AI revolutionizes sextortion scams

Artificial intelligence (AI) services are enabling unscrupulous online blackmailers to create fake but highly realistic sexually explicit photographs and videos of innocent victims. The blackmailer usually emails the target individual to show them pornographic images of themselves, threatening to send the pictures to the victim’s contacts – a process known as “sextortion.” A variation is to claim to have compromising images of the victim recorded via the webcam on their smartphone.