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Last Saturday, a Telegram message popped up on Heejin\u2019s phone from an anonymous sender. \u201cYour pictures and personal information have been leaked. Let\u2019s discuss.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
As the university student entered the chatroom to read the message, she received a photo of herself taken a few years ago while she was still at school. It was followed by a second image using the same photo, only this one was sexually explicit, and fake.<\/p>\n
Terrified, Heejin, which is not her real name, did not respond, but the images kept coming. In all of them, her face had been attached to a body engaged in a sex act, using sophisticated deepfake technology.<\/p>\n
Deepfakes, the majority of which combine a real person\u2019s face with a fake, sexually explicit body, are increasingly being generated using artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was petrified, I felt so alone,\u201d Heejin told the BBC.<\/p>\n
But she was not alone. <\/p>\n
Two days earlier, South Korean journalist Ko Narin had published what would turn into the biggest scoop of her career. It had recently emerged that police were investigating deepfake porn rings at two of the county\u2019s major universities, and Ms Ko was convinced there must be more.<\/p>\n
She started searching social media and uncovered dozens of chat groups on the messaging app Telegram where users were sharing photos of women they knew and using AI software to convert them into fake pornographic images within seconds. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery minute people were uploading photos of girls they knew and asking them to be turned into deepfakes,\u201d Ms Ko told us.<\/p>\n
Ms Ko discovered these groups were not just targeting university students. There were rooms dedicated to specific high schools and even middle schools. If a lot of content was created using images of a particular student, she might even be given her own room. Broadly labelled \u201chumiliation rooms\u201d or \u201cfriend of friend rooms\u201d, they often come with strict entry terms.<\/p>\n
Ms Ko\u2019s report in the Hankyoreh newspaper has shocked South Korea. On Monday, police announced they were considering opening an investigation into Telegram, following the lead of authorities in France, who recently charged Telegram\u2019s Russian founder for crimes relating to the app. The government has vowed to bring in stricter punishments for those involved, and the president has called for young men to be better educated.<\/p>\n
The BBC has reached out to Telegram for comment and while it is yet to reply on this particular case, it has previously told the BBC that it proactively searches for illegal activity, including child sexual abuse, on its site. It said undisclosed action was taken against 45,000 groups worldwide, in August alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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‘A systematic and organised process’<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The BBC has viewed the descriptions of a number of these chatrooms. One calls for members to post more than four photos of someone along with their name, age and the area they live in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked at how systematic and organised the process was,\u201d said Ms Ko. \u201cThe most horrific thing I discovered was a group for underage pupils at one school that had more than 2,000 members.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the days after Ms Ko\u2019s article was published, women\u2019s rights activists started to scour Telegram too, and follow leads.<\/p>\n
By the end of that week, more than 500 schools and universities had been identified as targets. The actual number impacted, and the number of victims, is still to be established, but many are believed to be under 16, which is South Korea’s age of consent. A large proportion of the suspected perpetrators are teenagers themselves.<\/p>\n
Heejin said learning about the scale of the crisis had made her anxiety worse, as she now worried how many people might have viewed her deepfakes. Initially she blamed herself. \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop thinking did this happen because I uploaded my photos to social media, should I have been more careful?\u201d<\/p>\n
Scores of women and teenagers across the country have since removed their photos from social media or deactivated their accounts altogether, frightened they could be exploited next.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are frustrated and angry that we are having to censor our behaviour and our use of social media when we have done nothing wrong,\u201d said one university student, Ah-eun, whose peers have been targeted. <\/p>\n
Ah-eun said one victim at her university was told by police not to bother pursuing her case as it would be too difficult to catch the perpetrator, and it was \u201cnot really a crime\u201d as \u201cthe photos were fake\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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