Invisible pixels protect South Korean graduates’ photos from deepfake abuse

A South Korean university has embedded graduation photos with anti-deepfake technology to prevent a repeat of a scandal two years ago, when portraits of female graduates were used to create sexually explicit manipulated images.

Seoul National University’s (SNU) use of StealCut Protect, created by a start-up founded by SNU alumni, marked the first time it was used for a university graduation album in the country, The Korea Herald reported. StealCut provided the technology to SNU free of charge.

Deepfake models generally work by analysing facial structure characteristics to generate manipulated content. StealCut Protect inserts minute, pixel-level signals – largely invisible to the human eye – into images to disrupt this process. If a deepfake generator tries to manipulate a protected photo, the result is a distorted or unidentifiable face.