HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog said on Tuesday (Jul 15) it has launched a criminal investigation into an AI-generated porn scandal at the city’s oldest university, after a student was accused of creating lewd images of his female classmates and teachers.
Three people alleged over the weekend that a University of Hong Kong (HKU) law student fabricated pornographic images of at least 20 women using artificial intelligence, in what is the first high-profile case of its kind in the city.
The university sparked outrage over a perceived lenient punishment after it said on Saturday it had only sent a warning letter to the student and demanded that he apologise.
But Hong Kong’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data said on Tuesday that disclosing someone else’s personal data without consent, and with an intent to cause harm, could be an offence.
The watchdog “has begun a criminal investigation into the incident and has no further comment at this stage”, it said, without mentioning the student.
The accusers said in a statement on Saturday that Hong Kong law only criminalises the distribution of “intimate images”, including those created with AI, but not the generation of them.
There is no allegation so far that the student spread the deepfake images, and so “victims are unable to seek punishment … through Hong Kong’s criminal justice system”, they wrote.
The accusers said a friend discovered the images on the student’s laptop.
Experts warn the alleged use of AI in the scandal may be the tip of a “very large iceberg” surrounding non-consensual imagery.
“The HKU case shows clearly that anyone could be a perpetrator, no space is 100 per cent safe,” Annie Chan, a former associate professor at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, told AFP.
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