AUGUST 12 — “Your pictures and personal information have been leaked. Let’s discuss.”
The Telegram message flashed on Heejin’s phone from an anonymous sender. Attached was a photo of her taken years ago during high school.
Moments later, a second image arrived — a deepfake in which her face had been digitally spliced onto the naked body of a stranger. Heejin froze and did not respond, but the images kept coming.
Tragically, she is far from alone. A recent BBC News investigation exposed a massive deepfake pornography crisis in South Korea, primarily targeting young women and children across more than 500 schools and universities.
Deepfakes are synthetic media – videos, audio recordings, or images – generated using advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) to seamlessly replace one person’s likeness with another.
Today, this technology is increasingly being weaponised to create highly realistic, sexually explicit content without consent.
A global epidemic of digital misogyny
The trauma of South Korea’s infamous “Nth Room” case still lingers, yet similar horrors are multiplying globally.
In China, investigative reporting by the Southern Metropolis Daily (subsequently verified by Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao) exposed a Telegram group called the “MaskPark Treehole Forum”.
With over 100,000 male members, the group functioned as a massive underground marketplace for trading AI-generated deepfake pornography and other non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII).
The crisis has also hit closer to home. In April 2025, a 16-year-old male student in Kulai, Johor, was arrested for using AI to generate explicit deepfake images of more than 40 female schoolmates and alumni.
According to The Straits Times, he sold these synthetic images in a Telegram group for a mere RM2 each.
Adding insult to injury, reports indicated that school authorities initially blamed the victims, claiming that “girls shouldn’t post photos online”.
This massive institutional failure sparked public outrage, highlighting a toxic combination of technological abuse and victim-blaming.
This weaponisation of AI spares no one, actively targeting women in power.
In 2022, Northern Irish politician Cara Hunter was targeted with a highly explicit deepfake video disseminated on encrypted apps just weeks before her election.
Writing in the MDPI Laws Journal, legal scholars noted that this case exposed a terrifying legal blind spot. When Hunter approached law enforcement, she learned that no existing law explicitly criminalised the creation of synthetic pornography.
Deepfakes are now actively being used to silence female voices in the political arena, exploiting outdated laws to derail democratic processes.
Legal and ethical black holes
The epidemic of deepfake sexual exploitation crosses all borders, threatening not just privacy, but fundamental human rights.
Ethically, the creation and dissemination of non-consensual deepfake pornography is a gross violation of human dignity and sexual freedom.
Researchers in the Journal of Digital Sociology attribute this to “digital misogyny” – a distorted online culture where women are not recognised as human beings, but simply as raw materials to be manipulated and consumed.
Legally, the landscape is fraught with loopholes, starting with what researchers call the “liar’s dividend”.
In the journal Deepfakes and the Crisis of Media Credibility, experts argue that the mere existence of deepfakes allows guilty parties to dismiss genuine, incriminating footage as fake, thereby eroding the foundational legal concept of evidence.
Furthermore, a dangerous copyright loophole has emerged. The landmark Thaler v. Perlmutter ruling in the US established that works generated solely by AI without significant human authorship are not copyrightable.
While meant to clarify intellectual property law, this creates a vacuum where neither the human user nor the platform can be easily held responsible for owning or creating the generated work.
Locally, Malaysia is currently fighting a 21st-century crime with 20th-century laws. A comprehensive study in the International Journal of Law, Government and Communication points out that Malaysia’s Penal Code – specifically Section 292 on obscenity and Section 509 on insulting modesty – is fundamentally outdated.
These laws assume that illicit images depict real, physical bodies. Consequently, victims whose faces are superimposed onto synthetic bodies often find no clear legal recourse.
Additionally, while Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998 criminalises the transmission of obscene content, it acts merely as a reactive measure that only allows authorities to step in after reputational harm has already been inflicted.
The path forward
As we navigate 2026, the goal is not to fear technology, but to construct a digital world where authenticity is protected by law and verified by science.
To stop this crisis, decisive action is required across all levels of society. First and foremost, the global community must standardise AI legislation.
Scholars argue that the unauthorised digital replication of a person’s appearance or voice using AI must be universally classified as a high-tier cybercrime.
This international co-operation is necessary to ensure perpetrators cannot seek refuge in unregulated jurisdictions.
Locally, Malaysia is taking progressive steps toward platform accountability. The implementation of the Online Safety Act 2025 (ONSA) on January 1, 2026, shifted the burden of responsibility, legally obligating licensed social media and messaging platforms to proactively prevent the spread of harmful deepfakes before they cause irreversible damage.
However, Parliament must also urgently amend existing penal codes to explicitly define and criminalise the creation, possession, and distribution of AI-generated synthetic pornography and non-consensual deepfakes.
Finally, educational institutions must be mandated to enforce digital safety protocols.
Teachers and administrators require mandatory training to recognise digital harassment and respond without victim-blaming, strictly adhering to their legal reporting duties under Section 19 of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 (SOAC).
“My life is not your porn” cannot remain just a protest slogan. It is time it becomes a legally guaranteed reality for every woman.
* Lim Shining and Dr Mohd Istajib Mokhtar are from the Department of Science and Technology Studies, Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya, and can be reached via [email protected]
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
