A Taiwanese YouTuber and an accomplice last month were ordered by the New Taipei City District Court to pay NT$500,000 (US$16,289) to a female YouTube personality for creating pornographic videos doctored to use her likeness, which the creators sold online.
The decision follows orders to pay two other victims of their work, but can be appealed.
Chu Yu-chen (朱玉宸), 27, who goes by Xiaoyu (小玉) on YouTube, was arrested in October 2021 for creating and selling “deepfake” pornographic videos of 119 people, including politicians and influencers, made with the assistance of Chuang Hsin-jui (莊炘睿) between July 2020 and October 2021. The videos reportedly earned the creators more than NT$13 million.
The victims included Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷), Legislator Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) and social media influencer Ili Cheng (鄭家純), prosecutors said.
In July 2022, the district court sentenced Chu to five years and six months, and Chuang to three years and eight months in prison for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法施行細則), with the sentences commutable to fines.
New Taipei City prosecutors appealed the ruling, saying the sentences were too lenient.
Meanwhile, 21 victims of Chu and Chuang’s deepfake videos filed civil lawsuits seeking financial compensation for misuse of their likenesses.
The district court on Dec. 12 last year ordered Chu and Chuang to pay two victims NT$1 million each — Huang and an unidentified female flight attendant.
Another victim, a female YouTuber, also sought compensation of NT$1 million from Chu and Chuang, claiming that they earned more than NT$13 million through the sale of videos using her likeness, and harmed her reputation.
Although Chu agreed that the videos were obscene and intended for profit, he said he did not intend to harm their reputations.
The dissemination of the videos was limited to registered members of Chu’s YouTube channel who knew that the videos were not authentic, Chu said.
Chuang agreed that he and Chu should pay restitution to the female YouTuber, but requested that the compensation be reduced to NT$500,000, for which the woman settled on Dec. 27 last year, the court said.
The court found that placing the face of the victim on the body of a porn actress for people to watch in doctored videos seriously undermined the female YouTuber’s reputation.
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