A Japanese man has been arrested for using artificial intelligence-driven tool DeepFake to de-pixelate porn content. The 43-year old was arrested by the Japanese police on grounds of using the technology to unblur pornography videos.
Recreating Pixelated Images Using DeepFake
In the case, which is a first-of-its-kind instance, a man identified as Masayuki Nakamoto has been accused of taking images of porn actors from a number of pornography sites, and putting faces on them. Interestingly, the faces he used were not random, and instead, had actually been recreated from the pixelated portions of the images using artificial intelligence.
And that wasn’t all, since he started selling the images online. Pixelated porn is peculiar to Japan, since the country’s law has made it illegal for any depiction of genitalia to be uncensored. Nakamoto made as much as $96,000 (11 million yen), by selling more than 10,000 DeepFake videos. He was eventually caught after he sold 10 fake photographs, each of them being valued at $20.
He has apparently pleaded guilty to charges of copyright infringement and displaying obscenity, while also admitting that he did everything for money.
A Dangerous Technology
Now you might be wondering what exactly a DeepFake is. They are almost realistic-looking images that are created using AI. They can potentially damage anyone, if the depiction is crude or obscene, and further sophistication could make it more difficult to trace such crimes.
But apart from personal damage, this technology also poses a threat to countries and democracies, since DeepFake can be used to develop realistic-seeming videos that could mislead people, and it is difficult for firms to keep track of everything that is posted on their platforms. Ethical questions are being raised, pertaining to privacy, artistic expression, copyright, and sexual exploitation.
However, Nakamoto has not been charged with violating the privacy of the actors depicted in the videos. Daisuke Sueyoshi, a Japanese lawyer, has said that this happens to be the first time a person has been arrested for using AI in the country. He has added that Japan doesn’t have any law which criminalizes the use of AI to create such images, at the moment.
Meanwhile in Taiwan
Interestingly, Monday also saw a man being arrested in Taiwan for selling DeepFake porn on a Telegram group which has around 6,000 members. The crime was called “online sex violence” by the country’s President, Tsai Ing-wen, who has added that she will consider legislation against the same.
