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No more torture by hope, please

Published: 04 Sep. 2024, 20:00

CHUN IN-SUNG
The author is the international news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was also a victim. She proposed the Defiance Act, which passed the U.S. Senate about a month ago. Referred to as AOC, she is a star politician who became the youngest woman to be elected to the Congress at age 28 in 2018. She spoke on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and “the atmosphere among the crowd was notably more energized for the charismatic Ocasio-Cortez than for any speaker who preceded her — barring Harris herself,” according to The Hill.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in April, AOC talked about how she felt when she accidentally found images of herself depicted sexually on social media. She discussed the shock, fear and trauma when she felt others would think it was real images of her. She called the victims of deepfake as “sexual violence survivors,” and warned that deepfake “parallels the same exact intention of physical rape and sexual assault” and drives victims to extreme choices.

The bipartisan bill proposed by AOC and ten other members of the House and Senate passed the Senate unanimously. While it needs to pass the House and be signed by the president, the bill is cruising unlike similar bills that were frustrated or delayed due to lobbying by the platform industry or the “freedom of speech” controversy.

The bill is distinguished as it focuses on recovery and the rights of victims that AOC calls “sexual violence survivors” by increasing the legal responsibility of perpetrators. The bill guarantees the rights of deepfake victims to seek compensation to not only those who created and distributed content but also those who possess it. The existing legislation that had been limited to regulating platforms and criminal punishment of the perpetrator expanded to include recovery for victims. Communication and collaboration with more than 30 organizations supporting online and offline sexual violence victims across America played a major role.

In Korea, the government and politicians pay belated attention as deepfake sexual exploitation cases have emerged since mid-August. The president’s “rage” made government agencies raise punishment standards and present measures for reporting and investigation, video deletion and prevention education. The governing and opposition parties have agreed to discuss strengthening regulations and raising statutory punishment. But most of the measures discussed so far are mere reiterations of old responses to pornographic materials or “wishful thinking,” such as installing a hotline with Telegram. Can such bureaucratic solutions resolve the unprecedented crisis of sexual exploitation using AI? If there is no clear plan, how about communicating and empathizing with victims and seeking new solutions as AOC and lawmakers did in the United States?