The rate of teenage offenders is even higher.
According to data just released by the National Police Agency on Friday, August 30, about 60 percent of the victims of all deepfake-related sexual crimes investigated by Korean police were minors.
According to the report, 523 deepfake sex crime reports were filed with the police between 2021 and 2023. Of these, 315 victims (59.8%) were identified as teenagers. This age group has the highest percentage of victims, with the second highest being people in their 20s (31.2%). For people in their 30s, the percentage is 5.3%, and for those in their 40s, it is 1.1%.
The number of minors targeted by deepfake sex crimes has seen an alarming increase in the last two years, from 53 in 2021 to 181 in 2023, a 3.4-fold increase.
Shockingly, the number of underage perpetrators has also increased, and the growing ease of access to AI-powered deepfake technology is believed to have played a major role in this. Of all the suspects accused of creating deepfake pornographic videos, a whopping 65.4% were found to be teenagers in 2021. In 2022, that number jumped to 75.8%. From January to July of this year, 73.6% of cases involved underage perpetrators.
South Korea’s problem with deepfake-fueled digital crimes has only recently been laid bare for the world to see, when a few netizens took the initiative and exposed many of the problems. Telegram channels with hundreds of thousands of members participating in such crimes. A group of developers later created a website to track down schools involved in deepfake crimes, and surprisingly, several elementary schools were listed. Read more here:
Elementary Schools Appear on Creepy Map of Schools Involved in Deepfake Chat Rooms
What’s happening in Korea
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