3 ms·

>This area is already well explored just with fake CSAM generated by artists using photoshop, cartoons, etc. I'm familiar with the research in this area, and t

>This area is already well explored just with fake CSAM generated by artists using photoshop, cartoons, etc. I'm familiar with the research in this area, and that's not something you can say confidently; most work (and by that I mean 2 or 3 papers in total) has gone into investigating the role 'generated' depictions of CSAM play in the collections of hoarders. No psychological study, as far as I'm aware, has conducted an investigation on those who enjoy cartoon material akin to what you might find in a Japanese manga. In fact, there's some evidence against what you're saying; anthropological research on fans of cartoon material ('lolicons' or 'shotacons') in Japan shows that their communities draw hard lines between '2D' and '3D' not just in this area of sexuality, but in their sexualities as a whole. This sexual inclination toward the 2D world is termed the 2D-complex and is akin to 'digital sexuality' or fictophilia, not pedophilia. By way of analogy, perhaps BDSM would work as a good counter point to you. Many people (some studies suggest the majority of people) engage in 'rape fantasies' or other such fantasies of illegal or immoral nature, yet although actual depiction of rape is rightly banned by the state, its simulated variants are not, and we are comfortable to acknowledge that sexual desires do not always manifest in real life, and sometimes the thrill of fantasy itself is the attraction. To make it real would, ironically, defeat the whole point.

ALittleLight 4y ago
One issue with this is that the fake CSAM wouldn't be the cartoons of a Japanese Manga, it would (or could) be photo realistic. It could be photo realistic of real children. This is obviously possibly bad because it might fuel or encourage pedophiles, but it also has lots of other negative possibilities too. One example of a bad thing - you could easily imagine an instagram bot that looks for pictures of people with their kids, then uses a Stable Diffusion like model to produce pictures of the people having sex with their kids, or horrible things happening to the kids, and reply to the target account. The bot might threaten to post the pictures and accuse the person of being a pedophile unless the person pays X in bitcoin (or whatever). Or, the bot could just post such pictures for fun. I think we don't know if fake CSAM will have a good or bad effect on pedophiles and, sadly, there is no real way to reliably test that (so far as I know). Fake CSAM might placate pedophiles, or it might whet their appetite. It's hard to know what to do. I think we will eventually get to the point where very good unrestricted image generation models are available to the general public. When that happens there will be chaos - you will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.
- claudiawerner 4y ago
  That's a good point, and I agree - I only wanted to pick up on the point about 'cartoons'. As for whether realistic generated images with real human data sources would have a good effect, it certainly wouldn't have a good effect on preventing further child abuse, and again, as far as I know there's no evidence that it would 'placate' them in the sense of the (widely debunked) catharsis theory. And of course, I'm not looking forward to the world ushered in by free roam with this technology, mainly for the reasons you stated.
kortilla 4y ago
>I'm familiar with the research in this area, and that's not something you can say confidently I’m referring to legally, sorry I should have specified.

ALittleLight 4y ago

One issue with this is that the fake CSAM wouldn't be the cartoons of a Japanese Manga, it would (or could) be photo realistic. It could be photo realistic of real children. This is obviously possibly bad because it might fuel or encourage pedophiles, but it also has lots of other negative possibilities too. One example of a bad thing - you could easily imagine an instagram bot that looks for pictures of people with their kids, then uses a Stable Diffusion like model to produce pictures of the people having sex with their kids, or horrible things happening to the kids, and reply to the target account. The bot might threaten to post the pictures and accuse the person of being a pedophile unless the person pays X in bitcoin (or whatever). Or, the bot could just post such pictures for fun. I think we don't know if fake CSAM will have a good or bad effect on pedophiles and, sadly, there is no real way to reliably test that (so far as I know). Fake CSAM might placate pedophiles, or it might whet their appetite. It's hard to know what to do. I think we will eventually get to the point where very good unrestricted image generation models are available to the general public. When that happens there will be chaos - you will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.

claudiawerner 4y ago
That's a good point, and I agree - I only wanted to pick up on the point about 'cartoons'. As for whether realistic generated images with real human data sources would have a good effect, it certainly wouldn't have a good effect on preventing further child abuse, and again, as far as I know there's no evidence that it would 'placate' them in the sense of the (widely debunked) catharsis theory. And of course, I'm not looking forward to the world ushered in by free roam with this technology, mainly for the reasons you stated.

kortilla 4y ago

>I'm familiar with the research in this area, and that's not something you can say confidently I’m referring to legally, sorry I should have specified.