K-Pop Stars Fall Victims to 'Deepfake' Porn Videos

Nearly all "deepfake" videos in circulation on the Internet are porn, and around a quarter of the performers whose faces have been superimposed are female Korean stars, according to a study.

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There have been fears that the digital technology could be used to further fiendish political plots, but the findings confirm that man is by and large a simpler animal.

Dutch cybersecurity company Deeptrace analyzed images on five major websites distributing deepfake videos and found that a quarter of the victims were female Korean celebrities. They were only outnumbered by American and British actresses with 41 percent.

Rolling Stone magazine said the large percentage of K-pop stars shows "the explosive global popularity of K-pop in general".

"The data shows that the majority of users in the online forums generating deepfakes aren't from Korea, but China, which plays host to one of the biggest K-pop markets in the world", the magazine added.

According to Deeptrace, 14,798 deepfake videos were in circulation as of September, up around two-fold compared to December of 2018.

Henry Ajder at Deeptrace told the BBC, "The debate is all about the politics and fraud... but a lot of people are forgetting that deepfake pornography is a very real, very current phenomenon that is harming a lot of women".