Seoul National University has embedded anti-deepfake signals into the roughly 5,800 portraits in its 2026 graduation yearbook, two years after women’s graduation photos were used to create sexually explicit deepfakes.
The university’s student council signed an agreement with StealCut, a startup founded by SNU alumni, to apply its StealCut Protect technology to the photos.
StealCut described the project as the first use of such technology in a South Korean university graduation album. The student council said the protection would also be applied to photos for the 2027 album.
StealCut provided the technology to the university free of charge.
The technology inserts minute pixel-level signals, largely invisible to the human eye, into portrait images. The signals are designed to interfere with the way deepfake models recognize and extract facial features from an original image.
Deepfake models generally analyze facial structural characteristics before generating manipulated content. StealCut said its embedded signals disrupt that process, making it more difficult for models to accurately reproduce a person’s features.
As a result, generated images may appear distorted or show a face that is difficult to identify, according to the company.
Unlike tools designed to detect or flag deepfakes after they have been created, StealCut Protect alters the source image before it is distributed. The company said the approach could hinder misuse even on illicit deepfake websites without content moderation systems.
The measure follows the so-called “SNU Nth Room” case, which came to light in 2024. SNU graduates and other accomplices used graduation and social media photos of women to create and distribute sexually explicit synthetic images and videos through Telegram.
Police identified 61 victims, including 12 SNU alumni. Prosecutors said one of the main defendants created more than 400 manipulated images and videos and distributed more than 1,700.
The defendant was sentenced to 10 years in prison in October 2024. An appeals court reduced the sentence to nine years in April 2025.
seungku99@heraldcorp.com
