Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 36
After South Korean authorities uncovered a sprawling network of AI deepfake porn Telegram chatrooms targeting schools and universities, teenage activist Bang Seo-yoon began collecting testimony of abuse from victims.
Many of the cases she documented followed the same pattern: schoolboys steal innocuous selfies from private Instagram accounts and create explicit images to share in the chat rooms, specifically to humiliate female classmates — or even teachers.
Super-wired South Korea, with the world’s fastest average internet speeds, has long battled sexual cyber violence, but experts say a toxic combination of Telegram, AI tech, and lax laws has supercharged the issue — and it is tearing through the country’s schools.
She has received thousands of reports from devastated victims since authorities in August found the first such Telegram chatrooms, typically set up within a school or university to prey on female students and staff. Most perpetrators are teens, police say.
Source: AFP
