[Anchor]
As artificial intelligence technology advances, fraudulent crimes impersonating lovers, models, and actors are occurring one after another. Such deepfake crimes do not even have proper statistics compiled yet. In response, the police have deployed specialized AI crime analysts nationwide and stepped up full-scale countermeasures.
Reporting by Pyeon Gwanghyeon.
[Reporter]
A photo that looks as though it was taken directly by a famous actor pops up in a messenger chat window.
A woman in her 30s, surnamed A, believed the person impersonating the actor was the actor themselves and exchanged messages like lovers for eight months.
Then one day, the counterpart claimed that a gift sent from abroad was stuck at customs and demanded money, leading A to send 35 million won across multiple occasions.
[Victim A: I divided it up and sent 3 million won, 5 million won, 2 million won, 4.8 million won like that....]
Realizing belatedly that it was a scam, she was unable to get a single penny back.
This advertisement, which appears to show singer Lee Ji-hye promoting a product while eating it, is also a fake synthesized using AI.
As damages piled up from consumers who bought the product believing it was real, Lee even warned of legal action against the company in question.
While AI-leveraged deepfake crimes are running rampant like this, only AI-based false video sex crimes were tallied at nearly 1,500 reports last year, while other types of AI deepfakes lack even basic statistics.
[Police Official: We maintain statistics regarding sex crimes (for deepfakes). Statistics for other areas have not yet been established....]
While preventive advice emerges—such as directly verifying through official websites or known numbers if money or ID is requested online—critics point out that AI technology has evolved so rapidly that relying solely on individual caution has its limits.
[Lee Kyung-ho, Professor of Information Security at Korea University: Attacks are carried out by analyzing individuals and tailoring messages to be persuasive. Activating an industrial ecosystem, such as by developing solutions, is the (preferable) way to resolve this.]
The police have deployed "AI specialized analysts" to provincial and metropolitan police agencies nationwide to strengthen their response against the flood of AI-manipulated materials.
(Video by Yoon Hyeong | Video Editing by Kim Ho-jin | Design: Kim Ye-ji)
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