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Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI
- sulandor 2y agoseems concerning although the result would probably be similar if he drew it by hand
- simcup 2y agoi have not followed the topic since it's not my cup of beer, but what is the legal stance on hentai with characters that are depicted as under 18 (or whatever age of concent is relevant) edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_pornography_depicting_minors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_po...
- lawn 2y agoI like how they use the loophole of "oh she's a 200 year old vampire in a child's body, so it's not actually a child".
- bitwize 2y agoMost likely illegal under the PROTECT Act. It would have to be ruled obscene under the Miller Test (which most material considered hentai probably would).
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- pessimizer 2y agoMike Diana: https://cbldf.org/2016/09/mike-diana-case-still-resonates-in-cbldf-history/ https://cbldf.org/2016/09/mike-diana-case-still-resonates-in...
- tmtvl 2y agoObvious disclaimer first: I do not condone imagery of child abuse, I believe this guy has some kind of psychological problem and needs professional help, AI-generated deepfakes can actually cause real harm and proper regulation is needed. With that out of the way: > the generative AI wrinkle in this particular arrest shows how technology is generating new avenues for crime and child abuse. Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? Does that mean that AI-generated imagery of some protected group being harmed causes actual harm to that protected group? Not saying it doesn't, but it may be worth thinking about. > The content that we’ve seen, we believe is actually being generated using open source software, which has been downloaded and run locally on people’s computers and then modified, [...] that is a much harder problem to fix. Sarcastic: people downloading and modifying open source software is a major problem indeed, hopefully a solution can be found.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago> Not saying it doesn't, but it may be worth thinking about. I think the path starts with asking, "How do things get normalized? What are the tools of normalization?"
- hmmokidk 2y agoExactly my thoughts. It normalizes this messed up stuff.
- Retric 2y agoYou lost me. Why would normalization have any impact on child predators? People aren’t going to be attracted to kids because they see such things. It’s like arguing gay porn is going to turn people gay.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoThank you for this clarifying point. You're right. It's probably better to focus on things that have a proven record of impacting child predators or child predation.
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- m3kw9 2y agoSo now is not downloading pics, but downloading AI models that can generate it. Are there people fine tuning models with these illegal images? Or is it just a jail broken model. In the former case the fine tuner needs to be traced, the latter case is new law territory
- bitwize 2y agoNo new law is necessary. The PROTECT Act makes all sexually explicit imagery of a minor that does not have artistic or literary merit illegal to produce, distribute, or possess. It closes the "no actual children were involved, it's just fiction/cartoons" loophole.
- pessimizer 2y agoThat stretches the definition of "loophole." It's like calling "truth" the libel loophole. The harm is supposed to be to children.
- bitwize 2y agoMany countries criminalize the distribution of child porn, irrespective of whether it's real, drawn, sculpted, or sometimes even written. If you are caught with loli hentai manga in New Zealand, expect the law to treat you like the chomo you are. The reason why blanket bans are implemented is not just to punish actual harm, but to avoid creating a demand for material that harms children. In the USA this kind of blanket ban, though desired by a majority of citizens, has historically not been feasible due to "that pesky First Amendment". So we say it's not about banning speech, it's about banning the abuse of children. And then we say that children get re-abused every time someone procures, distributes, or views this material. (Except when the FBI does it.) And then we're into semantic hair splitting of when exactly child abuse has occured: what if it's Bart Simpson? What if it's an AI deepfake? A photorealistic render of a fictional child? A Shadman cartoon drawing of a real minor e-celeb? Other countries have eliminated this problem by banning the material altogether irrespective of whether it depicts real or fictional persons, whether photographed, drawn, or computer synthesized. Before 1969, this would even have been possible in the United States. The PROTECT Act gets us closer by criminalizing any material that flunks a Miller obscenity test, which the Supreme Court has ruled is NOT protected under the First Amendment.
- telecuda 2y agoImportant callout beyond the headline: "Last year, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 4,700 reports of generated AI child porn, with some criminals even using generative AI to make deepfakes of real children to extort them."
- evanjrowley 2y agoOn the opposite end of this spectrum, there is interest among digital forensics examiners in some kind of automated capability for detecting child porn. Such a capability would speed up the process and reduce the mental/emotional load on examiners having to deal with this sensitive type of content. Automated processing could also reduce the risks of this material being mishandled as evidence. In a report presented at the 2019 Digital Forensics Research Conference, a survey of forensics examiners showed heightened interest in AI/ML models for this application. They discuss some prior work, recent attempts, and challenges in reaching this goal. https://dfrws.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2019_USA_pres-a_practitioner_survey_exploring_the_value_of_forensic_tools_for_csam.pdf https://dfrws.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2019_USA_pres-a... https://dfrws.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019_USA_paper-a_practitioner_survey_exploring_the_value_of_forensic_tools_ai_filtering_safer_presentation_for_investigating_child_sexual_abuse_material_csam.pdf https://dfrws.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019_USA_paper-...
- simcup 2y agoleaves the question: how much authority do these models posess, see also: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...
- pessimizer 2y agoIt's typical for authoritarians, not specific to AI. There are laws hiding all over the place that make drawing pictures illegal. Another Florida Man, Mike Diana, was convicted and sentenced for his (absurdly far from pornography or realism) zine-comic book Boiled Angel, which had a circulation of 300. For 3 years of probation, he was banned from drawing at all, even for personal use. https://cbldf.org/2016/09/mike-diana-case-still-resonates-in-cbldf-history/ https://cbldf.org/2016/09/mike-diana-case-still-resonates-in...
- rainy59 2y agoFlorida defines child porn as anyone under the age of 18 so all they need to do is say the AI image depicts a 17 year old. Vaguely written laws are very expensive to fight
- 00_hum 2y agocrazy how the same people who say fake pictures can cause enough harm to warrant jail time also are fine with dissemination of religious materials, violence porn on netflix, all of which is causing way more harm. by a mile. its not the harm, its just you picking and choosing.
- rendall 2y agoThe original rationale for criminalizing the possession of child porn was that a crime was inherently committed in its creation, and possession is participation in that crime. I think this is a correct conclusion. I can't see this rationale extending to generated imagery (deepfakes aside). No victim exists. Vaguely gesturing at social harm is not principled enough, in my opinion. One can point to actual crime and actual harm for filmed and photographed child pornography. For generated imagery, one can only point to one's own personal revulsion as "harm".
- sandworm101 2y agoPeople are not talking about how revolutionary this is. This isn't AI generating content to compete with artists. This is software running on standard hardware that turns electricity into material more illegal than cocaine. Just think of how that would impact the market for cocaine if suddenly everyone could make easily it at home from common ingredients. We are spiraling very quickly towards a "media creation box", standalone software that will generate whatever content a person might want without any external connections. There will be huge societal ramifications. We think media bubbles are bad now, but just wait until everyone can live inside their own bubble filled with locally-generated content to match their increasingly warped world views.
- bun_terminator 2y agoAre we still pretending that we punish harm or can we admit that we just want to punish people for doing things we don't like?
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- jrflowers 2y agoIn the US if I get caught selling you a gram of pure cocaine I get the same punishment as I would if I sold you a gram that’s only 20% pure. If I sold you a gram of some random powder and told you it is cocaine I am likely to be prosecuted all the same whether I knew it was fake or not. That aside, the “fully synthetic CSAM with no children involved at all” idea relies very, very heavily on taking the word of the guy who you just busted with a hard drive full of CSAM. His defense would essentially have to be “Your honor I pinky swear that I used the txt2img tab of automatic1111 instead of the img2img tab” or “I did start with real CSAM but the img2img tab acts as an algorithmic magic wand imbued with the power to retroactively erase the previous harm caused by the source material” There is no coherent defense to this activity that boils down to anything other than the idea that the existence of image generators should — and does — constitute an acceptable means of laundering CSAM and/or providing plausible deniability for anyone caught with it. The idea that there would be any pushback to arresting or investigating people for distributing this stuff boggles the mind. Inventing a new type of armor to specifically protect child abusers from scrutiny is a choice, not some sort of emergent moral ground truth caused by the popularization of diffusion models.
- Ferret7446 2y agoGenerally in the US, you must be proven guilty, not proven innocent. The prosecution must prove that the defendant actually committed the crime. The defendant absolutely can claim plausible deniability. Although currently it is not entirely clear whether mere possession should continue to constitute a crime by itself, or it should require actual child abuse (because the former used to imply the latter).
- jrflowers 2y agoI did not mention conviction, only prosecution. It’s not unreasonable to think “we should look into this guy that is publishing CSAM even though he’s posted it under hashtag #totallylegal” I have a legitimate question for the defenders of this specific activity: If a bad actor were to produce real CSAM by harming children and then used an img2img model that creates very similar but distinct outputs, what do you call those outputs? CSAM? Art? What (if anything) should happen when law enforcement sees those images? How can the idea of “synthetic CSAM that harms no one” exist without some mechanism to verify that that is the case?
- rainy59 2y agoFlorida law defines anything under the age of 18 as "child porn" - so if your catgirl doesn't look at least 30 you are probably heading to prison or an expensive court battle or both