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I totally agree. People often argue that photoshop has been around forever and so on. Creating sophisticated pornographic video of any individual is brand new.

I totally agree. People often argue that photoshop has been around forever and so on. Creating sophisticated pornographic video of any individual is brand new. Creating an app that realistically removes clothing from any photo is new technology. I actually just now came up with an idea for a browser plug-in that removes clothing from every image loaded.

echelon 4y ago
And we're going to get very used to it in short order. We may make laws that prohibit online harassment, and that should be the mechanism we use to deal with this. Not through technology bans.
zhynn 4y ago
The trolling terrifies me. Trolling someone by creating awful video (just think about how deeply, photo-realistically, awful it could be - porn is just the tip of the iceberg) is going to get really bad. I am not sure how this is going to shake out. The easiest will be video of famous people doing awful things. A little harder is doing a custom training on a particular person's likeness, and videos of that person doing awful things. That high-schooler. That child. It's not a happy idea. There should be severe consequences for deliberately making something like this with the intent to harass (troll). The fact is we have not even scratched the surface of classifying trolling as a real crime. I am less concerned with the tech (it's inevitable, hand wringing about it is not useful), and more concerned with the fact that we still have essentially no real consequences to this kind of harassment. I suspect that strong anonymity is incompatible with civilized life, since the few edgelords will always end up ruining it for the many. We have collectively decided that some amount of privacy must be sacrificed to live in a civilized place where you can address grievance (the subpoena must be served to someone). Surveillance is a weapon for tyranny, but I think that we need to flip the script. The relationship between tyranny and surveillance means we need better governments, not more anonymity. I also suspect we don't need to change anything except enforcement. I think trolls are a lot less anonymous than they think they are, since their opsec is typically nonexistent. It's just that we have no enforcers, and for some reason don't care. If I had a magic wand, I would convert the DEA wholesale over to dealing with online crimes (trolling, CP, trafficking, etc).
- dreadlordbone 4y ago
  Okay Ned Ludd. You're right that technology is only going to get more powerful. But hasn't this always been true? Who decides when it's over the line? The US government? They clearly aren't the best arbiters of judgement, so who gets to decide "sever consequences"?
  - trention 4y ago
    Yes, as a general rule the government decides when it's ok to forbid you from doing something. If the US government wants, it can make it a crime to train/use these models. Banning the training part is pretty much game over for this industry. I personally hope it happens as soon as possible. Intellectual property theft (without which those models don't exists) shouldn't be allowed.
    - TimeBearingDown 4y ago
      “Intellectual property” is a propaganda phrase that deliberately confuses copyright, trademark, and patent law in order to create the illusion that ideas can or should have owners. (See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html) I recommend specifically referring to the concept at hand, in this case copyright. Personally I disagree, as the models themselves do not contain any material which can be considered a copyright violation, the value of scraping the open web is easily apparent, the ability to prevent scraping wholesale - even given the legal framework to disallow it - seems dubious, and lastly because the collective potential harm caused by restricting just one or a few of the more arguably more ethical nations from this technology pathway is a known unknown, and possibly a very large one at that.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  We already have laws against harassment and libel.
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    That's why the GP is calling for enforcing them.
amadvance 4y ago
> browser plug-in that removes clothing from every image loaded Yep! Remove clothing and make-up to show everyone as they really are! You can call it the "ugly truth" plugin.

echelon 4y ago

And we're going to get very used to it in short order. We may make laws that prohibit online harassment, and that should be the mechanism we use to deal with this. Not through technology bans.

zhynn 4y ago

The trolling terrifies me. Trolling someone by creating awful video (just think about how deeply, photo-realistically, awful it could be - porn is just the tip of the iceberg) is going to get really bad. I am not sure how this is going to shake out. The easiest will be video of famous people doing awful things. A little harder is doing a custom training on a particular person's likeness, and videos of that person doing awful things. That high-schooler. That child. It's not a happy idea. There should be severe consequences for deliberately making something like this with the intent to harass (troll). The fact is we have not even scratched the surface of classifying trolling as a real crime. I am less concerned with the tech (it's inevitable, hand wringing about it is not useful), and more concerned with the fact that we still have essentially no real consequences to this kind of harassment. I suspect that strong anonymity is incompatible with civilized life, since the few edgelords will always end up ruining it for the many. We have collectively decided that some amount of privacy must be sacrificed to live in a civilized place where you can address grievance (the subpoena must be served to someone). Surveillance is a weapon for tyranny, but I think that we need to flip the script. The relationship between tyranny and surveillance means we need better governments, not more anonymity. I also suspect we don't need to change anything except enforcement. I think trolls are a lot less anonymous than they think they are, since their opsec is typically nonexistent. It's just that we have no enforcers, and for some reason don't care. If I had a magic wand, I would convert the DEA wholesale over to dealing with online crimes (trolling, CP, trafficking, etc).

dreadlordbone 4y ago
Okay Ned Ludd. You're right that technology is only going to get more powerful. But hasn't this always been true? Who decides when it's over the line? The US government? They clearly aren't the best arbiters of judgement, so who gets to decide "sever consequences"?
- trention 4y ago
  Yes, as a general rule the government decides when it's ok to forbid you from doing something. If the US government wants, it can make it a crime to train/use these models. Banning the training part is pretty much game over for this industry. I personally hope it happens as soon as possible. Intellectual property theft (without which those models don't exists) shouldn't be allowed.
  - TimeBearingDown 4y ago
    “Intellectual property” is a propaganda phrase that deliberately confuses copyright, trademark, and patent law in order to create the illusion that ideas can or should have owners. (See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html) I recommend specifically referring to the concept at hand, in this case copyright. Personally I disagree, as the models themselves do not contain any material which can be considered a copyright violation, the value of scraping the open web is easily apparent, the ability to prevent scraping wholesale - even given the legal framework to disallow it - seems dubious, and lastly because the collective potential harm caused by restricting just one or a few of the more arguably more ethical nations from this technology pathway is a known unknown, and possibly a very large one at that.
eurasiantiger 4y ago
We already have laws against harassment and libel.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  That's why the GP is calling for enforcing them.

amadvance 4y ago

> browser plug-in that removes clothing from every image loaded Yep! Remove clothing and make-up to show everyone as they really are! You can call it the "ugly truth" plugin.