Two men were arrested in Japan by Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department on "defamation and other charges" over the alleged distribution of doctored "pornography videos" in which the faces of the original actresses were "swapped with those of female celebrities", Japan Times reports.
According to the newspaper, both suspects – a 21-year-old university student named Takumi Hayashida, and a 47-year-old system engineer named Takanobu Otsuki - have "admitted to the charges".
The men are suspected of using "machine learning" to produce deepfake porn videos, and of uploading "on websites" a total of eight videos featuring faces of four female celebrities "inserted in place of those of the actresses in the original videos" and thus "defaming the four", between December 2019 and July 2020.
Hayashida also operated a website that allowed users to watch porn videos for a fee, earning about ¥800,000 (about $7,593) in roughly eight months, sources cited by the newspaper said.
The case is reportedly the first handled by Japanese police involving deepfake porn videos.