South Korean lawmakers have passed legislation banning the possession and viewing of sexually explicit images deepfake images and video, according to Reuters news agency. The new law was passed by South Korea’s National Assembly on Thursday. It now only needs a signature of approval from President Yoon Suk Yeol before it can go into effect.
Under the terms of the new bill, anyone who purchases, stores or views such material could face a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine of up to $22,600.
It is already illegal in South Korea to create sexually explicit deepfake material with the intent to distribute the content, with offenders facing a prison sentence of up to five years or a fine of approximately $38,000 under the Sexual Violence Prevention Act and protection of victims.
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If signed into law, the new legislation would increase the maximum penalty for the crime of creating deepfake pornography to seven years, regardless of whether the creator intended to distribute the images, according to Reuters.
There has been public outrage in South Korea in recent years over the exchange of sexually explicit, AI-manipulated images and deepfakes, and last month authorities launched an investigation into such content allegedly being shared through chat rooms on the messaging app Telegram.
An investigation by South Korean journalist Ko Narin for the country’s Hankyoreh newspaper, published in August, found that the faces of several female graduates of Seoul National University had appeared on sexually explicit deepfake material produced and distributed by men they had studied with.
“I was shocked by how systematic and organized the process was,” Ko told CBS News partner network BBC News earlier this month. “The most horrific thing I discovered was a group of underage students at one school [to share content] that had more than 2,000 members.”
The spread of such images among young people in South Korea appears to be a widespread problem. This year alone, a total of 387 people have been arrested for crimes related to deepfake sexual content, 80% of them teenagers, South Korea’s national news agency Yonhap reported this week, citing police data.
The Telegram investigation was announced not long after the tech company’s CEO Pavel Durov was charged by French authorities with multiple crimes, including accusations that his platform was used to distribute child sexual abuse material.
If CBS News reports thisdeepfake explicit images of pop icon Taylor Swift spread quickly on Elon Musk’s social media platform X early this year, attracting millions of views and prompting X (formerly Twitter) to temporarily block searches for the entertainer in January.
In May, two U.S. senators met co-author of a bipartisan bill aimed at tackling it non-consensual intimate deepfake images online. The legislation proposes penalties including fines and up to two years in prison, with civil penalties of up to $150,000.
