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It's confusing because that was also my interpretation until I saw the quote from the DoJ prosecutor in the article: >“Today’s announcement sends a clear messa

It's confusing because that was also my interpretation until I saw the quote from the DoJ prosecutor in the article: >“Today’s announcement sends a clear message: using AI to produce sexually explicit depictions of children is illegal, and the Justice Department will not hesitate to hold accountable those who possess, produce, or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse material"

squarefoot 2y ago
I completely understand forbidding the distribution to minors, but how can they hold accountable someone for producing CSAM and keeping all data in their hard drive? This sets a dangerous precedent; how is it different from simulating a murder, or simply speeding in a videogame? That "or distribute" should really be "and distribute"; the whole point should be to protect kids, not to punish people that are indeed fucked up but found a way to not harm the society.
- Sporktacular 2y ago
  "Not harm society" will depend on what material the models are trained with.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Running some order of magnitudes, we've had people abusing children and taking photos of it since around 1850. By this point there is a large enough corpus of whatever horrors they want to look at that a model can be trained without doing any further harm. It is a total waste of taxpayer funds to be going after someone if all they've done is generate however many images with stable diffusion. I'm glad in this case he's at least done something objectionable although an arrest seems a bit of an overreach, this seems to be the sort of situation that could be resolved with a fine rather than jail time based on skimming the indictment. If that.
    - Sporktacular 2y ago
      How would policing that work exactly? Downloading only old CSAM is acceptable? Technically any child abuse material available was produced in the past, so you could argue any pedophile downloading any of it isn't 'doing any further harm'. But the harm in it comes from generating further demand and normalising the sexualization of children. And than can happen with any material from before or after 1850. If a model is trained on it, it becomes a derivative work that should be treated no differently than a b&w version of a colour abuse image. Not sure what tax dollars have to do with this but IMO it's a small price to pay for an important service.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        > Technically any child abuse material available was produced in the past, so you could argue any pedophile downloading any of it isn't 'doing any further harm'. Sounds like I'd be happy to go with that. You're taking it to the logical conclusion and I generally agree. The problem to me is (1) people abusing children and (2) people paying other people to abuse children. > Not sure what tax dollars have to do with this but IMO it's a small price to pay for an important service. It isn't an important service. With the advent of generative AI models, going after people for possessing dodgy images is now more than likely persecuting people who haven't done any harm to anyone and aren't going to. We really should have learned this lesson after Turing. If people aren't harming anyone then it is OK for them to have bizarre sexual likes and dislikes.
        Sporktacular 2y ago
        "it is OK for them to have bizarre sexual likes and dislikes." I agree, so long as they are not consuming something that harmed anyone. Just as we know banning ivory sales reduces elephant poaching, contributing to demand causes harm. Putting an AI step in between the CP and its consumption is the same as before, it doesn't change anything.
        roenxi 2y ago
        It changes everything. It removes the part where harm needs to be done to satisfy demand. If someone says "I want a picture of X!" and an AI generates them the picture, no harm is done.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    how is that? the AI companies aren't commissioning new sexual abuse to train their models on.

squarefoot 2y ago

I completely understand forbidding the distribution to minors, but how can they hold accountable someone for producing CSAM and keeping all data in their hard drive? This sets a dangerous precedent; how is it different from simulating a murder, or simply speeding in a videogame? That "or distribute" should really be "and distribute"; the whole point should be to protect kids, not to punish people that are indeed fucked up but found a way to not harm the society.

Sporktacular 2y ago
"Not harm society" will depend on what material the models are trained with.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Running some order of magnitudes, we've had people abusing children and taking photos of it since around 1850. By this point there is a large enough corpus of whatever horrors they want to look at that a model can be trained without doing any further harm. It is a total waste of taxpayer funds to be going after someone if all they've done is generate however many images with stable diffusion. I'm glad in this case he's at least done something objectionable although an arrest seems a bit of an overreach, this seems to be the sort of situation that could be resolved with a fine rather than jail time based on skimming the indictment. If that.
  - Sporktacular 2y ago
    How would policing that work exactly? Downloading only old CSAM is acceptable? Technically any child abuse material available was produced in the past, so you could argue any pedophile downloading any of it isn't 'doing any further harm'. But the harm in it comes from generating further demand and normalising the sexualization of children. And than can happen with any material from before or after 1850. If a model is trained on it, it becomes a derivative work that should be treated no differently than a b&w version of a colour abuse image. Not sure what tax dollars have to do with this but IMO it's a small price to pay for an important service.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > Technically any child abuse material available was produced in the past, so you could argue any pedophile downloading any of it isn't 'doing any further harm'. Sounds like I'd be happy to go with that. You're taking it to the logical conclusion and I generally agree. The problem to me is (1) people abusing children and (2) people paying other people to abuse children. > Not sure what tax dollars have to do with this but IMO it's a small price to pay for an important service. It isn't an important service. With the advent of generative AI models, going after people for possessing dodgy images is now more than likely persecuting people who haven't done any harm to anyone and aren't going to. We really should have learned this lesson after Turing. If people aren't harming anyone then it is OK for them to have bizarre sexual likes and dislikes.
      - Sporktacular 2y ago
        "it is OK for them to have bizarre sexual likes and dislikes." I agree, so long as they are not consuming something that harmed anyone. Just as we know banning ivory sales reduces elephant poaching, contributing to demand causes harm. Putting an AI step in between the CP and its consumption is the same as before, it doesn't change anything.
        roenxi 2y ago
        It changes everything. It removes the part where harm needs to be done to satisfy demand. If someone says "I want a picture of X!" and an AI generates them the picture, no harm is done.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  how is that? the AI companies aren't commissioning new sexual abuse to train their models on.