4 ms·

AI-generated naked child images shock Spanish town of Almendralejo

33 points by basisword 3y ago

jokowueu 3y ago
Generally there is a distinction between deepfaking and AI generated or am I mistaken here ? Is there a preferred nomenclature ?
- basisword 3y ago
  Deepfake utilises AI, no? Either way I feel like in the context of a national news article AI is being used in a colloquial sense.
  - PeterisP 3y ago
    From the AI industry perspective, I'd call it "deepfake" if it's generated as the original deepfake method did, by taking a real image or video and replacing only the face, and "AI generated" if the whole image was generated. But perhaps this is a technical distinction that will go away soon, or perhaps has already disappeared in colloquial usage.
    - zmgsabst 3y ago
      I always used it literally: “Deepfake”: a fake generated by a DNN, or tool chain comprised primarily of such.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  While from technical perspective there are multiple quite different methods to create images, I don't think that there is (or should be, or can be) a clear boundary for social and legal purposes. It's clear that are a bunch of generated fake images with a face that looks like the impersonated victims and a naked body. Does it matter if that face was copy-pasted from an existing photo of that person or manipulated by a skilled artist to look like that person or AI-generated to look that person? And with respect to the impersonated victims, does it matter if the naked body came from a real photo of someone else, or was drawn by a skilled artist, or was generated by AI?
  - zingababba 3y ago
    I agree intent remains the same in either case. In this case the intent is desiring to create a nude likeness of an individual using some degree of original material so that the final creation appears indistinguishable from a genuine product. In terms of law the technical solution used to accomplish the likeness should not be relevant.
1MachineElf 3y ago
Whoever is generating and distributing these images should be charged with distributing child pornography. Doesn't matter if the images are AI generated. That's my initial response, anyway. I'll concede that it's not well thought out. For one, it isn't comprehensive enough to solve the problem of the perpetrator being halfway around the world.
- basisword 3y ago
  I think the problem is that the most likely perpetrators are the teenage boys the girls are in school with. It seems like exactly the sort of thing teenage boys would do without fully understanding the damage never mind the legality. In that sense it feels very tricky to deal with - saying that, it needs a solution. Being a kid these days seems pretty awful. I thought it was bad when your mistakes could be caught on camera and put on Facebook. How much worse can it get?
  - version_five 3y ago
    I think the endgame is having a different understanding of privacy, modesty, etc. There's no way this is going to go away or be regulated away somehow. Heavy handed punishment of young kids who generate images just creates more problems (though I imagine we'll go through that phase). Eventually (in a generation or two) it will equilibrate and nobody will take the pictures seriously or be interested in making them. There's novelty now, it will go away. I can't see any other realistic direction this will go.
    - basisword 3y ago
      I can’t see this happening. People have been saying this for a long time. On top of that, a lot of young girls are going to go through a lot of pain in the meantime - hoping for societal change seems negligent.
    - zingababba 3y ago
      I'd take issue with the statement about no one taking them seriously or being interested in making them. It seems like a pedophiles dream.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  More discussion over here when this was news days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37580805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37580805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570356
  - basisword 3y ago
    Thanks for the links. Didn't see that at the time. Edit: wish I hadn't checked those threads out - some absolutely awful takes. There's a serious lack of empathy in our tech bubble at times.
- version_five 3y ago
  It was posted on BBC, that's why it got more attention. I posted this article yesterday too, having searched for it and not found it posted.
  - ChrisArchitect 3y ago
    The discussion is over there on the elpais articles. Days ago. It's just a note to go there.
d--b 3y ago
This is why AI is going to be regulated. It’s fairly obvious by now.
- gameoverhumans 3y ago
  What kinds of regulation do you anticipate helping here? Let's assume that generating these images is as simple as downloading a model from the internet and running it on the same hardware you use to play Fortnite. How do you prevent stuff like this without going full "we need to backdoor all encryption because terrorism" moral panic mode?
- birracerveza 3y ago
  Yeah, good luck with that. The genie is out of the bottle, at best you can restrict its public use (and also good luck with proving whether an image is AI or not), because even if they outlaw it somehow, you still only need a GPU, a 4gb file and a <100mb software to make whatever image. Are we going to ban GPUs or monitor their use? Does that sound like a good idea?
  - jayski 3y ago
    Even if we banned GPUs, they could still be made (albeit slower) with a CPU.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  Photoshop didn't get regulated when people started photoshopping people's heads on strippers. Rather we used existing laws to punish individuals who did it, like those against defamation. And for the more obvious and benign cases we quickly stopped caring all together.
kypro 3y ago
Genuinely curious – if instead of AI these images were drawn by other children with photoshop would that be of equal concern? I feel ashamed to admit this, but I didn't like one of my teachers in highschool and as a joke one evening I photoshopped her into some photos (a few of which were sexual in nature). But worse, I shared these images with a few of my friends as a joke. Obviously we didn't have AI back then, but I was okay at photoshop so the images look semi-realistic I suppose. Looking back I didn't even think I was doing anything wrong because I had seen this done quite a bit. I didn't like my teacher and I was expressing my dislike for her with the mean images I created. If you look online you often find people doing similar things to politicians and celebs they dislike. I'd argue this should be illegal, but so long as the person is famous enough it seems this is a form of socially acceptable bullying which I've expressed some anger about on here before, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36737515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36737515 Perhaps the most egregious example of this I can think of is in Kanye West's "Famous" music video in which he created a life-like naked mannequin of Taylor Swift without her consent seemingly just to be cruel. But I guess that's fine because she's and adult and famous. Expanding on my point here, I think most of us can agree that it's acceptable to draw a picture of a naked child (or even take a photo of a naked child) depending on context. For example I think most people would agree there are appropriate artistic contexts for a drawing featuring a naked child, and similarly parents often take photos of their child in the bath or naked around the house. Whenever I think about this issue I always feel the problem is purely the intention and whether or not it was consensual. If the intention is to cause hurt and it's not consensual then I think it is deeply wrong. It's got much less to do with whether the image contains a naked child because otherwise context wouldn't matter. I also don't see how anyone could argue that there is anything inherently wrong or shameful about the body of a child. In which case I think treating this like child pornography would be inapporiate since the issue with child pornography is much more to do with the fact that a child is being coerced (or forced) into doing things which they cannot consent to for the content. This isn't happening here. In terms of harm this is far more similar to drawing a picture of someone naked against their will and sharing that drawing. However I do accept the realism here makes this worse and therefore should be punished more harshly, but either way this is still purely an issue of bullying. Who ever did this deserves serious punishment, but treating them like a pedophile would be wrong – especially if it was a classmate of similar age who created these images. And I'll add if we want to stop kids doing this then we should probably not normalise the sharing of nonconsensual photos featuring adults either. It's utterly absurd that they could have created a naked photo of Taylor Swift with this AI and that would have been totally fine, but because it's someone from their class its a crime. Why? I'd be interesting in hearing if and why others disagree with anything I've said here. I really do think we obsess about these issues when there's a child involved, meanwhile we're fine with adult women being victims of exactly the same behaviour. If this behaviour is wrong then let's stop it completely. You simply should not be allowed to share a photo of person without their consent. The only exception to this should be if that person was in public when the photo was taken.

33 points by basisword 3y ago

Generally there is a distinction between deepfaking and AI generated or am I mistaken here ? Is there a preferred nomenclature ?

basisword 3y ago
Deepfake utilises AI, no? Either way I feel like in the context of a national news article AI is being used in a colloquial sense.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  From the AI industry perspective, I'd call it "deepfake" if it's generated as the original deepfake method did, by taking a real image or video and replacing only the face, and "AI generated" if the whole image was generated. But perhaps this is a technical distinction that will go away soon, or perhaps has already disappeared in colloquial usage.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    I always used it literally: “Deepfake”: a fake generated by a DNN, or tool chain comprised primarily of such.
PeterisP 3y ago
While from technical perspective there are multiple quite different methods to create images, I don't think that there is (or should be, or can be) a clear boundary for social and legal purposes. It's clear that are a bunch of generated fake images with a face that looks like the impersonated victims and a naked body. Does it matter if that face was copy-pasted from an existing photo of that person or manipulated by a skilled artist to look like that person or AI-generated to look that person? And with respect to the impersonated victims, does it matter if the naked body came from a real photo of someone else, or was drawn by a skilled artist, or was generated by AI?
- zingababba 3y ago
  I agree intent remains the same in either case. In this case the intent is desiring to create a nude likeness of an individual using some degree of original material so that the final creation appears indistinguishable from a genuine product. In terms of law the technical solution used to accomplish the likeness should not be relevant.

1MachineElf 3y ago

Whoever is generating and distributing these images should be charged with distributing child pornography. Doesn't matter if the images are AI generated. That's my initial response, anyway. I'll concede that it's not well thought out. For one, it isn't comprehensive enough to solve the problem of the perpetrator being halfway around the world.

basisword 3y ago
I think the problem is that the most likely perpetrators are the teenage boys the girls are in school with. It seems like exactly the sort of thing teenage boys would do without fully understanding the damage never mind the legality. In that sense it feels very tricky to deal with - saying that, it needs a solution. Being a kid these days seems pretty awful. I thought it was bad when your mistakes could be caught on camera and put on Facebook. How much worse can it get?
- version_five 3y ago
  I think the endgame is having a different understanding of privacy, modesty, etc. There's no way this is going to go away or be regulated away somehow. Heavy handed punishment of young kids who generate images just creates more problems (though I imagine we'll go through that phase). Eventually (in a generation or two) it will equilibrate and nobody will take the pictures seriously or be interested in making them. There's novelty now, it will go away. I can't see any other realistic direction this will go.
  - basisword 3y ago
    I can’t see this happening. People have been saying this for a long time. On top of that, a lot of young girls are going to go through a lot of pain in the meantime - hoping for societal change seems negligent.
  - zingababba 3y ago
    I'd take issue with the statement about no one taking them seriously or being interested in making them. It seems like a pedophiles dream.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
More discussion over here when this was news days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37580805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37580805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37570356
- basisword 3y ago
  Thanks for the links. Didn't see that at the time. Edit: wish I hadn't checked those threads out - some absolutely awful takes. There's a serious lack of empathy in our tech bubble at times.
version_five 3y ago
It was posted on BBC, that's why it got more attention. I posted this article yesterday too, having searched for it and not found it posted.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  The discussion is over there on the elpais articles. Days ago. It's just a note to go there.

d--b 3y ago

This is why AI is going to be regulated. It’s fairly obvious by now.

gameoverhumans 3y ago
What kinds of regulation do you anticipate helping here? Let's assume that generating these images is as simple as downloading a model from the internet and running it on the same hardware you use to play Fortnite. How do you prevent stuff like this without going full "we need to backdoor all encryption because terrorism" moral panic mode?
birracerveza 3y ago
Yeah, good luck with that. The genie is out of the bottle, at best you can restrict its public use (and also good luck with proving whether an image is AI or not), because even if they outlaw it somehow, you still only need a GPU, a 4gb file and a <100mb software to make whatever image. Are we going to ban GPUs or monitor their use? Does that sound like a good idea?
- jayski 3y ago
  Even if we banned GPUs, they could still be made (albeit slower) with a CPU.
wongarsu 3y ago
Photoshop didn't get regulated when people started photoshopping people's heads on strippers. Rather we used existing laws to punish individuals who did it, like those against defamation. And for the more obvious and benign cases we quickly stopped caring all together.

kypro 3y ago

Genuinely curious – if instead of AI these images were drawn by other children with photoshop would that be of equal concern? I feel ashamed to admit this, but I didn't like one of my teachers in highschool and as a joke one evening I photoshopped her into some photos (a few of which were sexual in nature). But worse, I shared these images with a few of my friends as a joke. Obviously we didn't have AI back then, but I was okay at photoshop so the images look semi-realistic I suppose. Looking back I didn't even think I was doing anything wrong because I had seen this done quite a bit. I didn't like my teacher and I was expressing my dislike for her with the mean images I created. If you look online you often find people doing similar things to politicians and celebs they dislike. I'd argue this should be illegal, but so long as the person is famous enough it seems this is a form of socially acceptable bullying which I've expressed some anger about on here before, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36737515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36737515 Perhaps the most egregious example of this I can think of is in Kanye West's "Famous" music video in which he created a life-like naked mannequin of Taylor Swift without her consent seemingly just to be cruel. But I guess that's fine because she's and adult and famous. Expanding on my point here, I think most of us can agree that it's acceptable to draw a picture of a naked child (or even take a photo of a naked child) depending on context. For example I think most people would agree there are appropriate artistic contexts for a drawing featuring a naked child, and similarly parents often take photos of their child in the bath or naked around the house. Whenever I think about this issue I always feel the problem is purely the intention and whether or not it was consensual. If the intention is to cause hurt and it's not consensual then I think it is deeply wrong. It's got much less to do with whether the image contains a naked child because otherwise context wouldn't matter. I also don't see how anyone could argue that there is anything inherently wrong or shameful about the body of a child. In which case I think treating this like child pornography would be inapporiate since the issue with child pornography is much more to do with the fact that a child is being coerced (or forced) into doing things which they cannot consent to for the content. This isn't happening here. In terms of harm this is far more similar to drawing a picture of someone naked against their will and sharing that drawing. However I do accept the realism here makes this worse and therefore should be punished more harshly, but either way this is still purely an issue of bullying. Who ever did this deserves serious punishment, but treating them like a pedophile would be wrong – especially if it was a classmate of similar age who created these images. And I'll add if we want to stop kids doing this then we should probably not normalise the sharing of nonconsensual photos featuring adults either. It's utterly absurd that they could have created a naked photo of Taylor Swift with this AI and that would have been totally fine, but because it's someone from their class its a crime. Why? I'd be interesting in hearing if and why others disagree with anything I've said here. I really do think we obsess about these issues when there's a child involved, meanwhile we're fine with adult women being victims of exactly the same behaviour. If this behaviour is wrong then let's stop it completely. You simply should not be allowed to share a photo of person without their consent. The only exception to this should be if that person was in public when the photo was taken.