Man in Japan arrested after using AI to unblur censored porn

A man in Japan was charged with copyright infringement and electronic transmission of obscene materials after using AI software to de-censor porn on-demand though his website. In Japan, genitalia must be obscured in media, even in pornography; the AI software he allegedly used, TecoGAN [github], infers detail in the blurred region based on the remaining pixels and similar details in the many other works upon which its neural networks are trained.

As summarized by Boing Boing reader Jesse13927 from the original story at jiji.com:

Today, the cybercrime division of the Kyoto Prefectural Police arrested a 43 year-old man residing in Takasago, Hyogo on charges of for-profit copyright infringement and electronic transmission of obscene materials after he allegedly used advanced "TecoGAN" AI to remove the mosaic tiles from pornographic videos. He allegedly charged 2,300 Yen (about 20 bucks) per video, raking in 11M Yen (about 100k US) between December and August.

Here's a worksafe example of its output: