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The article seems to indicate that he was putting (real) childrens’ faces on sexual imagery that didn’t involve them. From context it would seem to indicate tha

The article seems to indicate that he was putting (real) childrens’ faces on sexual imagery that didn’t involve them. From context it would seem to indicate that the underlying imagery wasn’t actual CSAM, otherwise it wouldn’t have been called “synthetic” I think. But the article is never very specific on this point. It’s not clear what would have happened if the faces were the output of a generative AI model, and didn’t actually involve real children. That seems like it's coming soon. Presumably the law is going to treat all of that the same as actual CSAM, but people will need to think hard about the reasoning for it. All of the quotes in this article stress the possibility of harm and risk to (real) minors whose faces were duplicated. Which seems like a very reasonable set of concerns!

flangola7 4y ago
OK thank you. >Presumably the law is going to treat all of that the same as actual CSAM, but people will need to think hard about the reasoning for it. The US already signed a law in 2021 defining CSAM to include photorealistic AI generated material, even if there is no original child involved (such as deepfakes).
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Yes we have that law. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. What I do know is that a lot of the discourse around this area (and specifically new laws on content scanning for CSAM) hinges around the idea that (1) production of CSAM harms children, which is something that is obviously true. But also (2) that proliferation of old or fully-synthetic CSAM causes “addiction” that might lead to further real-world harm to children. The second point is concerning to me because it seems to be more an article of faith than something based in actual science. It feels to me that there is a (very natural!) tendency to want all of this stuff to disappear, because it’s disgusting. But that this results in a certain degree of motivated reasoning where people feel that they must justify new (invasive) legislation by tightly binding it to the welfare of real children. I worry that these justifications might ultimately do a lot of damage, causing us to aggressively treat symptoms rather than doing much to heal the underlying disease.

flangola7 4y ago

OK thank you. >Presumably the law is going to treat all of that the same as actual CSAM, but people will need to think hard about the reasoning for it. The US already signed a law in 2021 defining CSAM to include photorealistic AI generated material, even if there is no original child involved (such as deepfakes).

matthewdgreen 4y ago
Yes we have that law. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. What I do know is that a lot of the discourse around this area (and specifically new laws on content scanning for CSAM) hinges around the idea that (1) production of CSAM harms children, which is something that is obviously true. But also (2) that proliferation of old or fully-synthetic CSAM causes “addiction” that might lead to further real-world harm to children. The second point is concerning to me because it seems to be more an article of faith than something based in actual science. It feels to me that there is a (very natural!) tendency to want all of this stuff to disappear, because it’s disgusting. But that this results in a certain degree of motivated reasoning where people feel that they must justify new (invasive) legislation by tightly binding it to the welfare of real children. I worry that these justifications might ultimately do a lot of damage, causing us to aggressively treat symptoms rather than doing much to heal the underlying disease.