Easy access to deepfake porn services raises alarm

Social workers and online safety advocates in Singapore are bracing themselves for a wave of Al-generated porn targeting victims here, as deepfake-on-demand services are popping up on publicly accessible online channels.

- Osmond Chia

Such programs allow users to generate realistic deepfakes within seconds and often for free simply by uploading a picture of someone's face, which the AI, or artificial intelligence, will combine with a digitally rendered body.

Celebrities have long been targeted by explicit deepfakes created using programs such as Photoshop, but now the accessibility and rapid processing of deepfakeon-demand programs lower the barrier to entry for anyone.

Widely circulated on platforms like Telegram, these apps have fuelled a deepfake pornography crisis in countries like South Korea, where sexually explicit deepfake images of women and young girls often created based on school photos and social media content - are being widely shared in online chatrooms.

Social workers here have not encountered victims of deepfake harassment, but warn that South Korea's situation should be a warning to the rest of the world.

The Sunday Times found more than six Telegram channels offering deepfake services that allow users to develop "nude renders" using photos of real people within seconds.

These channels, which have up to 95,000 subscribers, are accessible to anyone.

Subscribers can generate deepfakes based on pictures they upload, as long as the target's face is clearly visible.

In some channels, users upload pictures of real people and request the channels' administrators to "undress" them, which they do for a fee.

Customers can tweak the footage to their fancy, such as by changing the size of the modified image's body parts. And the more one pays, the more explicit the generated images can get.

"Deepfakes are a genre of pornography that we are seeing more among addicts," said We Care Community Services' counsellor Alvin Seng, who specialises in therapy for those with sex- and porn-related addiction.