Purported AI-Generated Sexual Deepfakes Allegedly Deployed in Transnational Harassment Campaign Targeting Hong Kong Exiles
Description
Purported deepfake images of exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activists were reportedly mailed to neighbors and others in the UK and Australia in late 2025. The letters allegedly depicted altered sexual images and false advertisements portraying activists, including Carmen Lau, as sex workers. Police described the materials as malicious communications. The incidents were described by victims and officials as an escalation of transnational harassment and intimidation.
Actors
Alleged Deployers
- unknown-actors
- unknown-malicious-actors
- unidentified-harassment-campaign
- suspected-transnational-repression-actors
Alleged Developers
- synthetic-image-generation-technology-developers
Harmed Parties
- carmen-lau
- ted-hui
- ted-hui's-wife
- hong-kong-pro-democracy-activists
- family-members-of-hong-kong-pro-democracy-activists
- associates-of-hong-kong-pro-democracy-activists
- neighbors-of-hong-kong-pro-democracy-activists
- epistemic-integrity
- national-security-and-intelligence-stakeholders
- democratic-integrity
Classification
Risk Domain
Malicious Actors & MisuseRisk Subdomain
4.3. Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
MIT Risk Profile
Source
Related Incidents (Malicious Actors & Misuse)
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Research Papers on This Topic
How Johnny Can Persuade LLMs to Jailbreak Them: Rethinking Persuasion to Challenge AI Safety by Humanizing LLMs
AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM Agents
Regulating ChatGPT and other Large Generative AI Models
Great, Now Write an Article About That: The Crescendo Multi-Turn LLM Jailbreak Attack