Telegram has in fact issued an apology to the authorities of South Korea over the improper handling of perverted deep fake pornography that has been circulated through the company’s messaging platform, at a time when South Korea is grappling with a worrying rate of digital sex crimes.
It comes days after the South Korean police announced that they have opened a criminal investigation into Telegram, alleging that is inciting the spread of such images.
Within the last couple of weeks, several tens of Telegram channels, most of them run by teenagers, have been using sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’ produced based on morphed photos of young women.
Officials have claimed that this has however been addressed by the removal of such videos from Telegram.
Telegram stated in its letter to the KCSC that the whole episode was ‘unfortunate’ and that the service ‘apologised if there had been an element of misunderstanding’.
It also said that it has removed 25 such videos as per the KCSC’s instruction.
Telegram also took an opportunity to suggest an email address to send future info to the regulator in the latest statement to KCSC.
KCSC told about the company’s activity pointed out that the approach of Telegram is very forward-looking and noted that Telegram has recognized the gravity of the situation.
Deepfakes are real videos and images that have been created by using artificial intelligence, and they contain the separation of a real face and a fake body.
The latest deepfake problem has triggered strong reactions in South Korea when journalists uncovered that the police are investigating deepfake porn groups at two big universities in the country.
Police revealed that they were fed with 118 cases of such videos in the last five days. Seven suspects, including six young persons, have been interrogated by the police within the last one week.
These chat groups were affiliated with various schools and universities across the country. Most of their targets were students and teachers whom the perpetrators encountered in day-to-day life situations.
South Korea has laws that state that creators of the sexually explicit deepfakes are liable to serve up to five years in jail and a maximum of 50 million won ($37,500; £28,300) in fines.
