7 ms·

>We’ve limited the ability for DALL·E 2 to generate ... adult images. I think that using something like this for porn could potentially offer the biggest benef

>We’ve limited the ability for DALL·E 2 to generate ... adult images. I think that using something like this for porn could potentially offer the biggest benefit to society. So much has been said about how this industry exploits young and vulnerable models. Cheap autogenerated images (and in the future videos) would pretty much remove the demand for human models and eliminate the related suffering, no? EDIT: typo

uoaei 5y ago
No. If people are exposed to stimuli, they will pursue increasingly stimulating versions of it. I.e., if they see artificial CP, they will often begin to become desensitized (habituated) and pursue real CP or even live children thereafter. Conversely, if people are not exposed to certain stimuli, they will never be able to conceptualize them, and thus will be unable to think about them. Obviously you cannot eliminate all CP but minimizing the overall levels of exposure / ease of access to these kinds of things is way more appropriate than maximizing it.
- sneak 5y ago
  > If people are exposed to stimuli, they will pursue increasingly stimulating versions of it. I.e., if they see artificial CP, they will often begin to become desensitized (habituated) and pursue real CP or even live children thereafter. I have accumulated tens of thousands of headshots in video games but have yet to ever shoot a single real person in the face. More importantly, I have never had the urge to seek out same. I am not sure that your initial premise has any truth to it.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    The point is more "can you conceive of a headshot before you've ever witnessed one?" And the assertion is, no. I should be explicit -- I am saying the exposure which makes one seek stimulus is merely a catalyst for deeper urges, not a generator of them as such. A certain level of inhibition (e.g. sociopathy) is required but IMO so is a prior conception of the deed. In your example, if someone is predisposed to wanting to shoot actual people in the head, exposing them to video game headshots may distract in the short term but desensitizes and entrenches the image in the long term, possibly making it easier to decide to pull the trigger later on if they are sufficiently inhibited of social concerns. This does not happen for people with high inhibitions, or at least sufficient self-control.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > The point is more "can you conceive of a headshot before you've ever witnessed one?" And the assertion is, no. I'm not sure that's true. Our brains can imagine a lot that we've never seen, though maybe not very accurately. Inventors and developers and artists do it all the time, if we are talking about the same thing. I'm not sure that disproves your premise. Virtual experiences may make real ones easier, but some research and details about where it works, where it doesn't, would be helpful. Many training programs use virtual experiences, such as flight simulators.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      Is this just your own personal theory or opinion? Do you have some proof? To put it as nicely as possible, this wildly contradicts reality as I have experienced it and observed others experiencing it.
    - ctoth 5y ago
      > "can you conceive of a headshot before you've ever witnessed one?" Am totally blind, have never been able to see, can still conceive of a headshot. So, yes?
      - uoaei 5y ago
        "Conceive of" is a different idea than "visualize"...
        krageon 5y ago
        They can by definition not perceive a headshot, it is a visual thing. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, the difference is not germane to the conversation.
- throwaway675309 5y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with the statement, you're putting forth a lot of assertions without the actual quantitative data to back up what you're saying, and even though you think it sounds intuitive that doesn't necessarily make it valid. I'd actually argue the reverse, I think you see a lot more effort towards acquiring things that are illegal than you would otherwise.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    It's documented well already. The Overton window for pornography has continued to move to more and more extreme forms as what was once considered unacceptable and taboo becomes socially acceptable. It's because there is a market for deviance. Some people are interested in what's taboo and off limits and so long as they are approaching or just crossing that line, they're happy. As we've moved that line these people are no longer happy with the status quo and want content that is taboo, so a new market forms around that. Pornographers know this and talk about. Read David Foster Wallace's essay on it.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  If people are exposed to stimuli, they will pursue increasingly stimulating versions of it. This is not true in any kind of universal way. If you enjoy car chases in movies, does that mean you're going to require more and more intense chase scenes, and then consume real-life crash footage, and ultimately progress to doing your own daredevil driving stunts in real life? No, because at some point it's "enough." Same with... literally anything we enjoy. Did you enjoy your lunch? Did you compulsively feel the need to work up to crazier and crazier lunches? What about sex? Have you had sex? Do you feel the need to seek out crazier and crazier versions of it?
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    > What about sex? Have you had sex? Do you feel the need to seek out crazier and crazier versions of it? For porn and sex it's different though. Some people are attracted to things that are deviant and taboo. That's the part they're looking for. As pornography has become more widely accepted, a market has developed for more and more extreme forms of it. This has been documented. It's not the content per-se but rather the nature of it that is found attractive. So the idea is to find a line that's reasonable so the people that feel the need to get close to that line can have that urge fulfilled without damaging society. A market will form for more and more extreme content as soon as the line moves and what was one taboo no longer is. An Overton window of sorts for pornography.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    There seems to be a small issue in GP's logical inference to me, in that he places artificial CP as proportional and wholly inferior replacement to real CP. As if, ham sandwiches and boiled sausages are _inferior_ replacements to blocks of body parts of animals on a dish. I don't think this is the case, from anecdotal experiences; Hollywood chase scenes are much more exciting to me than real life crash footage, I've watched enough. They need cooking, and if you are cooking anyway, mixing artificial and "natural" ingredients can even be a problem than a positive. Truth is always boring.
- mikotodomo 5y ago
  Wow I didn't even think of this, that people could use this for something so horrifying. I'm relived that the geniuses behind this seem so smart that they even thought of this too and prohibit using the AI for sexual images. > Our content policy does not allow users to generate violent, adult, or political content, among other categories. We won’t generate images if our filters identify text prompts and image uploads that may violate our policies. We also have automated and human monitoring systems to guard against misuse.
  - techdragon 5y ago
    Please tell me your being sarcastic… This is arguably the most insipid and stupid crippling of a powerful tool for content creation I can think of. It’s worse than the adobe updates using every cpu core and locking up my machine once a week. What counts as “political” hm? Want it to look like that Obama poster or perhaps you want a Soviet Union flag for your retro 80s punk… oops sorry “political”… let’s go to adult… hmm that’s even dumber is the model showing too much ankle? What about the obvious fact that this is just designed with a heterodoxy view of pornography and likely does nothing to stem the wildly various fetishes and other sexual proclivities that exist in the world… It is effectively “we got squeamish and have done a bunch of stuff to stop you doing stuff that makes us squeamish, please don’t make us squeamish, we’re so worried we’re even checking for it in case you sneak something past us”… They should comply with the law, try to prevent and also check for child porn… but otherwise just let users use the damn tool, if someone wants an Obama hope poster of a sexualised Mussolini jerking off onto a balloon animal… why the heck do they feel the need to say no to that. It’s a deeply repressive instinct that should be fought against whenever people start to “police” what is acceptable in artistic mediums. I look forward to the reimplemented versions of this from efforts like EuletherAI and others.
- hemreldop 5y ago
  Nonsense, I think the opposite is true where if you can satisfy your urges in a way that doesn’t put you in jail for a decade, most people will take that route.
gitfan86 5y ago
When you combine advanced versions of this with advanced versions of GTP-3 you will not be able to tell the difference between AI and only fans. I'm not saying that AI will pass all Turing tests. But as far as having a virtual girlfriend/prostitute.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > a virtual girlfriend/prostitute I'm not picking on the commenter - by itself it's not a big deal - but look at the assumptions behind that comment, which I almost didn't notice on HN.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    what assumptions? That there may be a market for AI girlfriends?
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      The assumptions that HN commenters find cis-normal females sexually appealing, and that they can't get a date.
- techdragon 5y ago
  Yeah you will. It’s not going to be very good at reproduction of the same exact thing each time. In some of the examples you see the textures changing wildly and it’s a classic problem with these models. The same input does not generate the same output, so it will be obvious that it’s generated when you can’t get the “model” to look the same between two photos in the same “photo shoot”
soheil 5y ago
It'd be ironic if we ended up destroying our planet by using so much electricity to train models to generate a maximally optimal version of the type of content that you refer to similar to crypto mining.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
Or maybe we don't want to encourage that behavior more.
hemreldop 5y ago
When you put it that way… yes since no one is hurt in the process and people with pedophilic conditions may be deterred from doing something in real life.
Siira 5y ago
The problem might be that people are simply lying. Their real reasons are religious/ideological, but they cite humanitarian concerns (which their own religious stigma is partly responsible for).
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Their real reasons are religious/ideological, but they cite humanitarian concerns Are you asserting that nobody has humanitarian concerns? If so, that's quite a statement; what basis is there? I've seen so many humanitarian acts, big and small, that I can't begin to count. I've seen them today. I hear people express humanitarian beliefs and feelings all the time. I do them and have them myself. Maybe I misunderstand.
  - Siira 5y ago
    “Strawman argument”
sillysaurusx 5y ago
Depends whether you think models should be able to generate cp. It's almost impossible to even give an affirmative answer to that question without making yourself a target. And as much as I err on the side of creator freedom, I find myself shying away from saying yes without qualifications. And if you don't allow cp, then by definition you require some censoring. At that point it's just a matter of where you censor, not whether. OpenAI has gone as far as possible on the censorship, reducing the impact of the model to "something that can make people smile." But it's sort of hard to blame them, if they want to focus on making models rather than fighting political battles. One could imagine a cyberpunk future where seedy AI cp images are swapped in an AR universe, generated by models ran by underground hackers that scrounge together what resources they can to power the behemoth models that they stole via hacks. Probably worth a short story at least. You could make the argument that we have fine laws around porn right now, and that we should simply follow those. But it's not clear that AI generated imagery can be illegal at all. The question will only become more pressing with time, and society has to solve it before it can address the holistic concerns you point out. OpenAI ain't gonna fight that fight, so it's up to EleutherAI or someone else. But whoever fights it in the affirmative will probably be vilified, so it'd require an impressive level of selflessness.
- aliakhtar 5y ago
  Of course some level of censorship is needed, otherwise it can be used to produce porn involving real people without their consent (eg celebs)
  - Szpadel 5y ago
    we already have a lot of fabricated content like that using current photo editing technology (Photoshop) and it's not causing much legal nor moral issues
    - aliakhtar 5y ago
      Because it’s still pretty hard to make it and it’s bad - you can easily tell it’s fake. This makes it as easy as typing a sentence - and the quality seems fairly realistic
GauntletWizard 5y ago
Religious people don't only believe that porn harms the models, but also the user. I happen to agree, despite being a porn user - Porn is a form of simulated and not-real stimulation. Porn is harmful to the user the same way that any form of delusion is: It associated positive pleasure with stimulation that does not fulfil any basic or even higher-level needs, and is unsustainable. Porn is somewhere on the same scale as wireheading[1] That doesn't mean that it's all bad, and that there's no recreational use for it. We have limits on the availability of various other artificial stimulants. We should continue to have limits on the availability of porn. Where to draw that line is a real debate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
AYBABTME 5y ago
Iain Banks' "Surface Detail" would like to have a word with you. This author's books are great at putting these sort of moral ideas to test in a sci-fi context. This specific tome portraits virtual wars and virtual "hells". The hope is of being more civilized than by waging real war or torturing real living entities. However some protagonists argue that virtual life is indistinguishable from real life, and so sacrificing virtual entities to save "real" ones is a fallacy. Or some such, it's been a while.
thom 5y ago
People take their experiences of porn into real relationships, so I do not think this removes suffering overall, no.
cm2012 5y ago
I suspect that if a free version of this comes out and allows adult image generation, 90% of what it will be used for is adult stuff (see the kerfuffle with AIDungeon). I can get why the people who worked hard on it and spent money building it don't want to be associated with porn.
- krageon 5y ago
  > I can get why the people who worked hard on it and spent money building it don't want to be associated with porn. Why? Is there something inherently wrong with porn? Is it not noble to supply a base human need, based on some arbitrary cultural artifact that you possess?

uoaei 5y ago

No. If people are exposed to stimuli, they will pursue increasingly stimulating versions of it. I.e., if they see artificial CP, they will often begin to become desensitized (habituated) and pursue real CP or even live children thereafter. Conversely, if people are not exposed to certain stimuli, they will never be able to conceptualize them, and thus will be unable to think about them. Obviously you cannot eliminate all CP but minimizing the overall levels of exposure / ease of access to these kinds of things is way more appropriate than maximizing it.

sneak 5y ago
> If people are exposed to stimuli, they will pursue increasingly stimulating versions of it. I.e., if they see artificial CP, they will often begin to become desensitized (habituated) and pursue real CP or even live children thereafter. I have accumulated tens of thousands of headshots in video games but have yet to ever shoot a single real person in the face. More importantly, I have never had the urge to seek out same. I am not sure that your initial premise has any truth to it.
- uoaei 5y ago
  The point is more "can you conceive of a headshot before you've ever witnessed one?" And the assertion is, no. I should be explicit -- I am saying the exposure which makes one seek stimulus is merely a catalyst for deeper urges, not a generator of them as such. A certain level of inhibition (e.g. sociopathy) is required but IMO so is a prior conception of the deed. In your example, if someone is predisposed to wanting to shoot actual people in the head, exposing them to video game headshots may distract in the short term but desensitizes and entrenches the image in the long term, possibly making it easier to decide to pull the trigger later on if they are sufficiently inhibited of social concerns. This does not happen for people with high inhibitions, or at least sufficient self-control.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > The point is more "can you conceive of a headshot before you've ever witnessed one?" And the assertion is, no. I'm not sure that's true. Our brains can imagine a lot that we've never seen, though maybe not very accurately. Inventors and developers and artists do it all the time, if we are talking about the same thing. I'm not sure that disproves your premise. Virtual experiences may make real ones easier, but some research and details about where it works, where it doesn't, would be helpful. Many training programs use virtual experiences, such as flight simulators.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Is this just your own personal theory or opinion? Do you have some proof? To put it as nicely as possible, this wildly contradicts reality as I have experienced it and observed others experiencing it.
  - ctoth 5y ago
    > "can you conceive of a headshot before you've ever witnessed one?" Am totally blind, have never been able to see, can still conceive of a headshot. So, yes?
    - uoaei 5y ago
      "Conceive of" is a different idea than "visualize"...
      - krageon 5y ago
        They can by definition not perceive a headshot, it is a visual thing. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, the difference is not germane to the conversation.
throwaway675309 5y ago
I'm not sure I agree with the statement, you're putting forth a lot of assertions without the actual quantitative data to back up what you're saying, and even though you think it sounds intuitive that doesn't necessarily make it valid. I'd actually argue the reverse, I think you see a lot more effort towards acquiring things that are illegal than you would otherwise.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  It's documented well already. The Overton window for pornography has continued to move to more and more extreme forms as what was once considered unacceptable and taboo becomes socially acceptable. It's because there is a market for deviance. Some people are interested in what's taboo and off limits and so long as they are approaching or just crossing that line, they're happy. As we've moved that line these people are no longer happy with the status quo and want content that is taboo, so a new market forms around that. Pornographers know this and talk about. Read David Foster Wallace's essay on it.
JohnBooty 5y ago
If people are exposed to stimuli, they will pursue increasingly stimulating versions of it. This is not true in any kind of universal way. If you enjoy car chases in movies, does that mean you're going to require more and more intense chase scenes, and then consume real-life crash footage, and ultimately progress to doing your own daredevil driving stunts in real life? No, because at some point it's "enough." Same with... literally anything we enjoy. Did you enjoy your lunch? Did you compulsively feel the need to work up to crazier and crazier lunches? What about sex? Have you had sex? Do you feel the need to seek out crazier and crazier versions of it?
- nemo44x 5y ago
  > What about sex? Have you had sex? Do you feel the need to seek out crazier and crazier versions of it? For porn and sex it's different though. Some people are attracted to things that are deviant and taboo. That's the part they're looking for. As pornography has become more widely accepted, a market has developed for more and more extreme forms of it. This has been documented. It's not the content per-se but rather the nature of it that is found attractive. So the idea is to find a line that's reasonable so the people that feel the need to get close to that line can have that urge fulfilled without damaging society. A market will form for more and more extreme content as soon as the line moves and what was one taboo no longer is. An Overton window of sorts for pornography.
- numpad0 5y ago
  There seems to be a small issue in GP's logical inference to me, in that he places artificial CP as proportional and wholly inferior replacement to real CP. As if, ham sandwiches and boiled sausages are _inferior_ replacements to blocks of body parts of animals on a dish. I don't think this is the case, from anecdotal experiences; Hollywood chase scenes are much more exciting to me than real life crash footage, I've watched enough. They need cooking, and if you are cooking anyway, mixing artificial and "natural" ingredients can even be a problem than a positive. Truth is always boring.
mikotodomo 5y ago
Wow I didn't even think of this, that people could use this for something so horrifying. I'm relived that the geniuses behind this seem so smart that they even thought of this too and prohibit using the AI for sexual images. > Our content policy does not allow users to generate violent, adult, or political content, among other categories. We won’t generate images if our filters identify text prompts and image uploads that may violate our policies. We also have automated and human monitoring systems to guard against misuse.
- techdragon 5y ago
  Please tell me your being sarcastic… This is arguably the most insipid and stupid crippling of a powerful tool for content creation I can think of. It’s worse than the adobe updates using every cpu core and locking up my machine once a week. What counts as “political” hm? Want it to look like that Obama poster or perhaps you want a Soviet Union flag for your retro 80s punk… oops sorry “political”… let’s go to adult… hmm that’s even dumber is the model showing too much ankle? What about the obvious fact that this is just designed with a heterodoxy view of pornography and likely does nothing to stem the wildly various fetishes and other sexual proclivities that exist in the world… It is effectively “we got squeamish and have done a bunch of stuff to stop you doing stuff that makes us squeamish, please don’t make us squeamish, we’re so worried we’re even checking for it in case you sneak something past us”… They should comply with the law, try to prevent and also check for child porn… but otherwise just let users use the damn tool, if someone wants an Obama hope poster of a sexualised Mussolini jerking off onto a balloon animal… why the heck do they feel the need to say no to that. It’s a deeply repressive instinct that should be fought against whenever people start to “police” what is acceptable in artistic mediums. I look forward to the reimplemented versions of this from efforts like EuletherAI and others.
hemreldop 5y ago
Nonsense, I think the opposite is true where if you can satisfy your urges in a way that doesn’t put you in jail for a decade, most people will take that route.

gitfan86 5y ago

When you combine advanced versions of this with advanced versions of GTP-3 you will not be able to tell the difference between AI and only fans. I'm not saying that AI will pass all Turing tests. But as far as having a virtual girlfriend/prostitute.

wolverine876 5y ago
> a virtual girlfriend/prostitute I'm not picking on the commenter - by itself it's not a big deal - but look at the assumptions behind that comment, which I almost didn't notice on HN.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  what assumptions? That there may be a market for AI girlfriends?
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    The assumptions that HN commenters find cis-normal females sexually appealing, and that they can't get a date.
techdragon 5y ago
Yeah you will. It’s not going to be very good at reproduction of the same exact thing each time. In some of the examples you see the textures changing wildly and it’s a classic problem with these models. The same input does not generate the same output, so it will be obvious that it’s generated when you can’t get the “model” to look the same between two photos in the same “photo shoot”

soheil 5y ago

It'd be ironic if we ended up destroying our planet by using so much electricity to train models to generate a maximally optimal version of the type of content that you refer to similar to crypto mining.

Synaesthesia 5y ago

Or maybe we don't want to encourage that behavior more.

hemreldop 5y ago

When you put it that way… yes since no one is hurt in the process and people with pedophilic conditions may be deterred from doing something in real life.

Siira 5y ago

The problem might be that people are simply lying. Their real reasons are religious/ideological, but they cite humanitarian concerns (which their own religious stigma is partly responsible for).

wolverine876 5y ago
> Their real reasons are religious/ideological, but they cite humanitarian concerns Are you asserting that nobody has humanitarian concerns? If so, that's quite a statement; what basis is there? I've seen so many humanitarian acts, big and small, that I can't begin to count. I've seen them today. I hear people express humanitarian beliefs and feelings all the time. I do them and have them myself. Maybe I misunderstand.
- Siira 5y ago
  “Strawman argument”

sillysaurusx 5y ago

Depends whether you think models should be able to generate cp. It's almost impossible to even give an affirmative answer to that question without making yourself a target. And as much as I err on the side of creator freedom, I find myself shying away from saying yes without qualifications. And if you don't allow cp, then by definition you require some censoring. At that point it's just a matter of where you censor, not whether. OpenAI has gone as far as possible on the censorship, reducing the impact of the model to "something that can make people smile." But it's sort of hard to blame them, if they want to focus on making models rather than fighting political battles. One could imagine a cyberpunk future where seedy AI cp images are swapped in an AR universe, generated by models ran by underground hackers that scrounge together what resources they can to power the behemoth models that they stole via hacks. Probably worth a short story at least. You could make the argument that we have fine laws around porn right now, and that we should simply follow those. But it's not clear that AI generated imagery can be illegal at all. The question will only become more pressing with time, and society has to solve it before it can address the holistic concerns you point out. OpenAI ain't gonna fight that fight, so it's up to EleutherAI or someone else. But whoever fights it in the affirmative will probably be vilified, so it'd require an impressive level of selflessness.

aliakhtar 5y ago
Of course some level of censorship is needed, otherwise it can be used to produce porn involving real people without their consent (eg celebs)
- Szpadel 5y ago
  we already have a lot of fabricated content like that using current photo editing technology (Photoshop) and it's not causing much legal nor moral issues
  - aliakhtar 5y ago
    Because it’s still pretty hard to make it and it’s bad - you can easily tell it’s fake. This makes it as easy as typing a sentence - and the quality seems fairly realistic

GauntletWizard 5y ago

Religious people don't only believe that porn harms the models, but also the user. I happen to agree, despite being a porn user - Porn is a form of simulated and not-real stimulation. Porn is harmful to the user the same way that any form of delusion is: It associated positive pleasure with stimulation that does not fulfil any basic or even higher-level needs, and is unsustainable. Porn is somewhere on the same scale as wireheading[1] That doesn't mean that it's all bad, and that there's no recreational use for it. We have limits on the availability of various other artificial stimulants. We should continue to have limits on the availability of porn. Where to draw that line is a real debate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

AYBABTME 5y ago

Iain Banks' "Surface Detail" would like to have a word with you. This author's books are great at putting these sort of moral ideas to test in a sci-fi context. This specific tome portraits virtual wars and virtual "hells". The hope is of being more civilized than by waging real war or torturing real living entities. However some protagonists argue that virtual life is indistinguishable from real life, and so sacrificing virtual entities to save "real" ones is a fallacy. Or some such, it's been a while.

thom 5y ago

People take their experiences of porn into real relationships, so I do not think this removes suffering overall, no.

cm2012 5y ago

I suspect that if a free version of this comes out and allows adult image generation, 90% of what it will be used for is adult stuff (see the kerfuffle with AIDungeon). I can get why the people who worked hard on it and spent money building it don't want to be associated with porn.

krageon 5y ago
> I can get why the people who worked hard on it and spent money building it don't want to be associated with porn. Why? Is there something inherently wrong with porn? Is it not noble to supply a base human need, based on some arbitrary cultural artifact that you possess?