Source: The Straits Times

The Straits Times reports on a major scandal at a Hong Kong university involving the creation and circulation of AI-generated deepfake pornography depicting students. The incident has ignited a fierce public and legal debate in the city about whether the creation and distribution of such synthetic materials are illegal under current laws and has highlighted significant gaps in existing legislation when it comes to tackling new forms of technology-enabled abuse.

Legal experts and lawmakers cited in the article are divided on the applicability of existing laws, such as those concerning obscenity, libel, or computer crimes. A key challenge is that many of these statutes were written long before the advent of convincing deepfake technology and may not explicitly cover the act of creating a synthetic, yet realistic, abusive image of a person. The scandal has intensified calls from advocacy groups and politicians for the Hong Kong government to introduce specific legislation that criminalizes the non-consensual creation and sharing of deepfakes, similar to measures being adopted in other jurisdictions, to protect victims and deter future abuse.