A teenager has spoken of his terror at being the target of an emerging sextortion trend - deep fakes. Blackmailers threatened to release doctored nude images of him if he didn't comply.
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00:00 I was just genuinely scared.
00:04 I thought this could really ruin my life.
00:06 So as fake as these pictures were, the threat was very much real.
00:10 Mateo became the victim of sextortion after he added someone on Snapchat.
00:14 They threatened to release fake nudes of him unless he transferred them money.
00:20 Our real concern is around these deep fakes and what we're starting to see as some emerging
00:27 trends which is that they are taking the face of an individual and imposing that on a nude
00:34 body or a sexually explicit photograph.
00:37 So if you saw something dodgy online, would you question if it was real?
00:42 With the rise of AI, doctored images are going to look more and more realistic.
00:47 We need to understand that if someone sends us, "Here's a nude image of someone you know,"
00:51 we should just delete that.
00:52 We shouldn't be opening it and looking at it because that empowers someone to sextort,
00:57 as it were.
00:58 It's certainly an offence that we feel is very under-reported.
01:02 Do not pay the scammers.
01:04 As hard as that is going to be, it's actually worse if you pay them.
01:08 I guess we just live in a time where technology really is that advanced and we can be left
01:13 vulnerable never in a million years, but I thought this would ever happen to me, but
01:19 here I am.
01:20 Experts recommend victims immediately report extortion to social media platforms and authorities.
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