The increasing accessibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has not only proved to be a boon but also a bane as its misuse is growing rapidly. South Korea is one of its recent victims as deepfake-related digital sex crimes have been on the rise in the country.

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According to a data released by the Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Centre on Thursday (April 10), digital sex crime victims in Korea exceeded 10,000 for the first time last year, reported The Korea Times. This is much higher than just 423 incidents reported in 2023, which means it is an increase of 14.7 per cent.

Actual crime much higher

Young people, specifically those in their teens or twenties fell prey to the crime, accounting for approximately 92.6 per cent of the total cases reported.

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Last year, authorities reported 1,384 cases involving image manipulation using AI and advanced technology, which is triple the previous year's figure of 423.

The government further acknowledged that estimating unreported cases accurately is difficult, therefore the actual number of digital sex crime may be much higher than reported.

Also Read: 'Satisfy my sexual urges': Japanese man arrested for sending used condoms to female colleague

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“We’re seeing a growing number of reports involving elementary school students because of how easily accessible AI tools have become, even for children under the age of 10,” said Park Sung-hye, who leads deletion support at the advocacy centre, reported The Korea Times.

"When the center first opened in 2018, most manipulated images involved crude edits, such as adding sexual captions to photos," Park further said and added "But now, with the rise of tech-savvy youth, these issues are likely to escalate further."

Deepfake sex crimes using generative AI were also reported last year after which the government launched a dedicated response team that helps in emergency counseling and content removal.