An official looks at a poster related to preventing deepfake crimes at the Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Center of the Korean Women's Human Rights Institute in Seoul, Nov. 6, 2024. Yonhap

Police will invest 9.1 billion won ($6.2 million) to build a system that can detect deepfakes and misinformation, officials said Sunday, as South Korea seeks to better combat a surge in crimes involving images and sounds generated with artificial intelligence (AI).

Under the project set for completion by December 2027, the police plan to develop the system that uses a multimodal algorithm and analyzes noise and sound frequency to detect deepfake videos and AI-generated voices, according to the officials.

The plan also includes using generative AI to track the origin of online echo chambers to respond to and deter fake news and misinformation at an early stage, they said.

The police expect the envisioned system to substantially reduce the time needed to detect deepfake videos and sound bites.

In the first 10 months of 2024, the police apprehended 573 suspects in relation to 1,094 deepfake sex crimes that also involved teens and minors. (Yonhap)