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technology may evolve to the point where it becomes impossible to enforce actual child pornography laws because the Government cannot prove that certain pornographic images are of real children.
That right there seems like a great reason to ban ai-geneated CSAM, because that shit is never okay no matter what.
It should probably be illegal, but the rational here isn't great. Something shouldn't be made illegal just because it makes a detective's job more difficult.
This will stand until the first wave of child rapes and sexual assaults happen wherein the cops find huge amounts of the ai-created child porn in the perpetrators computers.
The prurient interest angle of the images an will then be unavoidable as an enticement and incitement to the assaults and it will be banned.
Unfortunately, the law has to see actionable harm FIRST from something before it can be banned.
Just give it time, as you notice the language the judge used - the "compelling interest" the government has - they know that it should ne illegal, but have to wait until the balance of content is ai-generated and the predators come out to play.
It absolutely sucks to have to unfold this way.
The interesting part of this is you can't have good discussions on the different aspects because any leniency towards the broader parts of prejudging something that doesn't exist yet means people will jump on you as supporting the current topic. And the danger later if and when such things develop into actual incidents is some level of Patriot Act where everyone says "we told you so" and approve blanket laws that supposedly take care of that problem, but also affect totally not connected things.
It's been something talked about in the tech world for a long time, how slow government is to react to changes in technology, and the gap widens as things speed along. Meanwhile we still aren't talking about things like AI safety and how to regress some of the damage done by how LLMs were developed ILLEGALLY. Rather than trying to be ahead of the curve (if that's even possible at this point) the laws will be late and draconian to appease the loud crowds.
That is absolutely fucking insane.
If CSAM is not CSAM because it’s fake and generated by AI, then that dude in Florida should be acquitted because they weren’t real flock cameras.
It’s that simple.
~And while I want that dude to go free, I also want all CSAM and their producers to be punished and burn in Hell/deactivated. Because it doesn’t matter if it’s a real child or not, the damage it does is real in the real world.~
Fucking assholes.
it doesn’t matter if it’s a real child or not
Real children who were abused to make CSAM say that they are re-traumatized when they come across the material or learn that it is being shared. I think most victims would say it does matter.
What I think you're trying to argue is that a generated facsimile of CSAM is also harmful.
Yes, thank you. I am not always good at words, but you captured my point precisely.
Check that judge's computer!
This is interesting and I'm torn on where I stand. It should probably be illegal, but just because I don't like something doesn't mean it should be illegal. Any curtailing of speech cuts the impact of the first amendment. It's something that shouldn't be done lightly.
I don't like the trajectory it puts us on when the government tries to tell people what is and isn't allowed to be said or done. Free speech and expression should not be curtailed unless absolutely necessary; this goes for joining the Klan to making porn to having died hair. The limits in place for yelling fire in a theater, making credible threats, and producing real csam are there to prevent immediate harm. And yes, I know there are more and exceptions; I'm generalizing. I'm also aware of the paradox of tollerance.
With AI generated csam, assuming the training model didn't use real csam to begin with, no person is harmed in its creation. Consumption of it could lead to harm, if it normalizes the behavior, making it seem alright for someone to harm a real child. On the otherhand, maybe having it could help keep someone's desires under control by giving them an outlet.
Has expert research been done on this? Though it might be hard to research. Given the subject matter, I'd imagine it'd be difficult to find a sample group large enough to test. Maybe based on arrest records. Peer reviewed research would help guide the direction.
If AI generated csam causes people to - who wouldn't have otherwise - harm children, then it should be added to the list of banned speech. If not, then even though many of us will find it disgusting, it shouldn't be made illegal. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
Again, I'm torn on this one. What thoughts do you folks have?
Edit: missed sentence.
It's like how people instinctually want to give child rapists the death penalty: it's counterproductive.
What it leads to is that the child now gets murdered as well, because the guy will try to minimize his chances of getting caught.
There is currently no good evidence that consuming child porn leads to abusive behaviour - there is some contradictory evidence of the kind you mentioned.
As such I think it should be legal unless it is established that it actually does lead to harmful behaviour.
I don't think the model's training data matters that much here, because that's the same regardless of what the model is used for.
It's because CSAM can be used to groom kids and has to be produced. It's existance also leads to harm to the victims, who couldn't consent to the act.
I agree, it is a fine line. Another relevant inconvenient truth is that there are pedophiles who have never acted on their urges, never harmed a child, and have even sought appropriate therapy to manage their mental state. Yet at the end of the day, they are still literally pedophiles.
Japan seems to be the canary in the coal mine for this issue. They have long made it legal to draw manga "pornography" featuring apparently underage characters, as long as it doesn't depict an actual child in any way. This is a vice mini-doc on the subject from a few years ago.
People in that culture try to make the argument that it gives pedophiles a way to manage their feelings without harming any children. But in reality, it's seeming more like giving suicidal patients access to guns. The challenge seems to be that: philosophically we want universal free speech, but biologically the human brain isn't evolved to control itself in that environment. You're not staving off a pedophiles' urges, you end up nurturing them. You create a subculture that embraces this mental state as acceptable and normalized. It would be like....building Westworld robots for serial killers to abuse. Surely nothing good will come from creating a safe space in society for people with these urges.
I personally do not agree with any laws against speech, and also I don't think anyone should ever create "artificial" CSAM in any capacity. But I don't know how to square that circle. Because if you try to just make a blanket law against it, on the one hand people will find ways to skirt the line, slowly developing arguably even more depraved genres; and on the other hand you'll have rulings against perfectly above-board, consensual pornography/speech, just because a politician doesn't like it (as have been attempted many times throughout history, and remains a concerted goal of the right to this day).
I have to assume this is what it feels like to be an old-fashioned puritan, seeing a clear line between pornographic content and the erosion of society. But in this case, I think that's where I am. I just don't think it's ok for the future of society to normalize artificial CSAM.
People in that culture try to make the argument that it gives pedophiles a way to manage their feelings without harming any children. But in reality, it's seeming more like giving suicidal patients access to guns.
Why assume when there is data? The rates of child sexual abuse are about the same in Japan.
For your assumption to hold, the rate would need to be higher. The data says it doesn't matter.
Caveat, only numbers I can find are child abuse survivor rates. But if reducing abuse rate outcomes is the goal these numbers feel adequate.
The rate might be higher in Japan specificaly because it's normalised. If the victims themselves don't see any wrong with what happened to them and bystanders too, then it's way less likely to be repported.
SA cases have been seen to be heavily underepported in Japan. Upskirts were normalized too, for reference, and they had to force the cameras to make shutter sounds when taking pictures to try to solve the issue. Still, people mod their phones to circumvent it, and the demand for such content is still high, hence encouraging the practice more.
I think the real question is whether CSAM increases or decreases the likelihood of actual abuse. I have seen no studies dealing with this, but the suspicion from regular pornography is that readily available regular pornography leads to a significant reduction in actual sex being had.
What happens if AI CSAM actually reduces real life abuse?
It won't because it normalises it. Groomers often use media like this to encourage pedophilia and convince their victims that it's normal. Litteraly how the pedo side of the fediverse opperates.
Also, the CSAM has to be produced. I know people say AI can just approximate how a child would look doing sexual acts, but that's half the truth. Oftentimes, predators will use victims' names to generate it, and pictures/videos similar to the ones in their CSAM would appear. So now, according to this ruling, the produced media would be legal. That, and how sometimes loli/shota artist use CSAM for reference, the AI will most likely use existing CSAM as a reference as well simply because of the tags used in a prompt.
Isn't the obvious conclusion that if you are unable to differentiate from AI CSAM and real CSAM, the safest thing for the victims is to treat it all as real CSAM?
Who are the victims of AI generated images? This stuff is absolutely repulsive, but the reasoning for outlawing it (that it’s evidence of, and was produced during, the commission of a crime) falls apart when it’s fake. Now if it can be linked to the commission of future abuse, that starts to make sense in the way that reckless behavior is illegal even if a particular incident doesn’t hurt anybody.
The people that the generated image was aggregated from are the victims.
Well my point is that if you can't differentiate between real or fake, you have no idea if there are victims or not, so you have to assume there are as a worst-case.
That would mean less money to go around to track down the real monsters abusing children because everything spent to track down victims that don't exist is wasted.
WTF ….
Every law is, fundamentally, a restriction on someone's freedom. The key justification for why that's okay is that the law protects one or more people from harm in the process. So in this case the question is "who is being harmed when an AI generates this particular configuration of pixels? How are they being harmed?"
When you dig into that it's more complicated than the simple knee-jerk "that stuff is just plain bad!" Attitude that has been drummed into the general public.
Also the ruling was just about the possession of it, which when it doesnt depict a real person, isnt against the law.
They get people by having pictures of real people OR transmitting it which is strictly against the law even when its all made up.
Given existing laws, if he transmitted it which he is charged with, he will still be found guilty.
The moment it exits or enters your home from outside its transmitting. Transmitting is as simple as going to a website and downloading it, or uploading it to a cloud drive, or even some cloud service to move it between 2 devices you own.
What I don’t understand, is how where the models trained. I don’t think they just took adult parts and made them smaller.. so wouldn’t that make the content illegal?
From the article:
For example, researchers have found that "a major dataset used for training image-generating AI contained hundreds of CSAM images."
However, there is no source for this. I would really like to see one because that's a huge part of the issue.
But regardless, this court ruling said that only possession is protected by current laws, not production or distribution.
Any model able to generalize will necessarily learn how to combine "nude" and "child" in the same way that it would learn how to combine "rainbow" and "banana". That's the whole point of the model is to generalize. It isn't required that one particular combination of concepts is in the training data for the model to learn how to do it.
So, these judges are definitely pedos.
I'm an opponent of the death penalty. If there's a convicted murderer on death row I would oppose executing him.
Does that mean I'm definitely a murderer?
If that's free speech then so is AI generated porn of the Judge.
they should have to show its computer generated. so realease all source and data involved in the generation for every single time it is done.