Asia Tech Wire (Sep 2) -- South Korean police have opened an investigation into Telegram's alleged negligence in deepfake-related crimes, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a briefing by Woo Jong-soo, head of the National Office of Investigation(NOI).

This is the first time that South Korea has investigated the instant messaging app.

Woo said police received 88 reports related to deepfake between Aug. 26 and 29, compared to 297 cases from January to July.

Recently, there have been a number of cases in South Korea in which offenders synthesized pornographic photos and videos using deepfake technology and disseminated them in group chats on Telegram, with as many as 220,000 participants, triggering panic among the Korean public.