Pornographic deepfake: fiction or virtual reality?

Nowadays, information technologies are developing every year with faster and faster and have almost become an integral part of our daily life. The development of the information technology, of course, carries such positive aspects as the improving of communication between people, the possibility of receiving a distance education, the use of information technology by the government agencies and business, and etc. At the same time, the information technologies like everything new and good can become an object for their use for criminal purposes. One of such a technology, which will be discussed in this article, is called a deepfake and, as its separate kind, a pornographic deepfake. The authors propose a solution to the problem of pornographic deepfakes at the level of the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation, since at present the Criminal code does not provide for responsibility for their creation and distribution. In particular, the authors formulate the proposals to the domestic legislator to make appropriate changes to Art. 137 and Art. 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, where the notion of a pornographic deepfake would be revealed in a note of the latter. In initially, it is considered the legal aspect of the pornographic deepfake as a phenomenon of modern digitalization and informatization of the society and the use of new methods for creating a virtual reality of objects harmful to humans: photo, video, and audio information. The results of the research can be used in further researches on this topic as well as in improving the legislation and law enforcement activities not only in the Russian Federation, but also in other foreign countries.

information technology, deepfake, pornography, Internet, cybercrime