WARNING: This article contains abuse details.
A man in Quebec has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for using artificial intelligence to create a synthetic child pornography video.
Stephen LaRoche, 61, of Sherbrooke, Quebec, pleaded guilty to making at least seven videos using so-called deepfake technology, which is used to superimpose one person’s face on another’s body. .
He also pleaded guilty to possessing hundreds of thousands of child pornography computer files and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
District Court Judge Benoît Gagnon believes this is the country’s first case involving deepfakes of child sexual exploitation, in a ruling issued earlier this month.
He worries about what will happen when criminals use the technology to paste children’s faces they find on social media into videos of other children being sexually assaulted. I said yes.
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“The use of deepfake technology in the hands of criminals is appalling. This kind of software allows us to commit crimes that could involve virtually every child in our community,” Gagnon said. I wrote in the judgment of the 14th of the month.
“Brief excerpts of children published on social media or videos of children filmed in public places can be potential victims of child pornography.”
Gagnon writes that the creation of new images of sexual abuse promotes a market for child pornography that craves novelty and endangers children by “facilitating fantasies that incite sexual crimes against children.” increase.
Larouche’s attorney argued for a lighter sentence because the children had not been assaulted when he made the video, but the judge said the children whose bodies were shown in the video had no sexual integrity. has been compromised again.
complicate a police investigation
Many images of child sexual exploitation have digital fingerprints, allowing police to identify them, the judge wrote. By creating synthetic images, Larouche made it more difficult for police to stop the spread of illegal material.
Larouche also admitted to possessing over 545,000 computer files containing child sexual abuse images and videos, some of which he has made available to others.
Among these images was a series of images of a girl who had been abused over a period of 7 years, between the ages of 7 and 14. Police also found photos of her and personal information about her children, including her, on LaRouche’s computer from her social media accounts. Real name, town where you live, school name.
In total, Gagnon sentenced LaRouche to eight years in prison. The length of service credit requires Larouche to serve an additional 5 years and him to 11 months.
Canadian law prohibits the visual representation of persons under the age of 18 engaging in sexually explicit acts.
set a precedent for Canada
Stephen Sauer, director of Cybertip.ca, said that while there have been cases of child sexual abuse composites being created before using more rudimentary methods such as Photoshop, someone in Canada has been convicted. He said that this may be the first time he has received a Creation of materials using deepfake technology.
“We are approaching an unprecedented time when children can be harmed as a result of this kind of material. , can hurt children in many different ways,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Synthetic images not only humiliate victims and violate their dignity and privacy, they can also lead people to seek out children for sexual assault, Sauer said.
“There are individuals out there trying to identify individuals with sexual abuse imagery, creating a safety risk for that child.”
Vasileia Karasavva, an MSc student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia, who co-authored a 2021 paper on the threat of deepfake pornography, says the technical barriers to creating videos this way continue to drop. said that
The technology has become easier to use and has also reduced the number of images required to include someone’s face in a video, she said in an interview Wednesday, adding that the app can be used to scrape images of individuals from social media accounts. added.
She said deepfake porn has two victims. The person whose body is shown in the video and the person whose face is shown.
Although there is little research on the specific impact of deepfake pornography on victims, research on other forms of online sexual violence suggests that it can affect victims in ways similar to face-to-face sexual assault. It shows a lot.
“This damage continues,” Karasava said. “It’s very public. Very often it’s very persistent and the victim feels very powerless and helpless in the situation.”
Available to anyone who has been sexually assaulted. It provides access to crisis response lines and local support services. Canadian government website or Ending Violence Association of Canada databaseCall 911 if you are in imminent danger or if you are concerned about your safety or that of others.
