Women-led digital sleuths in South Korea race to remove AI deepfake porn

A team of female digital investigators in Seoul is working to remove illegal AI-generated sexual imagery from the internet, as South Korea confronts a growing wave of deepfake pornography and other digital sex crimes.

Who is fighting back

The National Center for Digital Sexual Crime Response, based in Seoul, employs 23 women who search the web and file removal requests backed by legal threats. The centre also operates from a headquarters and 17 regional hubs, and provides counselling, legal advice and evidence collection for prosecutions.

Scale of the removals

Last year the group pulled down 318,000 videos and photos – including deepfakes, spycam footage and intimate imagery shared without consent – on behalf of 10,600 people. The centre said 75 percent of those people were women and girls.

New technology, persistent harms

Rights groups say South Korea faces widespread “digital sex crimes” ranging from spycam footage and revenge porn to extortion in private chatrooms. AI-generated deepfakes have become the latest tool of harassment: using generative technology and a picture of a victim’s face, harassers can fabricate pornographic images.

Describing the country’s response, Kim Mi-soon, head of the government-founded centre, told AFP:

“South Korea acted faster than others because not only digital sex crimes became common earlier than elsewhere, but also women spoke out against them just as quickly and vigorously.”

Victims’ experiences

A 33-year-old woman who asked to be identified only by her surname Kim said she had deepfakes shared in 2024 on encrypted apps beyond the reach of the centre’s specialists. She said:

“The centre may not be perfect, but it can make a huge difference for victims going through this nightmare alone.”

Kim, who is a member of the military, said the centre’s support included financial aid to secure a trauma diagnosis for court evidence and that the help made her feel “healed”. She told AFP:

“It gave me a huge sense of relief and solace. Navigating the whole legal procedure alone while suffering trauma would have been impossible.”

Trends and data

The centre opened in 2018 after large anti-spycam protests that year. The 2020 “Nth Room” scandal revealed men were exploiting women and girls in pay-to-view “sextortion” chatrooms.

Web safety firm Security Hero found that between 2019 and 2023 global deepfake circulation surged 550 percent, and that nearly 98 percent of that content was AI-generated pornography of women, with more than half the victims South Korean, according to the company’s research.

Police data cited in the reporting show digital sex crimes account for 40 percent of all sexual offences in South Korea.

Tools, law and limits

The centre uses its own AI tools, including a monitoring system said to detect exploitative material and messages targeting children. A deletion specialist who discussed the work with AFP said:

“This job is not easy. But it feels really rewarding whenever our clients say our service is a true life-saver.”

Deepfake pornography is illegal in South Korea. The reporting states possession is punishable by up to three years in prison and creators can face up to seven years behind bars. Penalties were increased in 2024, the year Telegram deepfake chatrooms were found to be sharing AI-generated sexualised footage of acquaintances, classmates, colleagues and relatives, sometimes created from photos taken from victims’ social media accounts.

Voices from outside the centre

Clare McGlynn, law professor at Britain’s Durham University and an expert in image-based sexual abuse, told AFP:

“Seoul is ‘leading the way on providing holistic support services and investing in the latest technology to try to reduce the harm’. South Korea’s approach offers ‘an example for the rest of the world’.”

Campaigners argue removal efforts are not enough without broader social change. Kim Yeo-jin, head of the nonprofit Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center, told AFP:

“Unless we tackle this fundamental cause by fostering more gender equality in wider society and strengthening gender equality education at school, no amount of removal efforts will be enough.”

Where it stands

South Korea’s combination of a specialised government centre, legal penalties and in-house monitoring tools illustrates a concerted effort to respond to a rapidly evolving online threat. The centre’s staff say their work brings relief to victims, even as experts warn that cultural change is needed to reduce the underlying problem.