Telegram cooperates with S. Korea on deepfake porn crackdown

SEOUL - South Korea regulators on Sept 30 hailed productive talks with messaging app Telegram over a deepfake porn crisis in the country.

In August, the media and authorities uncovered

a sprawling network of Telegram chatrooms in South Korea,

often set up within schools and universities, in which users shared AI-generated deepfake porn depicting female students and staff.

The revelations prompted public outrage, with the president vowing stern action and lawmakers recently moving to

criminalise possession or viewing of deepfake porn.

The telecommunications watchdog said on Sept 30 that Telegram had fully complied with its requests for 148 videos to be taken down over the past month, with the longest removal taking 36 hours.

“Telegram has accelerated our two-way communication by deleting all deepfake videos requested by the committee and immediately sending us the results,” said Mr Ryu Hee-lim, chair of the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC).

“We positively evaluate the results of our first meeting and we expect that illegal information in Telegram will be blocked and deleted more quickly,” he added.

The KCSC said the company claimed to “deeply understand the situation in Korea where deepfake sex crimes have become a social problem” and pledged a zero-tolerance policy for such content.

Cyber-security start-up Security Hero recorded nearly 96,000 deepfake videos online globally in 2023, with 53 per cent of them

featuring South Korean singers and actresses.

The “sudden move” by Telegram to cooperate with the South Korean authorities could be tied to the

arrest in France of the app’s chief Pavel Durov,

on charges of failing to act against criminals, a cyber-security professor told AFP.

“Telegram’s marketing point has been that it never cooperates with any government and that it is more secure than any other messaging app, so they are basically losing their biggest sales point if this cooperation goes on,” said Professor Kim Seung-joo from Korea University.

KCSC’s Mr Ryu said the commission had requested urgent cooperation from the French authorities, without providing details.

Separately, South Korea’s police agency said on Sept 30 there has been “some progress in communication” with Telegram.

“I can’t tell (details) now because it’s in the early stages,” Mr Woo Jong-soo, head of the investigation bureau at the National Police Agency, told reporters.

Police told AFP this was the first time Telegram had responded since the agency requested information of members on the platform.

The force said it had received hundreds of reports of deepfake crimes and arrested 387 suspects.

Telegram did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. AFP