6 ms·

Obvious 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-gen

• 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 ago
    Exactly my thoughts. It normalizes this messed up stuff.
  • Retric 2y ago
    You 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 ago
      Thank 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.
• bitwize 2y ago
  Doesn't matter if an actual child was abused or not. Under the PROTECT Act, obscene child porn is illegal to produce or distribute whether actual children were involved or not. The Supreme Court has ruled that material deemed obscene is NOT subject to First Amendment protection.
  • Manuel_D 2y ago
    Incorrect . Obscene material can be restricted in terms of its distribution and advertising. It is not an excuse to make it illegal to possess or distribute privately. This is why things like porn and vibrators are illegal to sell in stores in Texas, but you can still order it online. The reason why child porn is illegal completely - not just restricted in its advertising and distribution - is because it's production necessarily involve abuse of actual children. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_pornography_depicting_minors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_po... > In response to Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, Congress passed the PROTECT Act of 2003 (also dubbed the Amber Alert Law) which was signed into law on April 30, 2003, by President George W. Bush.[126] The PROTECT Act adjusted its language to meet the parameters of the Miller, Ferber, and Ashcroft decisions. The Act was careful to separate cases of virtual pornography depicting minors into two different categories of law: child pornography law and obscenity law. In regards to child pornography law, the Act modified the previous wording of "appears to be a minor" with "indistinguishable from that of a minor" phrasing. This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting minors or adults. Now, there is an argument that if the fictional content is indistinguishable from real abuse, it may be illegal. But that could probably be circumvented by providing the inputs and seed to generate the image, rather than the image itself. I'm not super motivated to defend AI generated child porn, but the notion of banning it introduces ambiguity. Actual child abuse material can be identified because the people involved were born on a specific date and so whether or not it's illegal has a clear threshold. But AI generated content is not so easy to distinguish. The fictional characters don't have a birth date, so whether or not it's illegal becomes a lot more subjective.
• elpocko 2y ago
  I can, will, and do create whatever imagery I want, no matter how I create it, and no matter what anyone else's opinion about that is. I will look at or think about that potentially depraved shit as often, hard, and long as I want, I will feel about that however I want, and no one in this big world of control freaks can or will do anything about any of that.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • cdelsolar 2y ago
    Ew
  • jrflowers 2y ago
    > no one in this big world of control freaks can or will do anything about any of that Many sovereign citizens(1) have in fact been prevented from doing things society deems illegal despite their attestations to the law’s applicability to them. 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement
• imoverclocked 2y ago
  > 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. Deepfakes of real children is real children being involved. Outside of that, my response is, “how would you create a compelling CSAM image with nothing resembling the target in the training data?”
  • throwaway76582 2y ago
    Despite never having seen any CSAM, and despite my terrible drawing skills, I could probably draw something that would qualify as CSAM.
  • umvi 2y ago
    If a skilled human artist could generate convincing csam despite not having ever viewed it, a computer could too
  • dgoldstein0 2y ago
    Deepfake porn of real people is already starting to be criminalized, children or not: https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/is-deepfake-pornography-illegal.html https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/is-deepfake-... I think that's a good thing, though the law obviously needs more time to catch up.
  • sandworm101 2y ago
    >> how would you create a compelling CSAM image with nothing resembling the target in the training data? (1) You feed it extra training data to suit the desired output. (2) The AI combines bits from existing training data. It has non-pornographic content of children. It has adult pornography. Layer one over the other and voila. Crime. Most AI has zero images of cats doing calculus, but is very capable of generating such content. (3) You manually aid the process. People forget how powerful standalone AI can be when one manually selects good output and feeds it back as a guide for the next iteration. This does not scale to a multi-task environment, but is very useful when accomplishing one specific task.
• throwaway413486 2y ago
  > Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? I think there is an empirical question one step beyond this. Does a pedophile who sees AI child porn get inured to it and then go on to try to act out fantasies with real victims? Or does this give pedophiles a way to satiate their desires indefinitely with only AI-based content, and lead to a lower portion abusing actual kids? A second order issue is that distributing child porn is claimed to create demand for child porn which leads to more abuse. If there were no criminal penalties for purely AI-generated CSAM and the normal criminal penalties remained for CSAM that in any way derived from images of actual kids, would the cost-benefit difference push most consumers to demand only AI-generated stuff? I'm not saying this is definitely the case, but I think it's at least plausible that more AI-generated CSAM would reduce actual sexual abuse of children, and from a harm-reduction standpoint, it should be beneficial to have more of it ... and it's also plausible that pedophiles being able to generate more and more extreme material at will would make things worse ... and it's also likely legally and institutionally impossible to do the studies to determine which of these is actually true.
  • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    This comment is great but I feel we're also leaving out the "human element" that necessarily is part of these sorts of questions. Ultimately, we, as a people, don't want pedophiles, we don't want children abused, etc. These I feel are not controversial statements. However, allowing AI-generated CASM as a way to placate pedophiles does a few things: Firstly, it normalizes this material, even to the tiniest degree you'd like to claim. If you bring something that was formerly illegal into the state of being legal, it becomes a part of our society. Weed is a fantastic example. It's on a great track to become a very casual drug of use in our society, and with each step forward along that path, it becomes less remarkable. When I was in high school, I was taught, by teachers and hired professionals, about the "dangers" of weed and other drugs. Now, I drive down the street and pass a couple of dispensaries selling that product and many derivatives of it, completely without drama. It is simply a thing that exists. [And to not leave it merely implied, that's a GOOD thing.] So, that being the case, are we as a society prepared to have a society and to live within one where something like AI-generated CASM is an accepted, to whatever degree, thing to have, sell, and create? Are we okay with that if it satiates pedophiles? Are we prepared to reckon with the consequences of that if it doesn't, and more children are harmed? Secondly, I think we have to contend with the fact that now that this technology exists, it will continue to exist regardless of legality. This is one of the reasons I was so incredibly opposed to wide-spread and open-source AI in the first place, and at risk of sounding like "I told you so," one of the concerns I outlined many times is that this technology enables people to create... anything, at a near industrial scale, be that disinformation, be that spam, be that non-consensual pornography, be that CASM. I don't think a black box program that can be run on damn near any consumer PC that can create photorealistic renderings of anything you can describe in text is inherently, by virtue of it's being, a bad thing, but I do think it's something that we as a society are not ready for, and I was not alone in that thinking. But now it's here, and now we have to deal with it.
• ajross 2y ago
  It's no different than the logic behind medication regulation. Some substances are known to induce bad/undesirable/harmful behavior and need to have access restricted. There may be a scientific argument about whether or not the argument is correct in this particular case, but the legal paradigm is sound. Yes, basically. You can absolutely criminalize fake images.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    I would say the difference between drugs and images is that the first amendment doesn’t protect drugs. This then becomes an argument about the limits of the first amendment.
    • ajross 2y ago
      The US constitution doesn't constrain French criminal law. But regardless, you're wrong in the US too: the first amendment absolutely does not "protect images", c.f. the fact that you can be prosecuted for distributing CSAM at all. We've already crossed the rubicon where we agree that the "speech" is illegal. The quibble under discussion here is whether or not the justification for the ban applies to synthetic images.
      • Ferret7446 2y ago
        To be pedantic, that is only true until/if the Supreme Court rules that it is a violation of the first amendment. That is to say, it is simply the status quo and not a hard fact that the first amendment doesn't cover images and text/speech equivalently.
• aprilthird2021 2y ago
  > Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? The "harm" principle which is very popular these days to see if things are bad or good or punishable or not, I think it has a lot of problems. There are a lot of things that don't map onto this principle well. Social cohesion is a huge one. Something may not directly harm someone, but it can harm the fabric of society and many other things.
  • malfist 2y ago
    It also doesn't apply to most laws. The law doesn't always require a victim or harm. Just look at speeding tickets or DUIs. You don't have to harm someone to wind up in jail
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • Manuel_D 2y ago
      Both of those have clear harms, namely increased risks of traffic collisions.
      • malfist 2y ago
        That's not true. Increased risk is not harm, it's just a higher potential for harm.
  • meowface 2y ago
    Not saying I agree with legally permitting this kind of thing, but just addressing your comment: If the government can throw you in prison for something, it better be for a good reason. If it's simply doing something "that doesn't harm anyone but is perceived as not conducive to social cohesion", that doesn't seem like a good reason. Many conservatives would say gay marriage, polyamory, tattoos, porn, foul language, and blasphemy are not socially cohesive. Insulting people or using slurs is not socially cohesive. Some countries imprison people for many of these things, but I'm glad the US doesn't.
• ASalazarMX 2y ago
  From the first paragraph: > A Florida man is facing 20 counts of obscenity for allegedly creating and distributing AI-generated child pornography I'd bet distribution of CSAM the crime what got him prosecuted, not modifying OSS.
  • sandworm101 2y ago
    The distribution is 100% what got him caught, and is the vast majority of prosecutions, but creation and possession is still separately illegal. And he didn't need to modify any OSS. Any image-generating AI is capable of generating such imagery. So too can anyone use Photoshop, or a paint brush, to create illegal imagery.
• tptacek 2y ago
  Distribution of fictitious CSAM does create harm, despite not directly involving real children.
  • blueflow 2y ago
    How?
    • tptacek 2y ago
      By cultivating a market for CSAM.
      • surteen 2y ago
        How is it different than the company making fake rhino horns to flood the market to fill the demand and reduce harm to real rhinos? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/10/fact-check-company-3-d-printed-rhino-horns-help-slow-down-poaching/7523775002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/10/fac...
        • tptacek 2y ago
          I don't know enough about how the market for rhino horns works to say. If putting fake rhino horns on the market encourages a more thriving market for rhino horns that then places a premium on real rhino horns, it can indeed be harmful to supply fake rhino horns: the practice will then have a foreseeable net effect of killing more rhinos.
      • simcup 2y ago
        so if it's availible for free, it's okay?
        • tptacek 2y ago
          No, and for the same reason.
• MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  > Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? I hope that there are people out there who know the true answer. It takes a special kind of person to seek the truth about something that people feel so strongly about. The truth doesn't care about us or how we feel. Finding it is a thankless task full of distractions and dead ends. If a perspective makes sense and rings true to me, that says more about me than it does about whether the perspective describes reality.
• rich_sasha 2y ago
  I guess renders or cartoons of child pornography is equally banned, so I guess that's not a defence here, as the law stands.
  • fear-anger-hate 2y ago
    I think they are legal in the US as long as the render or drawing is not depicting a real person.
• jrflowers 2y ago
  > Is it really child abuse if no children were involved? How can you prove that zero children were involved at any point? How does the model generate CSAM without it either being in the training material or fed to the model as an input?
  • nickthegreek 2y ago
    It somehow generates flying pigs without them existing. Substitute pigs for an other animal if your next argument is that flying pigs might be in the database.
    • deleted 2y ago
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  • Ferret7446 2y ago
    You're asking the wrong question. How can you prove that children were involved? In most developed jurisdictions, you must be proven guilty, not innocent. > How does the model generate CSAM without it either being in the training material or fed to the model as an input? How can a skilled artist (when forced to) draw CSAM without ever having seen CSAM? How can they draw something without having seen the exact thing before? Both humans and LLMs are able to extrapolate information.
    • jrflowers 2y ago
      > How can they draw something without having seen the exact thing before? There has, in fact, been CSAM found in a version of the training set that was used to make Stable Diffusion 1.5, for example. https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/20/csam_laion_dataset/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/20/csam_laion_dataset/
• deepfriedchokes 2y ago
  If the model was trained on CSAM then it’s definitely still CSAM, like the comment in this thread comparing it to cut cocaine, but if it wasn’t it sure seems like a thought crime.
• rstuart4133 2y ago
  In Australia, someone was jailed for possessing Simpson's cartoon in 2008: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1510365 That seemed an like absurd overreach at the time. But Australia has until recently always suffered from overreach in it's censorship laws, so as an Australian I didn't find it surprising. I always assumed the reason we didn't see the same thing in the US's was the 1st amendment. I guess it's too soon to know if this is just an aberration that will be fixed.