A 22-year-old man from Belgaum district has been arrested by police for reportedly creating deep fake images of a girl he loved and her friends by morphing them into explicit images after the girl rejected his proposal.
The police reported that the accused used AI-generated deepfake software to create and edit the images of the girl and her friends and manipulate them with explicit content. He forced the girl to agree to his proposal by threatening to share the altered pictures on the internet.
After the girl said no to him, the accused made a fake social media account using her name and posted the pictures. Following this, the victim then went to the police and filed a case.
Superintendent of Police (SP) Belgaum Rural, Bheemashankar Guled, commented on the case, “Social media has been misused in an incident in Khanapur where the accused was in love with a girl and she was not responding to his love. Angered by this, the accused warned her that she, along with her friends, would have to pay dearly for this. ” He added, “He created a fake profile with the name of the girl on social media and uploaded morphed pictures. The accused had morphed the pictures of the girls using a deepfake software which can edit photos and videos. He morphed their faces with nude images and uploaded them on social media. To create pressure on the girl he loved, he uploaded the nude pictures of his friends from her fake social media profile.”
The accused reportedly works in Bengaluru at a private firm. The cybercrime unit arrested him after getting the complaint.
AI-created deepfake software caused a stir when a video of actress Rashmika Mandhana was being circulated widely on social media. Recently, Delhi Police filed a case, and they are currently looking into it.
Deepfake involves using artificial intelligence to convincingly replace a person’s appearance with someone else’s in digital content.
The government has also warned social media platforms about the legal consequences and penalties related to such deepfakes.
