HONG KONG — Chinese authorities in Hong Kong have launched a criminal investigation after more than a dozen female students and teachers at the University of Hong Kong accused a male law student of using AI to generate deepfake porn images of them.
The probe, announced Tuesday by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, came after an outcry from students at the university, the city’s oldest, who said it hadn’t done enough to protect them or punish the accused.
“The images were organized into folders named after the victims, totaling 700+ images (including the original photos),” read a widely circulated letter that was posted Saturday on Instagram from an account run by three unnamed victims.
The accused, referred to in the letter only as “a male law student,” took photos of the victims from social media and used AI software to generate pornographic images with their faces, according to the letter. The images were discovered on his laptop reported to the university in February. They were not known to have been widely distributed.
In March, the university interviewed some of the victims, and in April informed one of them that the accused student had written a 60-word “apology letter.”
While NBC News was unable to confirm the authenticity of that letter, and the account did not respond to a request for comment, the university said it was “aware of the social media posts concerning a student allegedly using AI tools to create indecent images.”
“The University has already issued him a warning letter and demanded him a formal apology to his affected peers,” the university said Saturday in a statement.
Deepfake porn is a type of nonconsensual pornography that involves altering existing images or creating entirely new ones using readily available AI tools to make it appear that a person has participated in sexual acts.
Regulations in Hong Kong around the technology are currently sparse. While it criminalizes “publication or threatened publication of intimate images without consent,” it does not explicitly outlaw their generation.
In the U.S., regulations govern dissemination, with President Donald Trump signing legislation in May that bans nonconsensual online publication of AI-generated porn, but federal law does not explicitly prohibit personal possession, and a district judge ruled in February that possessing such images was protected by the First Amendment.
After it was rocked by a number of scandals similar to the one playing out in Hong Kong, South Korea passed a law last year that criminalizes not only the possession but also the consumption of such content.
Though the University of Hong Kong said that it had undertaken various steps on behalf of the victims, “including class adjustments,” the victims wrote in the letter that the university’s inaction had resulted in them being forced to share the classroom with the suspect “at least four times, causing unnecessary psychological distress.”
Outrage has since grown in the wider student community, which has demanded more stringent action. That prompted a response from the city’s top official, Chief Executive John Lee, who said at a news briefing Tuesday that universities have the “responsibility of developing students’ moral character,” adding institutions should “deal with student misconduct seriously.”
“Any conduct that causes harm to others may constitute a criminal offense and may also infringe individual rights and also privacy,” he said.
The university did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News, but it told the South China Morning Post this week that it was conducting a review of the incident and vowed further action if victims demanded more.
“The university is now further reviewing the case and will take further actions when appropriate to ensure a safe and respectful learning environment,” it said.
