The Northern District Court of Seoul has convicted a 30-year-old Chinese PhD student who created more than 1,100 pornographic deepfakes using the faces of seven of his colleagues at a university laboratory, according to infohub.kz.
The man was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison. In addition to the custodial term, the court ordered him to complete a 40-hour program for sex offenders and barred him from working at institutions for children and people with disabilities for five years.
Investigators established that, starting last November, the offender used neural networks to superimpose the faces of his female classmates onto explicit images and videos. He also sought ways to bypass the safety restrictions of the Grok chatbot.
The crime came to light in April, when one of the victims happened to notice images bearing her face on a classmate's computer.
During the trial, the defendant pleaded guilty, expressed remorse and deposited compensation of 7 million won for each of the seven victims with the court, but the women refused to accept the money.
The court took into account his guilty plea and the absence of any evidence that the material was distributed online, but stressed that the gravity and systematic nature of the crime warranted a real prison term.