South Korea is set to criminalize watching or possessing sexually explicit deepfake video or images, as the country attempts to quell what has been described as a “digital sex crime epidemic”.
On Thursday (September 26, 2024), South Korean lawmakers passed the new bill, meaning that perpetrators caught buying, saving or watching sexually explicit deepfakes face up to three years in jail and fines of up to 30 million won ($22,600). The country’s President, Yoon Suk Yeol, will need to approve the bill for it to take effect, and is expected to do so.
Creating sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention to share them was already illegal in South Korea. When the new law comes into effect, punishment for sexually explicit deepfake creation will be increased from a maximum of five years in jail to a maximum of seven years, and intent to distribute the deepfake material will not be needed for a conviction.
Many countries are toughening laws around deepfake technology as they attempt to deal with online floods of non-consensual deepfake porn, many featuring false depictions of celebrities. South Korea is set to be the first country to make watching sexually explicit deepfake porn illegal, though we would eventually expect to see other countries make similar laws.
On the day the new bill was passed, South Korean police said they had dealt with 800 deepfake sex crime cases in 2024 so far. They said that most victims and perpetrators were teenagers.
President Yoon recently told authorities in South Korea that they need to “eradicate” digital sex crime. The messaging app Telegram has become a focus of the so-called “digital sex crime epidemic” in the country, after police accused Telegram of abetting the distribution of explicit deepfake porn.
Telegram apologized to South Korean authorities, following reports of multiple chat rooms on the messaging app hosting such material.
Deepfake porn featuring fake depictions of celebrities, often made using AI, has made news globally, which helped prompt crackdowns on deepfake use. In the US congress is currently debating legislation that, if passed, would criminalize the publication of non-consensual deepfake porn. Further US legislation being debated would allow victims of such material to sue its creators.
Sharing deepfake porn without the consent of those depicted has become illegal in the UK, under the country’s Online Safety Bill. Also this year, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sued two people for defamation, following deepfake porn content falsely depicting her appeared online.
Recently Google changed its search settings, to stop deepfake porn content appearing in Google search results. Instead, the search engine is now designed to present news articles about the effects of non-consensual deepfake porn following searches for such material. Microsoft has made similar changes too, hooking up with StopNCII (Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse) to help cut out deepfakes on its search engine Bing.
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