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This has been discussed on HN before and the overwhelming HN response was “why would you care, it’s not an actual nude?” Lots of tasteless people doubled down

This has been discussed on HN before and the overwhelming HN response was “why would you care, it’s not an actual nude?” Lots of tasteless people doubled down that they wouldn’t even care if it were their own children or wives (let’s be real, it’ll be 99% women and children) being portrayed like this against their consent (“consent” doesn’t exist in such a context, the argument goes). The only defense against this, which is already too late for most extant children to employ, is to never post photos of your children online. But hey whatever it takes to avoid scrutiny and regulation eh? TBC, I’m not saying it’s obvious how to regulate/control/mitigate it, but that’s a totally different argument from the one I encountered which was “there’s no relevant concept of consent.”

prepend 3y ago
For me, it’s not that Im tasteless, it’s that I don’t think consent is needed to make an image with my face put into a naked body. At least if it’s for personal use. In the US at least, there are laws that prevent commercialization of my likeness, or harassment, or defamation. And those can be applied if someone sells images of me on a nude bode. But for personal use, it seems as pointless to outlaw as someone imagining me naked. Is that “tasteless?” Perhaps. Of my child, that’s gross. Im not sure how to stop this though as I think any control to try to outlaw perverts from staring at people, or drawing images of people, or using these apps without consent would cause more harm than the harm they seek to prevent.
- yladiz 3y ago
  > it’s that I don’t think consent is needed to make an image with my face put into a naked body Can you explain more of your reasoning why you don't think consent is needed here? I think the main thing here is that there is a very clear difference between mentally imagining someone nude and a fake version of their nude body being created. One is in the mind only and another actually exists.
  - sorokod 3y ago
    Not only exists, but also possibly difficult to distinguish from a non fake.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > I think the main thing here is that there is a very clear difference between mentally imagining someone nude and a fake version of their nude body being created. One is in the mind only and another actually exists. I think things through to what it will be like when we have digital consciousness. I think that imagining someone naked if our brain is simulated and running digitally so the memory can be saved and retrieved is the same as sketching a nude or writing in someone’s diary. It’s private thoughts and it’s best to not dig into others’ private thoughts. I think the problem to focus on is when images are sold or traded or distributed. I think things in my mind exist as much as a private sketch. It’s just that the sketch can be found by others but the thought cannot.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Insofar as we create laws to protect people from undue harm, it is a well known fact that victims of CSAM are victimized twice: first when the CSAM is produced and again when it’s viewed. “Yeah everyone at school is looking at it, but don’t worry it’s only pixels that represent your naked body!” The fact people can now produce CSAM that doesn’t inflict the first victimization does not eliminate the second, and the fact the current law wasn’t designed with this technology in mind doesn’t mean no harm is inflicted and we shouldn’t be responding to it. Of course you’ll argue that someone could paint a nude child with a real person’s likeness and I’ll point out that an actual photograph of a nude child is also not “really them.” We gauge the badness of any location on this spectrum by the harm felt. A thing that ~never happens, ~never causes harm, and is very difficult to produce (high quality paintings of nude children) is strictly less bad than something that costs $0, 0 hours, 0 talent to produce at significantly higher quality (synthetic CSAM).
  - chrisjj 3y ago
    > Insofar as we create laws to protect people from undue harm, it is a well known fact that victims of CSAM are victimized twice I note you didn't say harmed twice.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dcow 3y ago
    I don’t buy the “it’s easier to do now so the law must change” argument. You actually just admitted that there isn’t anything fundamentally different between a hand drawn depiction and an AI generated one. Both may be tasteless in most situations, but in neither case is there a victim.
- catchnear4321 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - knewter 3y ago
    > you’re afraid to curtail the rights of bad men for the sake of protecting women because you are afraid of what might happen to good men. You could of course ascribe bad motives to your ideological foes, but I find it weird you don't allow "this law is bad for humanity" as a possible motive.
    - catchnear4321 3y ago
      because it is lazy. good and bad are both subjective. shutting conversation down with “this is bad for humanity” additionally marginalizes a large portion of it. the alternative is also bad for humanity. i find it weird that you view it as binary.
      - knewter 3y ago
        > i find it weird that you view it as binary. This implies that you believe in binary right and wrong and I'm "out" but you lack conviction
        catchnear4321 3y ago
        you described it in a way that implies it to be binary. my noticing is not my belief.
        knewter 3y ago
        You finding it weird implies you believe there is a right and a wrong way to behave.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Lots of judgements here. > you specified perverts. these tend to be male. men. No, I don’t think this is true. There’s all genders of perverts and I don’t think they tend to be male. Happy to see your evidence though. > you are likely male No > bucketing yourself as good I don’t bucket myself into a good or bad bucket. > women are an afterthought Not at all. It’s funny you would bring this up as I don’t think my comment really has any position on men or women.
- RoyalHenOil 3y ago
  These images aren't personal use, though. They are being shared around. How does that not constitute harassment or defamation? Also, child porn laws apply to people who acquire the material for personal use. You can go to prison for possession, not just for selling. It would take only a small update to the law to have this apply to AI-generated imagery of real children as well. Even that may not be necessary, as it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate AI-generated photos from real photos.
  - prepend 3y ago
    I’m saying that they are harassment. So prosecute that. I think in the US any images of children are illegal, even if they are computer generated. So it’s currently illegal to possess.
    - chrisjj 3y ago
      > I think in the US any images of children are illegal Citation needed, but unlikely.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > These images aren't personal use, though. They are being shared around. How does that not constitute harassment or defamation? This is the key part: nobody would be upset if these were only for the personal use of the creator - teenagers have been fantasizing about their peers as long as they’ve existed - but the article mentions multiple cases of girls being confronted with non-consensual imagery and at least one of those was an attempt to extort real pictures. Whatever nuanced discussion there is about creating these images doesn’t apply to them being used as weapons.
- aio2 3y ago
  Even shourd you disagree, it's useful to respect other's wants not to have their faces on those bodies.
  - prepend 3y ago
    How do you know if people don’t want their faces on bodies? Should everyone ask everyone’s consent? Should I register my consent to be nudified like registering for an organ donor? There’s a debate in cosplay over whether consent is needed to take someone’s photo. Many people like to require consent. I think it’s polite to ask, but don’t feel bad if someone takes a picture without asking. And certainly not if someone takes a picture without me even knowing they did. This seems like something that it’s better for me not to worry about and focus on other things. The energy to pass a law or make sure all photos have consent would be such a pain to implement.
corethree 3y ago
This is a fine line. There are people who care. But at the same time this crosses boundaries of freedom of speech. The content is completely generated and and there is effort to censor this content. Think about it. Censoring generated content is equivalent to censoring art. It's morally equivalent to censoring art because you don't like the art. There's a problem from many perspectives and no one perspective is completely right. There's the female perspective where their beauty, rank and character is judged on their perceived promiscuity levels. Pictures obviously effect the womens ranking and the spouses care too so this is a factor. But it does not negate the existence of the freedom of speech perspective too. The problem here is that it's too fuzzy you can't strictly define what is creative art and what is a reputation bashing porno. What if the art was generated but just happens to look like the daughter off of pure coincidence? Similar to how a real person can look like another person randomly. What if someone that looks extremely similar to you starts modelling for porn. Do you ban and censor that person? Do you ban art that coincidentally looks like you? What if there's nude art where half the population finds it offensive and the other half does not? Once you cross this line because the boundaries are so fuzzy it's easy to overstep. China a very hated country by the US doesn't consider freedom of speech. They jump right in with what they believe to be the most reasonable decision. They would of course severely punish anyone who makes AI generated porn of real people. But we all know the consequence of this is china crosses too many fuzzy lines. If you have a wife and daughter do you prefer the china way or the more "freedom of speech" way?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ethanbond 3y ago
  There’s plenty of material that lands near the fine line and there’s plenty of material that lands nowhere close to it. Let’s start by saying “synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” This conversation is very very far from trying to figure out the intricacies of complicated cases. This is people saying, “there’s no relevant concept of consent” and “there’s no harm inflicted by pixels which just so happen to look like a real person.” For the former, you merely have to ask why we have any concept of consent anywhere at all, and the answer is: to make it illegal to do certain things which inflict certain harms. So here is a new specific way to produce a new specific harm. Don’t think it’s a harm? You merely have to ask someone who has had this done to them if they feel harmed or not. A bunch of 20-50 year old dudes on HN saying “I wouldn’t care lol” doesn’t qualify. I personally am more inclined to trust the victim advocacy groups and researchers who overwhelmingly agree that sharing nonconsensual sexual imagery of someone does inflict harm upon them. This argument is apparently so obvious that we in fact have curtailed freedom of speech along various boundaries of this area, and only complete weirdos or “I am very smart because I logic good” people have a hard time understanding why that is.
xchip 3y ago
You are changing the question to a different one and then answering it. There should be a fallacy name for this.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  What’s the original question?
  - manuelmoreale 3y ago
    > How come this is only happening in Spain? This one I suppose
  - cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    “How come this is only happening in Spain?”
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Answer: it’s not only happening in Spain, it has been discussed on HN before with similar amounts of pedantry around the corners of the issue and not the real crux of it which is we are facing a proliferation of technology that will proliferate this sort of material. I really just have a hard time interpreting “why only in Spain” as a good faith question rather than something meaning to steer the conversation around the real problem or portray it as not-real (such as the related "if true, why don't we see this of every celebrity" comment above). Maybe it was good faith and I’ll readily take the L for interpreting it otherwise. In any case I see now that I forgot to put the “it’s not” in my original comment. This was at least one article that was previously discussed here (not in Spain): https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/sextortionists-are-making-ai-nudes-from-your-social-media-images/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/sextortionist...
- luxuryballs 3y ago
  would it not be “moving the goalpost”?
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
I would be interested to hear how they would view the situation if someone was creating deepfakes of their mutilated corpses. Or their family's mutilated corpses. You know, because since it's all synthetic no harm could have possibly been done.

prepend 3y ago

For me, it’s not that Im tasteless, it’s that I don’t think consent is needed to make an image with my face put into a naked body. At least if it’s for personal use. In the US at least, there are laws that prevent commercialization of my likeness, or harassment, or defamation. And those can be applied if someone sells images of me on a nude bode. But for personal use, it seems as pointless to outlaw as someone imagining me naked. Is that “tasteless?” Perhaps. Of my child, that’s gross. Im not sure how to stop this though as I think any control to try to outlaw perverts from staring at people, or drawing images of people, or using these apps without consent would cause more harm than the harm they seek to prevent.

yladiz 3y ago
> it’s that I don’t think consent is needed to make an image with my face put into a naked body Can you explain more of your reasoning why you don't think consent is needed here? I think the main thing here is that there is a very clear difference between mentally imagining someone nude and a fake version of their nude body being created. One is in the mind only and another actually exists.
- sorokod 3y ago
  Not only exists, but also possibly difficult to distinguish from a non fake.
- prepend 3y ago
  > I think the main thing here is that there is a very clear difference between mentally imagining someone nude and a fake version of their nude body being created. One is in the mind only and another actually exists. I think things through to what it will be like when we have digital consciousness. I think that imagining someone naked if our brain is simulated and running digitally so the memory can be saved and retrieved is the same as sketching a nude or writing in someone’s diary. It’s private thoughts and it’s best to not dig into others’ private thoughts. I think the problem to focus on is when images are sold or traded or distributed. I think things in my mind exist as much as a private sketch. It’s just that the sketch can be found by others but the thought cannot.
ethanbond 3y ago
Insofar as we create laws to protect people from undue harm, it is a well known fact that victims of CSAM are victimized twice: first when the CSAM is produced and again when it’s viewed. “Yeah everyone at school is looking at it, but don’t worry it’s only pixels that represent your naked body!” The fact people can now produce CSAM that doesn’t inflict the first victimization does not eliminate the second, and the fact the current law wasn’t designed with this technology in mind doesn’t mean no harm is inflicted and we shouldn’t be responding to it. Of course you’ll argue that someone could paint a nude child with a real person’s likeness and I’ll point out that an actual photograph of a nude child is also not “really them.” We gauge the badness of any location on this spectrum by the harm felt. A thing that ~never happens, ~never causes harm, and is very difficult to produce (high quality paintings of nude children) is strictly less bad than something that costs $0, 0 hours, 0 talent to produce at significantly higher quality (synthetic CSAM).
- chrisjj 3y ago
  > Insofar as we create laws to protect people from undue harm, it is a well known fact that victims of CSAM are victimized twice I note you didn't say harmed twice.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dcow 3y ago
  I don’t buy the “it’s easier to do now so the law must change” argument. You actually just admitted that there isn’t anything fundamentally different between a hand drawn depiction and an AI generated one. Both may be tasteless in most situations, but in neither case is there a victim.
catchnear4321 3y ago
[flagged]
- knewter 3y ago
  > you’re afraid to curtail the rights of bad men for the sake of protecting women because you are afraid of what might happen to good men. You could of course ascribe bad motives to your ideological foes, but I find it weird you don't allow "this law is bad for humanity" as a possible motive.
  - catchnear4321 3y ago
    because it is lazy. good and bad are both subjective. shutting conversation down with “this is bad for humanity” additionally marginalizes a large portion of it. the alternative is also bad for humanity. i find it weird that you view it as binary.
    - knewter 3y ago
      > i find it weird that you view it as binary. This implies that you believe in binary right and wrong and I'm "out" but you lack conviction
      - catchnear4321 3y ago
        you described it in a way that implies it to be binary. my noticing is not my belief.
        knewter 3y ago
        You finding it weird implies you believe there is a right and a wrong way to behave.
- prepend 3y ago
  Lots of judgements here. > you specified perverts. these tend to be male. men. No, I don’t think this is true. There’s all genders of perverts and I don’t think they tend to be male. Happy to see your evidence though. > you are likely male No > bucketing yourself as good I don’t bucket myself into a good or bad bucket. > women are an afterthought Not at all. It’s funny you would bring this up as I don’t think my comment really has any position on men or women.
RoyalHenOil 3y ago
These images aren't personal use, though. They are being shared around. How does that not constitute harassment or defamation? Also, child porn laws apply to people who acquire the material for personal use. You can go to prison for possession, not just for selling. It would take only a small update to the law to have this apply to AI-generated imagery of real children as well. Even that may not be necessary, as it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate AI-generated photos from real photos.
- prepend 3y ago
  I’m saying that they are harassment. So prosecute that. I think in the US any images of children are illegal, even if they are computer generated. So it’s currently illegal to possess.
  - chrisjj 3y ago
    > I think in the US any images of children are illegal Citation needed, but unlikely.
- acdha 3y ago
  > These images aren't personal use, though. They are being shared around. How does that not constitute harassment or defamation? This is the key part: nobody would be upset if these were only for the personal use of the creator - teenagers have been fantasizing about their peers as long as they’ve existed - but the article mentions multiple cases of girls being confronted with non-consensual imagery and at least one of those was an attempt to extort real pictures. Whatever nuanced discussion there is about creating these images doesn’t apply to them being used as weapons.
aio2 3y ago
Even shourd you disagree, it's useful to respect other's wants not to have their faces on those bodies.
- prepend 3y ago
  How do you know if people don’t want their faces on bodies? Should everyone ask everyone’s consent? Should I register my consent to be nudified like registering for an organ donor? There’s a debate in cosplay over whether consent is needed to take someone’s photo. Many people like to require consent. I think it’s polite to ask, but don’t feel bad if someone takes a picture without asking. And certainly not if someone takes a picture without me even knowing they did. This seems like something that it’s better for me not to worry about and focus on other things. The energy to pass a law or make sure all photos have consent would be such a pain to implement.

corethree 3y ago

This is a fine line. There are people who care. But at the same time this crosses boundaries of freedom of speech. The content is completely generated and and there is effort to censor this content. Think about it. Censoring generated content is equivalent to censoring art. It's morally equivalent to censoring art because you don't like the art. There's a problem from many perspectives and no one perspective is completely right. There's the female perspective where their beauty, rank and character is judged on their perceived promiscuity levels. Pictures obviously effect the womens ranking and the spouses care too so this is a factor. But it does not negate the existence of the freedom of speech perspective too. The problem here is that it's too fuzzy you can't strictly define what is creative art and what is a reputation bashing porno. What if the art was generated but just happens to look like the daughter off of pure coincidence? Similar to how a real person can look like another person randomly. What if someone that looks extremely similar to you starts modelling for porn. Do you ban and censor that person? Do you ban art that coincidentally looks like you? What if there's nude art where half the population finds it offensive and the other half does not? Once you cross this line because the boundaries are so fuzzy it's easy to overstep. China a very hated country by the US doesn't consider freedom of speech. They jump right in with what they believe to be the most reasonable decision. They would of course severely punish anyone who makes AI generated porn of real people. But we all know the consequence of this is china crosses too many fuzzy lines. If you have a wife and daughter do you prefer the china way or the more "freedom of speech" way?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ethanbond 3y ago
There’s plenty of material that lands near the fine line and there’s plenty of material that lands nowhere close to it. Let’s start by saying “synthetically generated pornography of a real person created without their consent is bad.” This conversation is very very far from trying to figure out the intricacies of complicated cases. This is people saying, “there’s no relevant concept of consent” and “there’s no harm inflicted by pixels which just so happen to look like a real person.” For the former, you merely have to ask why we have any concept of consent anywhere at all, and the answer is: to make it illegal to do certain things which inflict certain harms. So here is a new specific way to produce a new specific harm. Don’t think it’s a harm? You merely have to ask someone who has had this done to them if they feel harmed or not. A bunch of 20-50 year old dudes on HN saying “I wouldn’t care lol” doesn’t qualify. I personally am more inclined to trust the victim advocacy groups and researchers who overwhelmingly agree that sharing nonconsensual sexual imagery of someone does inflict harm upon them. This argument is apparently so obvious that we in fact have curtailed freedom of speech along various boundaries of this area, and only complete weirdos or “I am very smart because I logic good” people have a hard time understanding why that is.

xchip 3y ago

You are changing the question to a different one and then answering it. There should be a fallacy name for this.

ethanbond 3y ago
What’s the original question?
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  > How come this is only happening in Spain? This one I suppose
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  “How come this is only happening in Spain?”
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Answer: it’s not only happening in Spain, it has been discussed on HN before with similar amounts of pedantry around the corners of the issue and not the real crux of it which is we are facing a proliferation of technology that will proliferate this sort of material. I really just have a hard time interpreting “why only in Spain” as a good faith question rather than something meaning to steer the conversation around the real problem or portray it as not-real (such as the related "if true, why don't we see this of every celebrity" comment above). Maybe it was good faith and I’ll readily take the L for interpreting it otherwise. In any case I see now that I forgot to put the “it’s not” in my original comment. This was at least one article that was previously discussed here (not in Spain): https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/sextortionists-are-making-ai-nudes-from-your-social-media-images/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/sextortionist...
luxuryballs 3y ago
would it not be “moving the goalpost”?

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

I would be interested to hear how they would view the situation if someone was creating deepfakes of their mutilated corpses. Or their family's mutilated corpses. You know, because since it's all synthetic no harm could have possibly been done.