6 ms·

EU to make AI generated child abuse material criminal

47 points by miohtama 3y ago

TeeMassive 3y ago
What is to stop someone from making a USB dongle that generates CP to politically assassinate a target?
- diggan 3y ago
  What is to stop someone from making a USB dongle that has real CP on it to politically assassinate a target?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - adammarples 3y ago
    They may not wish to interact with real CP or the people that sell it. Typing a few words into a model is certainly easier.
  - rolph 3y ago
    specificity, and effectiveness. when its faked, it can be magnitudes more damning in the fake details, vs spraying jpegs of old polaroids of a baby having first bath
  - huytersd 3y ago
    I presume the difference is- this USB has nothing on it except this one small exe. Nothing to worry about. Then it just generates massive amounts of illegal content on your PC. But I guess that’s not that different from a small exe reaching out to the internet and pulling in massive amounts of the same illegal material.
  - TeeMassive 3y ago
    No network traces. Can target offline PCs.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  What's to stop people from framing others for any other crime you could think of, what's to stop people from committing crimes themselves? Technically nothing that's bulletproof, yet we have laws anyway. The world is messy.
- bitwize 3y ago
  The FBI already has ways of "discovering" CSAM on the computers of slippery suspects or obstreperous potential informants.
seydor 3y ago
Didn't the US try this at some point with 3D cgi material? I think it fell through in the US. I believe in the EU such material is already criminal. OTOH i don't see any possible way they can stop it
- kergonath 3y ago
  How can you define the age of a fictional character in a computer-generated rendering anyway? This is misguided and ill-conceived from top to bottom.
- realfeel78 3y ago
  You don't see any possible way? Really? How do governments stop anything else? Google "laws" and "enforcement."
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  In the US, CSAM bans are on slightly shakier ground than in other countries because of the First Amendment (and the general trend in law over the past 100-ish years of liberalization of interpretations of 1A... pornography bans were rolled back significantly by various lawsuits around Hustler and its owner). They're grounded, more or less, in the notion that their creation is itself always a criminal exploitation of a minor, so trading in them is always encouragement of criminal creation of more such material (essentially, the idea that 1A doesn't apply because one is creating a marketplace for goods that are illegal to create). This argument falls flat regarding synthetically-produced CSAM and CSAM-adjacent material (no human beings exploited in its creation; in fact, one could argue that creation of synthetic CSAM depresses the market for child-exploiting CSAM), so I wouldn't be surprised if the US can't find a way in their legal structure to ban such material; their protections against obscenity in general tend to be weaker than other nations, and if the content is merely obscene and not generated by harming a minor, it's harder to argue it should be banned (as opposed to shunned for being odious).
- skissane 3y ago
  > Didn't the US try this at some point with 3D cgi material? I think it fell through in the US In the US, there is a legal distinction between child pornography and child obscenity. Both are criminal, and exceptions to the 1st Amendment – but, the first is much easier to prove in court. In the 2002 case of Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition [0] SCOTUS ruled that (under the 1st Amendment), child pornography only included material made with real children – so written text, drawings, or CGI/AI-generated children are not legally child pornography in the US. In the US, child pornography is only images/video [1] of real children. If someone uses editing software or AI to transform an innocent image/video of a real child into a pornographic one, that is also child pornography. But an image/video of a completely virtual child, that doesn't (non-coincidentally) look like any identifiable real child, is not child pornography in the US. What most people don't seem to know, is that while a virtual child can't be criminal child pornography in the US, it still can be criminal child obscenity – which is rarely prosecuted, and much harder to prove in court, but if they succeed, can still result in a lengthy prison term. In 2021, a Texas man was sentenced to 40 years in prison over a bunch of stories and drawings of child sexual abuse. [2] (Given the man is in his 60s, that's effectively a life sentence, he's probably going to die in prison.) If someone can get 40 years in prison for stories and drawings, there is no reason in principle why someone could not end up in federal prison for AI-generated images too, under 18 USC 1466A. [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit... [1] maybe audio too? I'm not sure about that [2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-prison-running-child-obscenity-website https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-... [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A
iammjm 3y ago
Who is the victim of this “crime” here?
- artninja1988 3y ago
  One argument I've heard is that it makes investigation of real cp harder.
  - mulletbum 3y ago
    Pretty sure that is a terrible reason to make laws for it. I heard the bill of rights has the same problem.
    - artninja1988 3y ago
      I'm also not sure how I feel about it. Guess I'd have to see some evidence of how people generating cp images affects real children, be it by encouraging actual acts or whatever. If it doesn't or has the opposite effect, I would be against criminalising it, even though it is disgusting
      - realfeel78 3y ago
        Luckily most other people in the world don't need further convincing.
  - anonporridge 3y ago
    Possibly, but I'd also speculate that it makes real cp less profitable, and therefore start to disappear. Similar to how real OF girls are going to rapidly lose their income because dudes running AI camgirls will increasingly outcompete them for attention and money.
    - realfeel78 3y ago
      You think the main reason cp exists is profit? Really? Listen to the podcast "Hunting Warhead" before you make another comment so wildly uninformed on the topic anywhere.
rolph 3y ago
no page loading for me. did a quick search on the article title and found, among others : https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ seems to be a working link . makes refernce to the title submission. of further note : "The possession and exchange of “pedophile manuals” would also be criminalized under the plan — which is part of a wider package of measures the EU says is intended to boost prevention of CSA" https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ this could be chilling, as outreach to children at risk, could be misconstrued, or repurposed for grooming, thus materials concerning adult interaction with children would become treacherous
throw0101c 3y ago
As a comparison, currently illegal in Canada: > The current law criminalizes possession of purely fictional material and has been applied in the absence of any images of real children, including to possession of fictional stories with no pictures at all, or vice versa, cartoon pictures without any stories.[4] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Cana...
- 101008 3y ago
  > It also includes the written depictions of persons or characters (fictional or non-fictional) under the age of 18 engaging in sexual activity.[2] Courts in Canada can also issue orders for the deletion of material from the internet from any computer system within the court's jurisdiction.[3] That's too much in my opinion. What if there is a novel about teens experiencing it for the first time at 16, or 17? Or if there is a novel a rapist?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Traubenfuchs 3y ago
I never understood why fictional cp of any kind is illegal but highly violent content is not. One can watch people getting tortured to death in "Hostel" or "Saw" in graphic detail on Amazon Prime. Is it the innocence and defenselessness of children that gets society so riled up?
- realfeel78 3y ago
  > Is it the innocence and defenselessness of children that gets society so riled up? Yes.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Then why is the fictional depiction of dismsembering a child legal, but the fictional depiction of giving a child an orgasm illegal?
    - almatabata 3y ago
      It is probably the getting off on seeing those pictures that triggers the visceral response. If I make a movie of a child getting dismembered, I do not have the goal to create a sexual reaction in the audience. In contrast if I make fictional CP, I have the inherent goal in sexually exciting a certain category of people.
      - stavros 3y ago
        Sure, but when has repressing urges led to anything good? I don't think CP will turn anyone into a pedophile, might as well let people satisfy their urges in a non-harmful way.
        almatabata 3y ago
        > Sure, but when has repressing urges led to anything good? I mean we all repress certain behaviors to a certain extent. Some level of repression is healthy. I might have the urge to eat 5KG of ice cream every day but I keep it under control. > I don't think CP will turn anyone into a pedophile, might as well let people satisfy their urges in a non-harmful way. If need CP to get off you are a pedophile by definition because you are sexually attracted to children. I guess you meant watching CP will not automatically turn him into a child molester. It is not that I agree with this new law. I do not see how it is enforceable. But I do see why people have a very negative view of it.
throwitaway8019 3y ago
As someone who loves abstract thinking and debate for debate's sake (in pursuit of truth and nuance). All i can comment is that this topic is so far out of the overton window that it's not possible to find any truth about the topic. In the US/Canada anything but full support for "Think of the children" will result in all out ad hominem. People cannot be honest about how they feel, sexually, because it's thought crime. People cannot get help because others must report it to the police. Researchers cannot study it (or release results contrary to the status quo) because it would be career ending. Reporters cannot tackle the subject because it would make them unemployable or ruin their publication. Politicians must bow to it, and leverage it, because of the populist view. Inmates cannot get rehabilitation because they're societally hated, and other inmates will kill them or commit deplorable acts against them. (This is socially acceptable behavior, even encouraged)
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  > In the US/Canada anything but full support for "Think of the children" will result in all out ad hominem. The other side of this is, "What's an acceptable number of crimes against children?" Implicitly, there's a choice, "This remedy is projected to reduce crimes against children by X%, but we're not going to do it because Y." The projected marginal reduction is justified using the consequences of Y. I'm perfectly ok with this calculus. If someone wants to say that right to privacy is more important than a projected reduction in crimes against children, more power to them. What I'm asking for is honesty regarding this calculus. For some reason it short circuits peoples' brains and the consequences of taking whichever action end up making them unable to say, "Yes, the [projected] marginal reduction is the what I'm willing to spend by not doing Y." Just say it.
  - ranyume 3y ago
    The issue is that there's little research being conducted on the topic. There's just multiple factors that make research extremely difficult, making progress in understanding the issues harder, thus undermining any policymaking.
    - 3y ago
fngjdflmdflg 3y ago
To those asking you are right that there is no victim. The issue that they are trying to solve is that allowing this will (or at least may) harm society in the long term by normalizing the content. We've somewhat lost the way to communicate this idea in our current individualist society. In East Asia for example all porn is censored not because it is helping victims but as an attempt to enforce a certain level of morality in their societies. Even though in many of these places there is no real recourse for distributing uncensored porn and all those countries are generally atheist. It is more about having the law so as to keep it from becoming accepted in society. We can argue whether that is a desirable value for society but I don't think anyone is saying there is a victim for this crime. It may also be worthwhile to compare this with public indecency laws that exist here which range from prescribing minimum attire in public to the banning of public defecation. There are many differences in practice between all these points but I think they all touch on the point of victimless crimes to some extent.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  I'll preface this by saying I am in favor of making AI child porn illegal. There are probably some details there that will need to be ironed out, but as a baseline it is a good idea. In your text, however, there is something I find far more interesting for discussion: > enforce a certain level of morality in their societies I, personally, like this. I think a society should have a level of enforced moral behavior. But by going down this road, you can reach some undesirable conclusions super fast.
  - KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
    > I think a society should have a level of enforced moral behavior. I, as a person with superior moral principles, completely agree. Following an old tradition, we should also put some psychopaths in charge of enforcement.
  - sgift 3y ago
    Society already has a certain level of enforced moral behavior. Making murder or torture illegal is based in morality. Problems arise if we get to less universal. That some things are illegal in one society, but legal in another is also often a consequence of a certain morality in that society. How much morality is "universally accepted" in a society to make violating it something which should also be against the law is a contentious issue. Personally, I think it's good to err on the side of "let people decide for themselves" and only make it into laws in exceptional cases.

47 points by miohtama 3y ago

TeeMassive 3y ago

What is to stop someone from making a USB dongle that generates CP to politically assassinate a target?

diggan 3y ago
What is to stop someone from making a USB dongle that has real CP on it to politically assassinate a target?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- adammarples 3y ago
  They may not wish to interact with real CP or the people that sell it. Typing a few words into a model is certainly easier.
- rolph 3y ago
  specificity, and effectiveness. when its faked, it can be magnitudes more damning in the fake details, vs spraying jpegs of old polaroids of a baby having first bath
- huytersd 3y ago
  I presume the difference is- this USB has nothing on it except this one small exe. Nothing to worry about. Then it just generates massive amounts of illegal content on your PC. But I guess that’s not that different from a small exe reaching out to the internet and pulling in massive amounts of the same illegal material.
- TeeMassive 3y ago
  No network traces. Can target offline PCs.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
What's to stop people from framing others for any other crime you could think of, what's to stop people from committing crimes themselves? Technically nothing that's bulletproof, yet we have laws anyway. The world is messy.
bitwize 3y ago
The FBI already has ways of "discovering" CSAM on the computers of slippery suspects or obstreperous potential informants.

seydor 3y ago

Didn't the US try this at some point with 3D cgi material? I think it fell through in the US. I believe in the EU such material is already criminal. OTOH i don't see any possible way they can stop it

kergonath 3y ago
How can you define the age of a fictional character in a computer-generated rendering anyway? This is misguided and ill-conceived from top to bottom.
realfeel78 3y ago
You don't see any possible way? Really? How do governments stop anything else? Google "laws" and "enforcement."
shadowgovt 3y ago
In the US, CSAM bans are on slightly shakier ground than in other countries because of the First Amendment (and the general trend in law over the past 100-ish years of liberalization of interpretations of 1A... pornography bans were rolled back significantly by various lawsuits around Hustler and its owner). They're grounded, more or less, in the notion that their creation is itself always a criminal exploitation of a minor, so trading in them is always encouragement of criminal creation of more such material (essentially, the idea that 1A doesn't apply because one is creating a marketplace for goods that are illegal to create). This argument falls flat regarding synthetically-produced CSAM and CSAM-adjacent material (no human beings exploited in its creation; in fact, one could argue that creation of synthetic CSAM depresses the market for child-exploiting CSAM), so I wouldn't be surprised if the US can't find a way in their legal structure to ban such material; their protections against obscenity in general tend to be weaker than other nations, and if the content is merely obscene and not generated by harming a minor, it's harder to argue it should be banned (as opposed to shunned for being odious).
skissane 3y ago
> Didn't the US try this at some point with 3D cgi material? I think it fell through in the US In the US, there is a legal distinction between child pornography and child obscenity. Both are criminal, and exceptions to the 1st Amendment – but, the first is much easier to prove in court. In the 2002 case of Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition [0] SCOTUS ruled that (under the 1st Amendment), child pornography only included material made with real children – so written text, drawings, or CGI/AI-generated children are not legally child pornography in the US. In the US, child pornography is only images/video [1] of real children. If someone uses editing software or AI to transform an innocent image/video of a real child into a pornographic one, that is also child pornography. But an image/video of a completely virtual child, that doesn't (non-coincidentally) look like any identifiable real child, is not child pornography in the US. What most people don't seem to know, is that while a virtual child can't be criminal child pornography in the US, it still can be criminal child obscenity – which is rarely prosecuted, and much harder to prove in court, but if they succeed, can still result in a lengthy prison term. In 2021, a Texas man was sentenced to 40 years in prison over a bunch of stories and drawings of child sexual abuse. [2] (Given the man is in his 60s, that's effectively a life sentence, he's probably going to die in prison.) If someone can get 40 years in prison for stories and drawings, there is no reason in principle why someone could not end up in federal prison for AI-generated images too, under 18 USC 1466A. [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit... [1] maybe audio too? I'm not sure about that [2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-prison-running-child-obscenity-website https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-sentenced-40-years-... [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A

iammjm 3y ago

Who is the victim of this “crime” here?

artninja1988 3y ago
One argument I've heard is that it makes investigation of real cp harder.
- mulletbum 3y ago
  Pretty sure that is a terrible reason to make laws for it. I heard the bill of rights has the same problem.
  - artninja1988 3y ago
    I'm also not sure how I feel about it. Guess I'd have to see some evidence of how people generating cp images affects real children, be it by encouraging actual acts or whatever. If it doesn't or has the opposite effect, I would be against criminalising it, even though it is disgusting
    - realfeel78 3y ago
      Luckily most other people in the world don't need further convincing.
- anonporridge 3y ago
  Possibly, but I'd also speculate that it makes real cp less profitable, and therefore start to disappear. Similar to how real OF girls are going to rapidly lose their income because dudes running AI camgirls will increasingly outcompete them for attention and money.
  - realfeel78 3y ago
    You think the main reason cp exists is profit? Really? Listen to the podcast "Hunting Warhead" before you make another comment so wildly uninformed on the topic anywhere.

rolph 3y ago

no page loading for me. did a quick search on the article title and found, among others : https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ seems to be a working link . makes refernce to the title submission. of further note : "The possession and exchange of “pedophile manuals” would also be criminalized under the plan — which is part of a wider package of measures the EU says is intended to boost prevention of CSA" https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/eu-csa-deepfakes/ this could be chilling, as outreach to children at risk, could be misconstrued, or repurposed for grooming, thus materials concerning adult interaction with children would become treacherous

throw0101c 3y ago

As a comparison, currently illegal in Canada: > The current law criminalizes possession of purely fictional material and has been applied in the absence of any images of real children, including to possession of fictional stories with no pictures at all, or vice versa, cartoon pictures without any stories.[4] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Cana...

101008 3y ago
> It also includes the written depictions of persons or characters (fictional or non-fictional) under the age of 18 engaging in sexual activity.[2] Courts in Canada can also issue orders for the deletion of material from the internet from any computer system within the court's jurisdiction.[3] That's too much in my opinion. What if there is a novel about teens experiencing it for the first time at 16, or 17? Or if there is a novel a rapist?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Traubenfuchs 3y ago

I never understood why fictional cp of any kind is illegal but highly violent content is not. One can watch people getting tortured to death in "Hostel" or "Saw" in graphic detail on Amazon Prime. Is it the innocence and defenselessness of children that gets society so riled up?

realfeel78 3y ago
> Is it the innocence and defenselessness of children that gets society so riled up? Yes.
- stavros 3y ago
  Then why is the fictional depiction of dismsembering a child legal, but the fictional depiction of giving a child an orgasm illegal?
  - almatabata 3y ago
    It is probably the getting off on seeing those pictures that triggers the visceral response. If I make a movie of a child getting dismembered, I do not have the goal to create a sexual reaction in the audience. In contrast if I make fictional CP, I have the inherent goal in sexually exciting a certain category of people.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Sure, but when has repressing urges led to anything good? I don't think CP will turn anyone into a pedophile, might as well let people satisfy their urges in a non-harmful way.
      - almatabata 3y ago
        > Sure, but when has repressing urges led to anything good? I mean we all repress certain behaviors to a certain extent. Some level of repression is healthy. I might have the urge to eat 5KG of ice cream every day but I keep it under control. > I don't think CP will turn anyone into a pedophile, might as well let people satisfy their urges in a non-harmful way. If need CP to get off you are a pedophile by definition because you are sexually attracted to children. I guess you meant watching CP will not automatically turn him into a child molester. It is not that I agree with this new law. I do not see how it is enforceable. But I do see why people have a very negative view of it.

throwitaway8019 3y ago

As someone who loves abstract thinking and debate for debate's sake (in pursuit of truth and nuance). All i can comment is that this topic is so far out of the overton window that it's not possible to find any truth about the topic. In the US/Canada anything but full support for "Think of the children" will result in all out ad hominem. People cannot be honest about how they feel, sexually, because it's thought crime. People cannot get help because others must report it to the police. Researchers cannot study it (or release results contrary to the status quo) because it would be career ending. Reporters cannot tackle the subject because it would make them unemployable or ruin their publication. Politicians must bow to it, and leverage it, because of the populist view. Inmates cannot get rehabilitation because they're societally hated, and other inmates will kill them or commit deplorable acts against them. (This is socially acceptable behavior, even encouraged)

kelseyfrog 3y ago
> In the US/Canada anything but full support for "Think of the children" will result in all out ad hominem. The other side of this is, "What's an acceptable number of crimes against children?" Implicitly, there's a choice, "This remedy is projected to reduce crimes against children by X%, but we're not going to do it because Y." The projected marginal reduction is justified using the consequences of Y. I'm perfectly ok with this calculus. If someone wants to say that right to privacy is more important than a projected reduction in crimes against children, more power to them. What I'm asking for is honesty regarding this calculus. For some reason it short circuits peoples' brains and the consequences of taking whichever action end up making them unable to say, "Yes, the [projected] marginal reduction is the what I'm willing to spend by not doing Y." Just say it.
- ranyume 3y ago
  The issue is that there's little research being conducted on the topic. There's just multiple factors that make research extremely difficult, making progress in understanding the issues harder, thus undermining any policymaking.
  - 3y ago

fngjdflmdflg 3y ago

To those asking you are right that there is no victim. The issue that they are trying to solve is that allowing this will (or at least may) harm society in the long term by normalizing the content. We've somewhat lost the way to communicate this idea in our current individualist society. In East Asia for example all porn is censored not because it is helping victims but as an attempt to enforce a certain level of morality in their societies. Even though in many of these places there is no real recourse for distributing uncensored porn and all those countries are generally atheist. It is more about having the law so as to keep it from becoming accepted in society. We can argue whether that is a desirable value for society but I don't think anyone is saying there is a victim for this crime. It may also be worthwhile to compare this with public indecency laws that exist here which range from prescribing minimum attire in public to the banning of public defecation. There are many differences in practice between all these points but I think they all touch on the point of victimless crimes to some extent.

surgical_fire 3y ago
I'll preface this by saying I am in favor of making AI child porn illegal. There are probably some details there that will need to be ironed out, but as a baseline it is a good idea. In your text, however, there is something I find far more interesting for discussion: > enforce a certain level of morality in their societies I, personally, like this. I think a society should have a level of enforced moral behavior. But by going down this road, you can reach some undesirable conclusions super fast.
- KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
  > I think a society should have a level of enforced moral behavior. I, as a person with superior moral principles, completely agree. Following an old tradition, we should also put some psychopaths in charge of enforcement.
- sgift 3y ago
  Society already has a certain level of enforced moral behavior. Making murder or torture illegal is based in morality. Problems arise if we get to less universal. That some things are illegal in one society, but legal in another is also often a consequence of a certain morality in that society. How much morality is "universally accepted" in a society to make violating it something which should also be against the law is a contentious issue. Personally, I think it's good to err on the side of "let people decide for themselves" and only make it into laws in exceptional cases.