Hong Kong – Chinese authorities in Hong Kong have launched criminal investigation after more than a dozen students and teachers from Hong Kong University accused a male law student to use AI to generate porn images of depth of them.
The investigation, announced on Tuesday by the Office of the Personal Data Commissioner, occurred after a protest from the students of the University, the oldest in the city, which said it. He had not done enough to protect them or punish the defendant.
“The images were organized in folders that bear the name of the victims, with a total of more than 700 images (including the original photos),” he read a widely circulated letter that was published on Saturday on Instagram from an account directed by three victims without name.
The defendant, mentioned in the letter only as “a masculine law student,” took pictures of social networks victims and used AI software to generate pornographic images with their faces, according to the letter. The images were discovered on their laptop reported to the university in February. It was not known that they had been distributed widely.
In March, the University interviewed some of the victims, and in April he informed one of them that the accused student had written a “apology” letter “of 60 words.
While NBC News could not confirm the authenticity of that letter, and the account did not respond to a request for comments, the university said it was “aware of publications on social networks with respect to a student who supposedly used AI tools to create indecent images.”
“The university has already issued a warning letter and demanded a formal apology for its affected peers,” said the university on Saturday in a statement.
Deepfake Porn is a non -consensual type of pornography that implies altering existing images or creating completely new ones that use easily available AI tools so that it seems that a person has participated in sexual acts.
The regulations in Hong Kong around technology are currently scarce. While criminalizing “publication or threatened publication of intimate images without consent,” does not explicitly prohibit their generation.
In the US, the regulations govern the dissemination, with President Donald Trump, signing the legislation in May that prohibits the online publication not agreed with pornography generated by AI, but the federal law does not explicitly prohibit personal possession and a The district judge ruled in February that possessing such images was protected by the first amendment.
After it was shaken by several scandals similar to those developed in Hong Kong, South Korea approved a law last year that criminalizes not only possession but also the consumption of said content.
Although the University of Hong Kong said he had taken several steps on behalf of the victims, “including class adjustments,” the victims wrote in the letter that the university’s inaction had turned out that they were forced to share the classroom with the suspect “at least four times, causing unnecessary psychological anguish.”
Since then, outrage has grown in the broader student community, which has demanded a stricter action. That caused a response from the main official of the city, Executive President John Lee, who said in a newspaper session on Tuesday that universities have the “responsibility of developing the moral character of the students”, adding that institutions should “treat the misconduct of students seriously.”
“Any behavior that causes harm to others can constitute a criminal offense and can also violate individual rights and also privacy,” he said.
The University did not respond to a request for comments from NBC News, but told the South China Morning Post this week that he was doing a review of the incident and promised more measures if the victims demanded more.
“The university is now reviewing the case even more and will take more measures when it is appropriate to guarantee a safe and respectful learning environment,” he said.
