Taking Graduation Photos, Then Seeing Yourself Naked... Why Schools Are Even Making Students Sign Pledges

Middle school teachers A and B received shocking news two years ago that sexually exploitative material featuring them was being circulated.

A graduated former student had used deepfake technology to composite the two teachers' faces onto photos from the yearbook.

[Deepfake Victim Teacher : I felt deeply devastated and experienced a sense of self-doubt, wondering if I went through this simply because I became a teacher....]

Including five teachers, there were a total of 11 victims.

The perpetrator student was sentenced last week to a maximum term of 2 years and a minimum term of 1 year and 6 months in prison and taken into custody, but the victims still shrink back at the sight of a camera even after the incident.

[Deepfake Victim Teacher : My heart skips a beat, and checking a single box for non-consent felt so shameful, distressing, and painful, almost as if I were publishing my own victim photos.]

As deepfake crimes increase, anxiety that anyone could become a target of sex crimes is growing.

[University Student : When I hear about things happening where graduation photos were synthesized around me, it makes me needlessly anxious. Graduation photos are something you're supposed to take, after all.]

Some schools even include warnings about deepfake risks in school notices regarding yearbook photography or have students sign a pledge promising not to create deepfake outputs prior to the photo shoot.

Some schools are producing yearbooks by spending extra costs to go through deepfake prevention processing.

This is my yearbook photo.

Let's run an experiment to see what kind of output comes out when deepfakes are applied after protective processing.

[Lee Jung-hoon / CEO of Steel Cut : We insert subtle protective noise that is extremely fatal to deepfakes but barely noticeable to the human eye.]

The photo on the left is my original yearbook photo, and the photo on the right is the one that has gone through protective processing.

However, the two results are 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 measures to protect once-in-a-lifetime school memories from digital sex crimes.

Surrounded by Fear, "I Could Be Next"... Schools Grapple with Solutions (September 22, 2026, 8 News)

(Reported by Dong Eun-young | Produced by Choi Yoon-seo | Camera Filming by Kim Nam-sung and Kang Si-woo | Video Editing by Park Ji-in | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.