A Japanese boffin has been nabbed for using AI to unpixelate thousands of adult films and sell them online, earning himself tens of thousands of pounds in the process.
Kyoto Prefectural Police officers arrested 43-year-old Masayuki Nakamoto, who hails from the Japanese city of Takasago, in the city of Kyoto on 18th October.
He was arrested for the crimes of ‘violating the Copyright Act’ and ‘displaying obscene electromagnetic recorded media’.
Local media including newspaper The Mainichi believe it is the first-ever arrest in the East Asian country for such crimes.
According to reports, the suspect has already confessed to his alleged crimes to the police during questioning.
He is accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) to ‘unpixelate’ the pixelated parts of a pornographic film produced by a Tokyo company on 9th January.
He is accused of then uploading stills from the footage he made to look almost unaltered to his openly-accessible website that he had launched in November last year.
According to Japanese law, actors’ and actresses’ genitals must be censored in pornographic material produced in the country, with pixelation being the most common form of censorship.
He reportedly used an application called TecoGAN to improve the resolution of blurred explicit footage at the behest of his clients, from whom he made a reported JPY 11 million (GBP 69,861).
According to reports, he sold 2,561 videos and was only caught during a police cyber patrol.
The police said he also sold video files on other websites, adding that they will investigate the suspect for other possible crimes.
