[Anchor]
Deepfake technology is even changing yearbook culture. Amid growing concerns over related sex crimes, some schools are now requiring students to sign pledges before yearbook photography or making photo sessions optional.
Reporter Dong Eunyeong has the story.
[Reporter]
Two years ago, middle school teachers A and B received the shocking news that sexually exploitative material featuring them had been distributed.
A graduated former student had used deepfake technology to composite the two teachers' faces into photos from their yearbook.
[Deepfake Victim Teacher: I felt so disillusioned and shattered, wondering if I had somehow brought this upon myself just by becoming a teacher.]
There were 11 victims in total, including five teachers.
The perpetrator was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of up to 2 years (with a minimum of 1 year and 6 months) in prison and taken into custody last week, but the victims still shrink away whenever they see a camera following the incident.
[Deepfake Victim Teacher: My heart drops, and checking the non-consent box for yearbook photography felt almost as humiliating and painful as having my own victim photos exposed.]
As deepfake crimes increase, anxiety is growing that anyone could become a target of sexual violence.
[University Student: When I hear about things like graduation photos being doctored around me, it makes me unnecessarily anxious. But yearbook photos are something you're supposed to take.]
Some schools now include warnings about deepfake risks in school newsletters regarding yearbook photos, or even require students to sign pledges promising not to create deepfake content prior to the photo shoots.
Some schools are even spending extra money to produce yearbooks that have undergone deepfake prevention processing.
This is a photo from my yearbook.
Let us test what kind of results come out when running a deepfake on it after applying protective measures.
[Lee Jung-hoon / CEO of Still Cut: We insert microscopic protective noise that is extremely fatal to deepfakes yet barely noticeable to the human eye.]
The photo on the left is my original yearbook picture, and the photo on the right is the one that has undergone the protective processing.
However, the two results look completely different.
The one on the left looks like me with blonde hair, while the one on the right feels like the gender has completely changed.
Schools are racking their brains to come up with countermeasures to protect once-in-a-lifetime school memories from digital sex crimes.
(Camera reporting: Kim Nam-sung, Kang Si-woo | Video editing: Park Ji-in)
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