Middle school senior makes money out of 177 deepfake pornographies

It was found that perpetrators generate a profit online by making and selling deepfake pornography. Even a middle school student was caught producing and distributing sexual deepfake content for profit, according to the South Korean police. Experts point out that deepfake crime is mushrooming covertly as payments are made by cryptocurrency, which is hard for law enforcement to track.

The Dong-A Ilbo on Wednesday went undercover in 10 Telegram chatrooms where deepfake pornography is distributed and traded among members. It was found that transactions were made by using Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. When the undercover team pretended to be interested in buying deepfake porn and tried paying, it was told that 46 cryptocurrencies were available for payment, and the more money is paid, the more sexually explicit porn is available.

Experts worry that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Some criminal rings use a so-called “deepfake bot” program to automatically produce and sell porn for just a few thousand won. Such sexual crimes involving deepfake technology may prevail unless there is an end to the transaction system that allows illegal sexual content to bring money to perpetrators, experts say.


손준영기자 hand@donga.com