Telegram has apologized to South Korean authorities for fake pornographic material shared through its messaging app, amid a rise in digital sex crime in the country.
The apology came days after South Korean police said they had launched an investigation, accusing the company of "supporting" the distribution of such photos.
In recent weeks, it has been discovered that a large number of story rooms on the app, mostly run by teenagers, are making explicit dipfakes using fake photos of young women.
Authorities said Telegram removed such videos from the platform.
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In a statement to South Korea's Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), Telegram said the situation was "unfortunate" and apologized for the "misunderstanding".
They also confirmed that 25 controversial videos were removed at the request of this commission.
Telegram also proposed an email address that will be used for future communication with the regulator, the Commission stated.
He acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, regulators said.
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A dipfake is generated using artificial intelligence and often combines a real person's face with a fake body.
The recent deep-faking crisis has sparked outrage in South Korea, after reporters revealed that police are investigating the country's two largest universities over it.
It later emerged that the police had received 118 reports of questionable videos in the last five days.
Seven suspects, six of whom are teenagers, were questioned by the police in the past week.
Chat groups were linked to individual schools and universities across the country.
Many of the victims were students and teachers they knew.
In South Korea, those found guilty of creating sexually explicit dipfakes can be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined 35.000 euros.
The revelations in South Korea followed the arrest in France of Russian-born Telegram founder Pavle Durov over allegations that child pornography, drug trafficking and fraud were taking place on the messaging app.
Durov has since been charged.
Last Tuesday, South Korean President Ion Suk-yeol instructed authorities to "thoroughly investigate and deal with these digital sex crimes in order to eradicate them."
Women's rights activists have accused South Korean authorities of allowing sexual abuse on Telegram.
It was also discovered that in 2019, a circle of sexual abusers used the application to blackmail dozens of women and children.
The leader of the abusers, Cho Yu Bin, who was 42 years old at the time, was sentenced to XNUMX years in prison.
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