Telegram cooperates with S. Korea deepfake porn crackdown: regulators

South Korea regulators on Monday hailed productive talks with messaging app Telegram over a deepfake porn crisis in the country.

In August, media and authorities uncovered a sprawling network of Telegram chatrooms in South Korea, often set up within schools and universities, in which users shared AI-generated deepfake porn depicting female students and staff.

The revelations prompted public outrage, with the president vowing stern action and lawmakers recently moving to criminalise possession or viewing of deepfake porn.

The telecommunications watchdog said Monday that Telegram had fully complied with its requests for 148 videos to be taken down over the past month, with the longest removal taking 36 hours.

"Telegram has accelerated our two-way communication by deleting all deepfake videos requested by the committee and immediately sending us the results," said Ryu Hee-lim, chair of the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC).

"We positively evaluate the results of our first meeting and we expect that illegal information in Telegram will be blocked and deleted more quickly," he added.

The KCSC said the company claimed to "deeply understand the situation in Korea where deepfake sex crimes have become a social problem" and pledged a zero-tolerance policy for such content.

Cybersecurity startup Security Hero recorded nearly 96,000 deepfake videos online globally last year, with 53 percent of them featuring South Korean singers and actresses.

The "sudden move" by Telegram to cooperate with South Korean authorities could be tied to the arrest in France of the app's chief Pavel Durov, on charges of failing to act against criminals, a cybersecurity professor told AFP.

"Telegram's marketing point has been that it never cooperates with any government and that it is more secure than any other messaging app, so they are basically losing their biggest sales point if this cooperation goes on," said Kim Seung-joo from Korea University.

KCSC's Ryu said the commission had requested urgent cooperation from French authorities, without providing details.

Separately, South Korea's police agency said Monday there has been "some progress in communication" with Telegram.

"I can't tell (details) now because it's in the early stages," Woo Jong-soo, head of the investigation bureau at the National Police Agency, told reporters.

Police told AFP this was the first time Telegram had responded since the agency requested information of members on the platform.

The force said it had received hundreds of reports of deepfake crimes and arrested 387 suspects.

Telegram did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.