This week in the All Points North studio we discuss the disturbing rise in the use of explicit deepfake images, with victims ranging from women in the public spotlight to young girls.Yle journalist Johanna Vehkoo joined Ronan Browne in the APN studio to discuss this troubling trend.Ronan Browne3.9. 16:05The use of fake nude images, otherwise known as 'deepfakes', is a disturbing and rapidly spreading phenomenon in Finland.Over the past year, Yle has uncovered cases including the distribution of explicit deepfakes of women volunteers in the defence forces, the man who allegedly manipulated photos of his female friends, relatives and co-workers, as well as evidence that a young boy created nude images of dozens of underage girls.Deepfakes are digitally manipulated images or videos, usually created using artificial intelligence (AI), which can depict people in sexually explicit situations among other forms of manipulation.Yle journalist Johanna Vehkoo, who has extensively investigated the emergence of deepfake imagery, tells APN that Finland is facing an "epidemic"."This permeates our entire society," she says. "It's happening in schools. It's happening in workplaces, as I've just described. It's happening to well-known women, and it's happening to women who are not that well-known at all. It's happening to children. And it's happening in the army."Vehkoo further notes that the impact on victims is profound and long-lasting."They have lost their sense of security, their sense of safety. They're walking on the street, and they're thinking, is somebody taking my picture? Have they seen that nudified picture and thought that it was actually a real picture of me? They talk about sleeping problems, depression, really severe psychological effects," she explains.You can watch the full episode from the video at the top of the page or on our YouTube channel.Tell us what you think!Ronan Browne produced and presented this episode of All Points North. The sound and video engineer was Tuomas Vauhkonen, and the production assistant was Hannah Anderson.If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts, contact us via WhatsApp at +358 44 421 0909 or at yle.news@yle.fi and allpointsnorth@yle.fi.