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This is the killer app elephant in the room. Removing the exploitation of people in porn is a net positive. There’s been attempts at ethical porn but it is a ga

This is the killer app elephant in the room. Removing the exploitation of people in porn is a net positive. There’s been attempts at ethical porn but it is a garden in a rainforest.

negus 2y ago
Why "exploitation of people" in porn is unethical? Are the porn actors forced to work?
- tantalor 2y ago
  Might be referring to nonconsensual cases, like "dumb high school kids make AI porn of their classmates"
  - negus 2y ago
    Is it a common case? Seems like the vast portion of porn is made by professional actors, isn't it?
    - vdsk 2y ago
      There are tons of stories of people being forced doing acts they did not sign for, and plenty of unsavory or illegal practices in the industry. Is all porn unethical? No, of course not, but there is still enough that you have a very serious chance of stumbling upon "not-ethically sourced" porn on a regular basis.
  - tjpnz 2y ago
    They're not going to touch that one.
    - tantalor 2y ago
      Well, that's exactly what I mean. They should make sure their tools cannot be used to do that!
- demondemidi 2y ago
  Yes. Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia including India. (And America.) Basically everywhere. Funny you think that all porn is consensual. Not “funny,” I meant “sad.”
  - negus 2y ago
    Please, make me think otherwise. With numbers and proofs
    - demondemidi 2y ago
      No. I don't waste time on people like who you really don't care, and just want to fight.
- chaorace 2y ago
  In theory? Nothing. In practice? A few things coalesce to make the situation more complicated: 1. Sex is a fundamentally asymmetrical power dynamic. For a conventional porn actress, it's frequently something that's done to you. These sex workers become passive actors in a transaction that directly taxes their mind & body, something very rare in other industries. 2. Sex work comes with a hefty opportunity cost. Any reputation you create for yourself in the sex industry becomes toxic once you leave -- and eventually you do have to leave it. It's a job that consumes all of your prime working & education years in exchange for little, if any, future opportunity. 3. Sex work is often, by far, the most lucrative job available to a young woman. Some young women simply have no other realistic choice to pay the bills. This in and of itself isn't a problem unique to sex work, however it does uniquely suck for sex workers because of the prior two issues. How do you stand up for yourself when the other party knows you can't walk away? How do you save for the future if you need the money today?
woodruffw 2y ago
Given that the AI in question is trained on the products of human exploitation (as you put it), is it accurate to say it’s been removed? The exploitation is laundered here and not truly removed, to my eyes. (Intuitively it’s even worse in some ways, since performing in adult media doesn’t necessarily imply that the performer wants their physical attributes merged and re-represented in ways they would not have consented to.)
- demondemidi 2y ago
  Yes. Because that person is no longer physically at risk. Now whether they consent to their image being used is a different type of exploitations that needs to be addressed. Both can be true. As I put it is correct.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    > Because that person is no longer physically at risk. I don't know if I would describe someone whose image is subject to arbitrary manipulation per anybody's fantasies as "no longer physically at risk." There's a nontrivial amount of precedent for mentally unwell people building up parasocial relationships that they then (violently) act on; it's not inconceivable that AI would facilitate those. But even beyond that: you're approaching this from a baseline assumption is everyone who makes adult content is "physically at risk," which probably isn't true. The reality is that it's a spectrum, and that there is probably a large demographic that isn't harmed by the content they voluntarily produce, but would be harmed by content produced from a model trained on their data. As an intuitive example: someone who does boudoir photography or burlesque is clearly not inviting an AI to produce "harder" content using their likeness, and would be harmed by that.
clwg 2y ago
I agree with you (I also think gaming has allot of potential with this stuff), but personally I wouldn't want to feed my preferences for this sort of content into a hosted service. I'd also imagine that there needs to some consideration applied in a legal context. Just yesterday there was a massive child porn bust which also included AI generated content[0]. [0] https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-provincial-police-arrest-64-suspects-in-child-sexual-exploitation-investigation-1.6876377 https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-provincial-police-arrest-...
chaorace 2y ago
Funny thing that you mention exploitation. From a high-level perspective, there's a lot of parallels in the discourse surrounding exploitation of women in pornography and exploitation of artists in generative AI. Mind you, I said that the discourse has parallels, we talk about these two things in similar ways -- I'll refrain from speaking on behalf of the actual actors whose experiences are distinct from my own (e.g.: artists, women, neural networks). It's a pithy thought, but exactly what do I mean by that? Well... both things fundamentally exist within the interplay between labor, content, and the internet. We're forced to grapple with the yawning gap between abstract and economic value which the fundamental reproducibility of internet content implictly creates, not to mention the resulting potential for exploitation. This conflict forces us to reflect on unpleasant worldly realities -- how responsible is a consumer with finite resources for the fair treatment of those whose labors produce an infinite commodity?

This is the killer app elephant in the room. Removing the exploitation of people in porn is a net positive. There’s been attempts at ethical porn but it is a garden in a rainforest.

negus 2y ago

Why "exploitation of people" in porn is unethical? Are the porn actors forced to work?

tantalor 2y ago
Might be referring to nonconsensual cases, like "dumb high school kids make AI porn of their classmates"
- negus 2y ago
  Is it a common case? Seems like the vast portion of porn is made by professional actors, isn't it?
  - vdsk 2y ago
    There are tons of stories of people being forced doing acts they did not sign for, and plenty of unsavory or illegal practices in the industry. Is all porn unethical? No, of course not, but there is still enough that you have a very serious chance of stumbling upon "not-ethically sourced" porn on a regular basis.
- tjpnz 2y ago
  They're not going to touch that one.
  - tantalor 2y ago
    Well, that's exactly what I mean. They should make sure their tools cannot be used to do that!
demondemidi 2y ago
Yes. Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia including India. (And America.) Basically everywhere. Funny you think that all porn is consensual. Not “funny,” I meant “sad.”
- negus 2y ago
  Please, make me think otherwise. With numbers and proofs
  - demondemidi 2y ago
    No. I don't waste time on people like who you really don't care, and just want to fight.
chaorace 2y ago
In theory? Nothing. In practice? A few things coalesce to make the situation more complicated: 1. Sex is a fundamentally asymmetrical power dynamic. For a conventional porn actress, it's frequently something that's done to you. These sex workers become passive actors in a transaction that directly taxes their mind & body, something very rare in other industries. 2. Sex work comes with a hefty opportunity cost. Any reputation you create for yourself in the sex industry becomes toxic once you leave -- and eventually you do have to leave it. It's a job that consumes all of your prime working & education years in exchange for little, if any, future opportunity. 3. Sex work is often, by far, the most lucrative job available to a young woman. Some young women simply have no other realistic choice to pay the bills. This in and of itself isn't a problem unique to sex work, however it does uniquely suck for sex workers because of the prior two issues. How do you stand up for yourself when the other party knows you can't walk away? How do you save for the future if you need the money today?

woodruffw 2y ago

Given that the AI in question is trained on the products of human exploitation (as you put it), is it accurate to say it’s been removed? The exploitation is laundered here and not truly removed, to my eyes. (Intuitively it’s even worse in some ways, since performing in adult media doesn’t necessarily imply that the performer wants their physical attributes merged and re-represented in ways they would not have consented to.)

demondemidi 2y ago
Yes. Because that person is no longer physically at risk. Now whether they consent to their image being used is a different type of exploitations that needs to be addressed. Both can be true. As I put it is correct.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  > Because that person is no longer physically at risk. I don't know if I would describe someone whose image is subject to arbitrary manipulation per anybody's fantasies as "no longer physically at risk." There's a nontrivial amount of precedent for mentally unwell people building up parasocial relationships that they then (violently) act on; it's not inconceivable that AI would facilitate those. But even beyond that: you're approaching this from a baseline assumption is everyone who makes adult content is "physically at risk," which probably isn't true. The reality is that it's a spectrum, and that there is probably a large demographic that isn't harmed by the content they voluntarily produce, but would be harmed by content produced from a model trained on their data. As an intuitive example: someone who does boudoir photography or burlesque is clearly not inviting an AI to produce "harder" content using their likeness, and would be harmed by that.

clwg 2y ago

I agree with you (I also think gaming has allot of potential with this stuff), but personally I wouldn't want to feed my preferences for this sort of content into a hosted service. I'd also imagine that there needs to some consideration applied in a legal context. Just yesterday there was a massive child porn bust which also included AI generated content[0]. [0] https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-provincial-police-arrest-64-suspects-in-child-sexual-exploitation-investigation-1.6876377 https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-provincial-police-arrest-...

chaorace 2y ago

Funny thing that you mention exploitation. From a high-level perspective, there's a lot of parallels in the discourse surrounding exploitation of women in pornography and exploitation of artists in generative AI. Mind you, I said that the discourse has parallels, we talk about these two things in similar ways -- I'll refrain from speaking on behalf of the actual actors whose experiences are distinct from my own (e.g.: artists, women, neural networks). It's a pithy thought, but exactly what do I mean by that? Well... both things fundamentally exist within the interplay between labor, content, and the internet. We're forced to grapple with the yawning gap between abstract and economic value which the fundamental reproducibility of internet content implictly creates, not to mention the resulting potential for exploitation. This conflict forces us to reflect on unpleasant worldly realities -- how responsible is a consumer with finite resources for the fair treatment of those whose labors produce an infinite commodity?