The possession or viewing of sexually explicit deepfake movies will be illegal in South Korea.

South Korean legislators have enacted a law prohibiting the possession and viewing of sexually explicit deepfake images and videos, as reported by the Reuters news agency. This legislation was approved by the National Assembly on Thursday and now awaits the signature of President Yoon Suk Yeol to become effective.

The provisions of the new law stipulate that individuals who buy, store, or view such materials may face penalties of up to three years in prison or fines reaching approximately $22,600. This measure addresses the growing concerns surrounding the misuse of deepfake technology in explicit content.

Currently, it is already against the law in South Korea to produce sexually explicit deepfake material intended for distribution, with violators facing up to five years of imprisonment or fines of around $38,000 under the Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Protection Act. Should the new legislation be enacted, the maximum penalty for creating deepfake pornography would rise to seven years, irrespective of the creator’s intent to distribute the content. Public sentiment in South Korea has increasingly condemned the circulation of AI-generated explicit images, prompting authorities to investigate instances of such content being shared in chat rooms on the Telegram messaging platform.

An investigation conducted by South Korean journalist Ko Narin for the Hankyoreh newspaper revealed in August that the images of several female graduates from Seoul National University had been manipulated into sexually explicit deepfake content. This material was created and disseminated by male peers from their academic environment.

Ko expressed her astonishment at the systematic and organized nature of this illicit activity during an interview with BBC News earlier this month. She highlighted a particularly alarming discovery: a group comprising underage students at one institution, which had amassed over 2,000 members to share such content.

The prevalence of this issue among South Korean youth is alarming, with reports indicating that 387 individuals have been arrested this year for offenses related to deepfake sexual imagery, 80% of whom are teenagers, according to the national Yonhap news agency. This investigation into the use of Telegram for such purposes coincided with legal actions against the platform’s CEO, Pavel Durov, by French authorities for various crimes, including the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

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