Additional evidence from the laptop indicates that he used extremely specific and explicit prompts to create these images. He likewise used specific ‘negative’ prompts—that is, prompts that direct the GenAI model on what not to include in generated content—to avoid creating images that depict adults.”
They make it sound like the prompts are important and/or more important than the 13,000 images…
In many ways they are. The image generated from a prompt isn't unique, and is actually semi random. It's not entirely in the users control. The person could argue "I described what I like but I wasn't asking it for children, and I didn't think they were fake images of children" and based purely on the image it could be difficult to argue that the image is not only "child-like" but actually depicts a child.
The prompt, however, very directly shows what the user was asking for in unambiguous terms, and the negative prompt removes any doubt that they thought they were getting depictions of adults.
Mhm I have mixed feelings about this. I know that this entire thing is fucked up but isn't it better to have generated stuff than having actual stuff that involved actual children?
Yeah would be nice. Unfortunelately it isn't so and it's never going to. Chasing after people generating distasteful AI pictures is not making the world a better place.
Alternative perspective is to think that does watching normal porn make heterosexual men more likely to rape women? If not then why would it be different in this case?
The vast majority of pedophiles never offend. Most people in jail for child abuse are just plain old rapists with no special interest towards minors, they're just an easy target. Pedophilia just describes what they're attracted to. It's not a synonym to child rapist. It usually needs to coinside with psychopathy to create the monster that most people think about when hearing that word.
That's a bit of a difference in comparison.
A better comparison would be "does watching common heterosexual porn make common heterosexual men more interested in performing common heterosexual sexual acts?" or "does viewing pornography long term satiate a mans sex drive?” or "does consumption of nonconsensual pornography correlate to an increase in nonconsensual sex acts?"
Comparing "viewing child sexual content might lead it engaging in sexual acts with children" to "viewing sexual activity with women might lead to rape" is disingenuous and apples to oranges.
a review of 19 studies published between 2013 and 2018 found an association between online porn use and earlier sexual debut, engaging with occasional and/or multiple partners, emulating risky sexual behaviours, assimilating distorted gender roles, dysfunctional body perception, aggression, anxiety, depression, and compulsive porn use.24 Another study has shown that compulsive use of sexually explicit internet material by adolescent boys is more likely in those with lower self-esteem, depressive feeling and excessive sexual interest.1
some porn use in adult men may have a positive impact by increasing libido and desire for a real-life partner, relieving sexual boredom, and improving sexual satisfaction by providing inspiration for real sex.7
As for child porn, it's not a given that there's no relationship between consumption and abusing children. There are studies that indicate both outcomes, and are made much more complicated by one of both activities being extremely illegal and socially stigmatized making accurate tracking difficult.
It's difficult to justify the notion that "most pedophiles never offend" when it can be difficult to identify both pedophiles and abuse.
Point being, you can't just hand wave the potential for a link away on the grounds that porn doesn't cause rape amongst typical heterosexual men. There's too many factors making the statistics difficult to gather.
I would love to see research data pointing either way re #1, although it would be incredibly difficult to do so ethically, verging on impossible. For #2, people have extracted originals or near-originals of inputs to the algorithms. AI generated stuff - plagiarism machine generated stuff, runs the risk of effectively revictimizing people who were already abused to get said inputs.
It's an ugly situation all around, and unfortunately I don't know that much can be done about it beyond not demonizing people who have such drives, who have not offended, so that seeking therapy for the condition doesn't screw them over. Ensuring that people are damned if they do and damned if they don't seems to pretty reliably produce worse outcomes.
A problem that I see getting brought up is that generated AI images makes it harder to notice photos of actual victims, making it harder to locate and save them
Well that, and the idea of cathartic relief is increasingly being dispelled. Behaviour once thought to act as a pressure relief for harmful impulsive behaviour is more than likely just a pattern of escalation.
Catharsis theory predicts that venting anger should
get rid of it and should therefore reduce subsequent
aggression. The present findings, as well as previous
findings, directly contradict catharsis theory (e.g.,
Bushman et al., 1999; Geen & Quanty, 1977). For reduc-
ing anger and aggression, the worst possible advice to
give people is to tell them to imagine their provocateur’s
face on a pillow or punching bag as they wallop it, yet this
is precisely what many pop psychologists advise people to
do. If followed, such advice will only make people
angrier and more aggressive.
But there's a lot more studies who have essentially said the same thing. The cathartic hypothesis is mainly a byproduct of the Freudian era of psychology, where hypothesis mainly just sounded good to someone on too much cocaine.
Do you have a source of studies showing the opposite?
you made the claim that the cathartic hypothesis is poorly supported by evidence, which you source supports, but is not relevant to the topic at hand.
your other claim is that sexual release follows the same patterns as aggression. that's a pretty big claim! i'd like to see a source that supports that claim.
otherwise you've just provided a source that provides sound evidence, but is also entirely off-topic...
The belief that indulging in AI created child porn relieves the sexual deviant behaviour of being attracted to actual minors utilizes the cathartic theory. The cathartic theory is typically understood to relate to an array of emotions, not just anger. "Further, the catharsis hypothesis maintains that aggressive or sexual urges are relieved by "releasing" aggressive or sexual energy, usually through action or fantasy. "
follows the same patterns as aggression. that's a pretty big claim! i'd like to see a source that supports that claim.
That's not a claim I make, it's a claim that cathartic theory states. As I said the cathartic hypothesis is a byproduct of Freudian psychology, which has largely been debunked.
Your issue is with the theory in and of itself, which my claim is already stating to be problematic.
but is also entirely off-topic...
No, you are just conflating colloquial understanding of catharsis with the psychological theory.
understand that the theory supposedly applies to other areas as well, but as you so helpfully pointed out: the theory doesn't seem to hold up.
My original claim was that cathartic theory in and of itself is not founded on evidence based research.
but at the same time, the theory is totally correct! (when it's convenient to you, that is)
When did I claim it was ever correct?
I think you are misconstruing my original claim with the claims made by the cathartic theory itself.
I don't claim that cathartic theory is beneficial in any way, you are the one claiming that Cathartic theory is correct for sexual aggression, but not for violence.
Do you have a source that claims cathartic theory is beneficial for satiation deviant sexual impulses?
then the claim of a link between sexuality and aggression is also without support, until you provide a source for that claim.
You are wanting me to provide an evidence based claim between the two when I've already said the overarching theory is not based on evidence?
The primary principle to establish is the theory of cathartic relief, not wether it works for one emotion or the other. You have not provided any evidence to support that claim, I have provided evidence that disputes it.
Reading comprehension is still hard for you? My argument was about Cathartic theory, which includes several emotions including sexual urges...... It is a theory from freud, of course it covers sexual urges.
You and the other guy just have no idea what you're talking about.
How about providing any kind of source instead of talking out of your ass?
True, but by their very nature their generations tend to create anonymous identities, and the sheer amount of them would make it harder for investigators to detect pictures of real, human victims (which can also include indicators of crime location.
It does learn from real images, but it doesn't need real images of what it's generating to produce related content.
As in, a network trained with no exposure to children is unlikely to be able to easily produce quality depictions of children. Without training on nudity, it's unlikely to produce good results there as well.
However, if it knows both concepts it can combine them readily enough, similar to how you know the concept of "bicycle" and that of "Neptune" and can readily enough imagine "Neptune riding an old fashioned bicycle around the sun while flaunting it's tophat".
Under the hood, this type of AI is effectively a very sophisticated "error correction" system. It changes pixels in the image to try to "fix it" to matching the prompt, usually starting from a smear of random colors (static noise).
That's how it's able to combine different concepts from a wide range of images to create things it's never seen.
Basically if I want to create ...
(I'll use a different example for obvious reasons, but I'm sure you could apply it to the topic)
... "an image of a miniature denium airjet with Taylor Swift's face on the side of it", the AI generators can despite no such thing existing in the training data.
It may take multiple attempts and effort with the text prompt to get exactly what you're looking for, but you could eventually get a convincing image.
AI takes loads of preexisting data on airplanes, T.Swift, and denium to combine it all into something new.
Did we memory hole the whole ‘known CSAM in training data’ thing that happened a while back? When you’re vacuuming up the internet you’re going to wind up with the nasty stuff, too. Even if it’s not a pixel by pixel match of the photo it was trained on, there’s a non-zero chance that what it’s generating is based off actual CSAM. Which is really just laundering CSAM.
IIRC it was something like a fraction of a fraction of 1% that was CSAM, with the researchers identifying the images through their hashes but they weren't actually available in the dataset because they had already been removed from the internet.
Still, you could make AI CSAM even if you were 100% sure that none of the training images included it since that's what these models are made for - being able to combine concepts without needing to have seen them before. If you hold the AI's hand enough with prompt engineering, textual inversion and img2img you can get it to generate pretty much anything. That's the power and danger of these things.
What % do you think was used to generate the CSAM, though? Like, if 1% of the images were cups it’s probably drawing on some of that to generate images of cups.
And yes, you could technically do this with no CSAM training material, but we don’t know if that’s what the AI is doing because the image sources used to train it were mass scraped from the internet. They’re using massive amounts of data without filtering it and are unable to say with certainty whether or not there is CSAM in the training material.
The arrest is only a positive. Allowing pedophiles to create AI CP is not a victimless crime. As others point out it muddies the water for CP of real children, but it also potentially would allow pedophiles easier ways to network in the open (if the images are legal they can easily be platformed and advertised), and networking between abusers absolutely emboldens them and results in more abuse.
As a society we should never allow the normalization of sexualizing children.
Interesting. What do you think about drawn images? Is there a limit to how will the artist can be at drawing/painting? Stick figures vs life like paintings. Interesting line to consider.
If it was photoreal and difficult to distinguish from real photos? Yes, it's exactly the same.
And even if it's not photo real, communities that form around drawn child porn are toxic and dangerous as well. Sexualizing children is something I am 100% against.
It feels like driving these people into the dark corners of the internet is worse than allowing them to collect in clearnet spaces where drawn csam is allowed.
The conventional wisdom used to be, (normal) porn makes people more likely to commit sexual abuse (in general). Then scientists decided to look into that. Slowly, over time, they've become more and more convinced that (normal) porn availability in fact reduces sexual assault.
I don't see an obvious reason why it should be different in case of CP, now that it can be generated.
It should be different because people can not have it. It is disgusting, makes them feel icky and thats just why it has to be bad. Conventional wisdom sometimes really is just convential idiocracy.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's a mixture of the two. It's kind of like if you surround yourself with criminals regularly, you're more likely to become one yourself. Not to say it's a 100% given, just more probable.
I'm not hoping anything, haha wtf? The comment above me asked if it was a proven statement or common sense and I said I wouldn't be surprised if it's both. I felt confident that if I googled it, there would more than likely be studies backing up a common sense statement like that, as I've read in the past how sending innocent people or people who committed minor misdemeanors to prison has influenced them negatively to commit crimes they might not have otherwise.
And look at that, there are academic articles that do back it up:
Who we’re around can influence who we are. Just being in a high-crime neighborhood can increase our chances of turning to crime ourselves.4 But being in the presence of criminals is not the only way our environment can affect our behaviors. Research reveals that simply living in poverty increases our likelihood of being incarcerated. When we’re having trouble making ends meet, we’re under intense stress and more likely to resort to crime.
But you didn't say you had proof with your comment, you said it was probable. Basically saying its common sense that its proven.
Why are you getting aggressive about actually having to provide proof about something when saying its obvious?
Also, that seems to imply that locking up people for AI offenses would then encourage truly reprehensible behavior by linking them with those who already engage in it.
Almost like lumping people together as one big group, instead of having levels of grey area, means people are more likely to just go all in instead of sticking to something more morally defensible.
Because it's a casual discussion, I think it's obnoxious when people constantly demand sources to be cited in online comments section when they could easily look it up themselves. This isn't some academic or formal setting.
And I disagree, only the second source mentioned prisons explicitly. The first source mentions social environments as well. So it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Additionally, even if you consider the second source, that source mentions punishment reforms to prevent that undesirable side effect from occuring.
I find it ironic that you criticized me for not citing sources and then didn't read the sources. But, whatever. Typical social media comments section moment.
I think it's obnoxious when people constantly demand sources to be cited in online comments section when they could easily look it up themselves.
People request sources because people state their opinions as fact. If that’s how it’s presented then asking for a source is ok. Its either ask for a source or completely dismiss the comment.
Again, in casual conversation where no one was really debating, it's obnoxious. When you're talking to friends in real life and they say something, do you request sources from them? No, because it'd be rude and annoying. If you were debating them in earnest and you both disagreed on something, sure, that would be expected.
But that wasn't the case here, the initial statement was common sense: If pedophiles are allowed to meet up and trade AI generated child sex abuse material, would that cause some of them to be more likely to commit crimes against real kids? And I think the answer is pretty obvious. The more you hang around people who agree with you, the more an echo chamber is cultivated. It's like an alcoholic going into a bar without anyone there to support them in staying sober.
Anyway, it's your opinion to think asking for sources from strangers in casual conversation is okay, and it's mine to say it can be annoying in a lot of circumstances. We all have the Internet at our fingertips, look it up in the future if you're unsure of someone's assertion.
The far right in France normalized its discourses and they are now at the top of the votes.
Also in France, people talked about pedophilia at the TV in the 70s, 80s and at the beginning of the 90s. It was not just once in a while. It was frequent and open without any trouble. Writers would casually speak about sexual relationships with minors.
The normalization will blur the limits between AI and reality for the worse. It will also make it more popular.
The other point is also that people will always ends with the original. Again, politic is a good example. Conservatives try to mimic the far right to gain votes but at the end people vote for the far right...
And, someone has a daughter. A pedophile takes a picture of her without asking and ask an AI to produce CP based on her. I don't want to see things like this.
The system isn't perfect, especially where we prioritize punishing people over rehabilitation. Would you rather punish everyone equally, emphasizing that if people are going to risk the legal implications (which, based on legal systems the world over, people are going to do) they might as well just go for the real thing anyways?
You don't have to accept it as morally acceptable, but you don't have to treat them as completely equivalent either.
There's gradations of questionable activity. Especially when there's no real victims involved. Treating everything exactly the same is, frankly speaking, insane. Its like having one punishment for all illegal behavior. Murder someone? Death penalty. Rob them? Straight to the electric chair. Jaywalking? Better believe you're getting the needle.
Ironically, You ask if everything is completely black and white for someone without accepting that there’s nuance to the very issue you’re calling out. And assuming that “everything”- a very black and white term, is not very nuanced, is it?
No, not EVERYTHING, but some things. And this is one of those things. Both forms should be illegal. Period. No nuance, no argument, NO grey area.
This does not mean that nuance doesn’t exist. It just means that some believe that it SHOULDN’T exist within the paradigm of child porn.
I have trouble with this because it's like 90% grey area. Is it a pic of a real child but inpainted to be nude? Was it a real pic but the face was altered as well? Was it completely generated but from a model trained on CSAM? Is the perceived age of the subject near to adulthood? What if the styling makes it only near realistic (like very high quality CG)?
I agree with what the FBI did here mainly because there could be real pictures among the fake ones. However, I feel like the first successful prosecution of this kind of stuff will be a purely moral judgement of whether or not the material "feels" wrong, and that's no way to handle criminal misdeeds.
If not trained on CSAM or in painted but fully generated, I can't really think of any other real legal arguments against it except for: "this could be real". Which has real merit, but in my eyes not enough to prosecute as if it were real. Real CSAM has very different victims and abuse so it needs different sentencing.
Yeah, it’s very similar to the “is loli porn unethical” debate. No victim, it could supposedly help reduce actual CSAM consumption, etc… But it’s icky so many people still think it should be illegal.
There are two big differences between AI and loli though. The first is that AI would supposedly be trained with CSAM to be able to generate it. An artist can create loli porn without actually using CSAM references. The second difference is that AI is much much easier for the layman to create. It doesn’t take years of practice to be able to create passable porn. Anyone with a decent GPU can spin up a local instance, and be generating within a few hours.
In my mind, the former difference is much more impactful than the latter. AI becoming easier to access is likely inevitable, so combatting it now is likely only delaying the inevitable. But if that AI is trained on CSAM, it is inherently unethical to use.
Whether that makes the porn generated by it unethical by extension is still difficult to decide though, because if artists hate AI, then CSAM producers likely do too. Artists are worried AI will put them out of business, but then couldn’t the same be said about CSAM producers? If AI has the potential to run CSAM producers out of business, then it would be a net positive in the long term, even if the images being created in the short term are unethical.
Why is that? The whole point of generative AI is that it can combine concepts.
You train it on the concept of a chair using only red chairs. You train it on the color red, and the color blue. With this info and some repetition, you can have it output a blue chair.
The same applies to any other concepts. Larger, smaller, older, younger. Man, boy, woman, girl, clothed, nude, etc. You can train them each individually, gradually, and generate things that then combine these concepts.
Obviously this is harder than just using training data of what you want. It's slower, it takes more effort, and results are inconsistent, but they are results. And then, you curate the most viable of the images created this way to train a new and refined model.
I wasn’t arguing about current laws. I was simply arguing about public perception, and whether the average person believes it should be illegal. There’s a difference between legality and ethicality. Something unethical can be legal, and something illegal can be ethical.
Weed is illegal, but public perception says it shouldn’t be.
I think one of the many problems with AI generated CSAM is that as AI becomes more advanced it will become increasingly difficult for authorities to tell the difference between what was AI generated and what isn't.
Banning all of it means authorities don't have to sift through images trying to decipher between the two.
If one image is declared to be AI generated and it's not...well... that doesn't help the victims or create less victims. It could also make the horrible people who do abuse children far more comfortable putting that stuff out there because it can hide amongst all the AI generated stuff. Meaning authorities will have to go through far more images before finding ones with real victims in it. All of it being illegal prevents those sorts of problems.
And that’s a good point! Luckily it’s still (usually) fairly easy to identify AI generated images. But as they get more advanced, that will likely become harder and harder to do.
Maybe some sort of required digital signatures for AI art would help; Something like a public encryption key in the metadata, that can’t be falsified after the fact. Anything without that known and trusted AI signature would by default be treated as the real deal.
But this would likely require large scale rewrites of existing image formats, if they could even support it at all. It’s the type of thing that would require people way smarter than myself. But even that feels like a bodged solution to a problem that only exists because people suck. And if it required registration with a certificate authority (like an HTTPS certificate does) then it would be a hurdle for local AI instances to jump through. Because they would need to get a trusted certificate before they could sign their images.
I think the point is that child attraction itself is a mental illness and people indulging it even without actual child contact need to be put into serious psychiatric evaluation and treatment.
This mentality smells of "just say no" for drugs or "just don't have sex" for abortions. This is not the ideal world and we have to find actual plans/solutions to deal with the situation. We can't just cover our ears and hope people will stop
This did happen a while back, with researchers finding thousands of hashes of CSAM images in LAION-2B. Still, IIRC it was something like a fraction of a fraction of 1%, and they weren't actually available in the dataset because they had already been removed from the internet.
You could still make AI CSAM even if you were 100% sure that none of the training images included it since that's what these models are made for - being able to combine concepts without needing to have seen them before. If you hold the AI's hand enough with prompt engineering, textual inversion and img2img you can get it to generate pretty much anything. That's the power and danger of these things.
I'm not sure. Let us assume that you generate it on your own PC at home (not using a public service) and don't brag about it and never give it to anybody - what harm is done?
Even if the AI didn't train itself on actual CSAM that is something that feels inherently wrong. Your mind is not right to think that's acceptable IMO.
Laws shouldn't be about feelings though and we shouldn't prosecute people for victimless thought crimes. How often did you think something violent when someone really pissed you off? Should you have been persecuted for that thought too?
Who are the victims of someone generating such images privately then? It's on the same level as all the various fan fiction shit that was created manually over all the past decades.
And do we apply this to other depictions of criminalized things too? Would we ban the depiction of violence & sexual violence on TV, in books, and in video games too?
Article title is a bit misleading. Just glancing through I see he texted at least one minor in regards to this and distributed those generated pics in a few places. Putting it all together, yeah, arrest is kind of a no-brainer.
Ethics of generating csam is the same as drawing it pretty much. Not much we can do about it aside from education.
Lemmy really needs to stop justifying CP.
We can absolutely do more than "eDuCaTiOn". AI is created by humans, the training data is gathered by humans, it needs regulation like any other industry.
It's absolutely insane to me how laissez-fair some people are about AI, it's like a cult.
While I agree with your attitude, the whole 'laissez-fair' thing is probably a misunderstanding:
There is nothing we can do to stop the AI.
Nothing.
The genie is out of the bottle, the Pandora's box has been opened, everything is out and it won't ever return. The world will never be the same, and it's irrelevant what people think.
That's why we need to better understand the post-AI world we created, and figure out what do to now.
Also, to hell with CP. (feels weird to use the word 'fuck' here)
Thats not the question, the question is not "can we stop AI entirely" it's about regulating its development and yes, we can make efforts to do that.
This attitude of "it's inevitable, can't do anything about it" is eerily similar logic to what is used in climate denial and other right-wing efforts. It's a really poor attitude to have, especially about something as consequential as AI.
We have the best opportunity right now to create rules about its uses and development. The answer is not "do nothing" as if it's some force of nature, as opposed toa tool created by humans.
I hear you, and I don't necessarily disagree with you, I just know that's not how anything works.
Regulations work for big companies, but there isn't a big company behind this specific case. And those small-time users have run away and you can't stop them.
It's like trying to regulate cameras to not store specific images. Like, I get the sentiment, but sorry, no. It's not that I would not like that, it's just not possible.
This argument could be applied to anything though. A lot of people get away with myrder, we should still try and do what we can to stop it from happening.
You can't sit in every car and force people to wear a seatbelt, we still have seatbelt laws and regulations for manufacturers.
So accept defeat from the start, that's really just a non-starter. AI models run on hardware, they are developed by specific people, their contents are distributed by specific individuals, code bases are hosted on hardware and on specific outlets.
It really does sound like you're just trying to make excuses to avoid regulation, not that you genuinely have a good reason to think it's not possible to try.
Dude the amount of open source, untrackable, distributed ai models is off the charts. This isn't just about the models offered by subscription from the big players.
This is still one of the weaker arguments.
There is a lot of malware out there too, people are still prosecuted when they're caught developing and distributing it, we don't just throw up our hands and pretend there's nothing that can be done.
Like, yeah, some pedophile who also happens to be tech saavy might build his own AI model to make CP, that's not some self-evident argument against attempting to stop them.
No, like, the tools to do these things are common and readily available. It's not malware, it's generalized ai tools, completely embroiled with non image ai work.
Pandora's box is wide open. All of this work can be done trivially, completely offline with a basic PC. Anyone motivated can be offline and up and running in a weekend
You're asking to outlaw something like a spreadsheet.
You download a general purpose image ai model, then train and prompt it completely offline
The models used are not trained on CP. The models weight are distributed freely and anybody can train a LORA on his computer. Its already too late to ban open weight models.
One of two classic excuses, virtue signalling to hijack control of our devices, our computing, an attack on libre software (they don't care about CP). Next, they'll be banning more math, encryption, again.
It says gullible at the start of this page, scroll up and see.
You don't need CSAM training data to create CSAM images. If your model knows how children looks like, how naked human bodies look like, then it can create naked children. That's simply how generative models like this work and has absolutely nothing to do with specifically trained models for CSAM using actual CSAM material.
So while I disagree with him, in that lack of education is the cause of CSAM or pedophilia... I'd say it could help with the general hysteria about LLMs, like the one's coming from you, who just let their emotions run wild when those topics arise. You people need to understand that the goal should be the protection of potential victims, not the punishment of victimless thought crimes.
Legally, a sufficiently detailed image depicting csam is csam, regardless of how it was produced. Sharing it is why he got caught, inevitably, but it's still illegal even if he never brought a minor into it.
Well yeah. Just because something makes you really uncomfortable doesn't make it a crime. A crime has a victim.
Also, the vast majority of children are victimized because of the US' culture of authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism. That's why far and away children are victimized by either a relative or in a church. But y'all ain't ready to have that conversation.
It's not whataboutism, he's being persecuted because of the idea that he's hurting children all the while law enforcement refuses to truly persecute actual institutions victimizing children and are often colluding with traffickers. For instance LE throughout the country were well aware of the scale of the Catholic church's crimes for generations.
They're not two different things. They're both supposedly acts of pedophilia except one would take actual courage to prosecute (churches) and the other which doesn't have any actual victims is easy and is a PR get because certain people find it really icky.
First of all, it's absolutely crazy to link to a 6 month old thread just to complain that you go downvoted in it. You're pretty clearly letting this site get under your skin if you're still hanging onto these downvotes.
Second, none of your 6 responses in that thread are logical, rational responses. You basically just assert that things that you find offensive enough should be illegal, and then just type in all caps at everyone who explains to you that this isn't good logic.
The only way we can consider child porn prohibition constitutional is to interpret it as a protection of victims. Since both the production and distribution of child porn hurt the children forced into it, we ban it outright, not because it is obscene, but because it does real damage. This fits the logic of many other forms of non-protected speech, such as the classic "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre" example, where those hurt in the inevitable panic are victims.
Expanding the definition of child porn to include fully fictitious depictions, such as lolicon or AI porn, betrays this logic because there are no actual victims. This prohibition is rooted entirely in the perceived obscenity of the material, which is completely unconstitutional. We should never ban something because it is offensive, we should only ban it when it does real harm to actual victims.
I would argue that rape and snuff film should be illegal for the same reason.
The reason people disagree with you so strongly isn't because they think AI generated pedo content is "art" in the sense that we appreciate it and defend it. We just strongly oppose your insistence that we should enforce obscenity laws. This logic is the same logic used as a cudgel against many other issues, including LGBTQ rights, as it basically argues that sexually disagreeable ideas should be treated as a criminal issue.
I think we all agree that AI pedo content is gross, and the people who make it and consume it are sick. But nobody is with you on the idea that drawings and computer renderings should land anyone in prison.
First of all, it's absolutely crazy to link to a 6 month old thread just to complain that you go downvoted in it. You're pretty clearly letting this site get under your skin if you're still hanging onto these downvotes.
No, I just... Remembered the thread? Wasn't difficult to remember it. Took me a minute to find it.
This may surprise you but CP isn't something I discuss very often.
I don't lose sleep over people defending CP as "art", nor did it get under my skin. I just think these are fucking idiots and are for some baffling reason trying to defend the indefensible and go about my day. I'm not going to do anything about it, but I'm sure glad I don't have such dumb comments linked to a public account with my IP address logged somewhere...
I just raised it to make my point.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your essay. Its pretty clear from the first paragraph where you're going to land.
This is tough, the goal should be to reduce child abuse. It's unknown if AI generated CP will increase or reduce child abuse. It will likely encourage some individuals to abuse actual children while for others it may satisfy their urges so they don't abuse children. Like everything else AI, we won't know the real impact for many years.
It should be illegal either way, to be clear. But you think theyre not training models on CSAM? Youre trusting in the morality/ethics of people creating AI generated child pornography?
The training doesn't use csam, 0% chance big tech would use that in their dataset. The models are somewhat able to link concept like red and car, even if it had never seen a red car before.
Well, with models like SD at least, the datasets are large enough and the employees are few enough that it is impossible to have a human filter every image. They scrape them from the web and try to filter with AI, but there is still a chance of bad images getting through. This is why most companies install filters after the model as well as in the training process.
You make it sound like it is so easy to even find such content on the www. The point is, they do not need to be trained on such material. They are trained on regular kids, so they know their sizes, faces, etc. They're trained on nude bodies, so they also know how hairless genitals or flat chests look like. You don't need to specifically train a model on nude children to generate nude children.
I don't know if we can say for certain it needs to be in the dataset, but I do wonder how many of the other models used to create CSAM are also trained on CSAM.
I suggest you actually download stable diffusion and try for yourself because it's clear that you don't have any clue what you're talking about. You can already make tiny people, shaved, genitals, flat chests, child like faces, etc. etc. It's all already there. Literally no need for any LoRAs or very specifically trained models.
I had an idea when these first AI image generators started gaining traction. Flood the CSAM market with AI generated images( good enough that you can't tell them apart.) In theory this would put the actual creators of CSAM out of business, thus saving a lot of children from the trauma.
Most people down vote the idea on their gut reaction tho.
My concern is why would it put them out of business? If we just look at legal porn there is already beyond huge amounts already created, and the market is still there for new content to be created constantly. AI porn hasn't noticeably decreased the amount produced.
Really flooding the market with CSAM makes it easier to consume and may end up INCREASING the amount of people trying to get CSAM. That could end up encouraging more to be produced.
It's such an emotional topic that people lose all rationale.
I remember the Reddit arguments in the comment sections about pedos, already equalizing the term with actual child rapists, while others would argue to differentiate because the former didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't be stigmatized for what's going on in their heads but rather offered help to cope with it. The replies are typically accusations of those people making excuses for actual sexual abusers.
I always had the standpoint that I do not really care about people's fictional content. Be it lolis, torture, gore, or whatever other weird shit. If people are busy & getting their kicks from fictional stuff then I see that as better than using actual real life material, or even getting some hands on experiences, which all would involve actual real victims.
And I think that should be generally the goal here, no? Be it pedos, sadists, sociopaths, whatever. In the end it should be not about them, but saving potential victims. But people rather throw around accusations and become all hysterical to paint themselves sitting on their moral high horse (ironically typically also calling for things like executions or castrations).
America has some of the most militant anti pedophilic culture in the world but they far and away have the highest rates of child sexual assault.
I think AI is going to revel is how deeply hypocritical Americans are on this issue. You have gigantic institutions like churches committing industrial scale victimization yet you won't find a 1/10th of the righteous indignation against other organized religions where there is just as much evidence it is happening as you will regarding one person producing images that don't actually hurt anyone.
It's pretty clear by how staggering a rate of child abuse that occurs in the states that Americans are just using child victims as weaponized politicalization (it's next to impossible to convincingly fight off pedo accusations if you're being mobbed) and aren't actually interested in fighting pedophilia.
Fortunately most instances are in the category of a 17 year old to an 18 year old, and require parental consent and some manner of judicial approval, but the rates of "not that" are still much higher than one would want.
~300k in a 20 year window total, 74% of the older partner being 20 or younger, and 95% of the younger partner being 16 or 17, with only 14% accounting for both partners being under 18.
There's still no reason for it in any case, and I'm glad to live in one of the states that said "nah, never needed .
These cases are interesting tests of our first amendment rights. "Real" CP requires abuse of a minor, and I think we can all agree that it should be illegal. But it gets pretty messy when we are talking about depictions of abuse.
Currently, we do not outlaw written depictions nor drawings of child sexual abuse. In my opinion, we do not ban these things partly because they are obvious fictions. But also I think we recognize that we should not be in the business of criminalizing expression, regardless of how disgusting it is. I can imagine instances where these fictional depictions could be used in a way that is criminal, such as using them to blackmail someone. In the absence of any harm, it is difficult to justify criminalizing fictional depictions of child abuse.
So how are AI-generated depictions different? First, they are not obvious fictions. Is this enough to cross the line into criminal behavior? I think reasonable minds could disagree. Second, is there harm from these depictions? If the AI models were trained on abusive content, then yes there is harm directly tied to the generation of these images. But what if the training data did not include any abusive content, and these images really are purely depictions of imagination? Then the discussion of harms becomes pretty vague and indirect. Will these images embolden child abusers or increase demand for "real" images of abuse. Is that enough to criminalize them, or should they be treated like other fictional depictions?
We will have some very interesting case law around AI generated content and the limits of free speech. One could argue that the AI is not a person and has no right of free speech, so any content generated by AI could be regulated in any manner. But this argument fails to acknowledge that AI is a tool for expression, similar to pen and paper.
A big problem with AI content is that we have become accustomed to viewing photos and videos as trusted forms of truth. As we re-learn what forms of media can be trusted as "real," we will likely change our opinions about fringe forms of AI-generated content and where it is appropriate to regulate them.
That's it actually, all sites that allow it like danbooru, gelbooru, pixiv, etc. Have a clause against photo realistic content and they will remove it.
It comes back to distribution for me. If they are generating the stuff for themselves, gross, but I don't see how it can really be illegal. But if your distributing them, how do we know their not real? The amount of investigative resources that would need to be dumped into that, and the impact on those investigators mental health, I don't know. I really don't have an answer, I don't know how they make it illegal, but it really feels like distribution should be.
for some reason the US seems to hold a weird position on this one. I don't really understand it.
It's written to be illegal, but if you look at prosecution cases, i think there have been only a handful of charged cases. The prominent ones which also include relevant previous offenses, or worse.
It's also interesting when you consider that there are almost definitely large image boards hosted in the US that host what could be constituted as "cartoon CSAM" notably e621, i'd have to verify their hosting location, but i believe they're in the US. And so far i don't believe they've ever had any issues with it. And i'm sure there are other good examples as well.
I suppose you could argue they're exempt on the publisher rules. But these sites don't moderate against these images, generally. And i feel like this would be the rare exception where it wouldnt be applicable.
The law is fucking weird dude. There is a massive disconnect between what we should be seeing, and what we are seeing. I assume because the authorities who moderate this shit almost exclusively go after real CSAM, on account of it actually being a literal offense, as opposed to drawn CSAM, being a proxy offense.
It seems to me to be a lesser charge. A net that catches a larger population and they can then go fishing for bigger fish to make the prosecutor look good. Or as I've heard from others, it is used to simplify prosecution. PedoAnon can't argue "it's a deepfake, not a real kid" to the SWAT team.
There is a massive disconnect between what we should be seeing, and what we are seeing. I assume because the authorities who moderate this shit almost exclusively go after real CSAM, on account of it actually being a literal offense, as opposed to drawn CSAM, being a proxy offense.
This can be attributed to no proper funding of CSAM enforcement. Pedos get picked up if they become an active embarrassment like the article dude. Otherwise all the money is just spent on the database getting bigger and keeping the lights on. Which works for congress. A public pedo gets nailed to the wall because of the database, the spooky spectre of the pedo out for your kids remains, vote for me please....
It seems to me to be a lesser charge. A net that catches a larger population and they can then go fishing for bigger fish to make the prosecutor look good. Or as I’ve heard from others, it is used to simplify prosecution. PedoAnon can’t argue “it’s a deepfake, not a real kid” to the SWAT team.
ah that could be a possibility as well. Just ensuring reasonable flexibility in prosecution so you can be sure of what you get.
Well thought-out and articulated opinion, thanks for sharing.
If even the most skilled hyper-realistic painters were out there painting depictions of CSAM, we'd probably still label it as free speech because we "know" it to be fiction.
When a computer rolls the dice against a model and imagines a novel composition of children's images combined with what it knows about adult material, it does seem more difficult to label it as entirely fictional. That may be partly because the source material may have actually been real, even if the final composition is imagined. I don't intend to suggest models trained on CSAM either, I'm thinking of models trained to know what both mature and immature body shapes look like, as well as adult content, and letting the algorithm figure out the rest.
Nevertheless, as you brought up, nobody is harmed in this scenario, even though many people in our culture and society find this behavior and content to be repulsive.
To a high degree, I think we can still label an individual who consumes this type of AI content to be a pedophile, and although being a pedophile is not in and of itself an illegal adjective to posses, it comes with societal consequences. Additionally, pedophilia is a DSM-5 psychiatric disorder, which could be a pathway to some sort of consequences for those who partake.
It feels incredibly gross to just say "generated CSAM is a-ok, grab your hog and go nuts", but I can't really say that it should be illegal if no child was harmed in the training of the model. The idea that it could be a gateway to real abuse comes to mind, but that's a slippery slope that leads to "video games cause school shootings" type of logic.
I don't know, it's a very tough thing to untangle. I guess I'd just want to know if someone was doing that so I could stay far, far away from them.
It's worth mentioning that in this instance the guy did send porn to a minor. This isn't exactly a cut and dry, "guy used stable diffusion wrong" case. He was distributing it and grooming a kid.
The major concern to me, is that there isn't really any guidance from the FBI on what you can and can't do, which may lead to some big issues.
For example, websites like novelai make a business out of providing pornographic, anime-style image generation. The models they use deliberately tuned to provide abstract, "artistic" styles, but they can generate semi realistic images.
Now, let's say a criminal group uses novelai to produce CSAM of real people via the inpainting tools. Let's say the FBI cast a wide net and begins surveillance of novelai's userbase.
Is every person who goes on there and types, "Loli" or "Anya from spy x family, realistic, NSFW" (that's an underaged character) going to get a letter in the mail from the FBI? I feel like it's within the realm of possibility. What about "teen girls gone wild, NSFW?" Or "young man, no facial body hair, naked, NSFW?"
This is NOT a good scenario, imo. The systems used to produce harmful images being the same systems used to produce benign or borderline images. It's a dangerous mix, and throws the whole enterprise into question.
Is every person who goes on there and types, "Loli" or "Anya from spy x family, realistic, NSFW" (that's an underaged character) going to get a letter in the mail from the FBI?
I'll throw that baby out with the bathwater to be honest.
Simulated crimes aren't crimes. Would you arrest every couple that finds health ways to simulate rape fetishes? Would you arrest every person who watches Fast and The Furious or The Godfather?
If no one is being hurt, if no real CSAM is being fed into the model, if no pornographic images are being sent to minors, it shouldn't be a crime. Just because it makes you uncomfortable, don't make it immoral.
Or, ya know, everyone who ever wanted to decapitate those stupid fucking Skyrim children. Crime requires damaged parties, and with this (idealized case, not the specific one in the article) there is none.
If they were, any one who's played games is fucked. I'm confident everyone who has played went on a total ramapage murdering the townfolk, pillaging their houses and blowing everything up....in Minecraft.
People have only gotten in trouble for that when they're already in trouble for real CSAM. I'm not terrible interested in sticking up for actual CSAM scum.
No it's immoral because they are sexual gratifying themselves to pictures that look like children. Sexually desiring children or wanting to see them abused is immoral, full stop.
For now, if you read the article, it states that he shared the pictures to form like minded groups where they got emboldened and could support each other and legitimize/normalize their perverted thoughts. How about no thanks.
wrong comment chain. people weren't talking about the criminal shithead the article is about but about the scenario of someone using (not csam trained) models to create questionable content (thus it is implied that there would be no victim).
we all know that there are bad actors out there, just like there are rapists and murderers. still we dont condemn true crime lovers or rape fetishists until they commit a crime. we could do the same with pedos but somehow we believe hating them into the shadows will stop them somehow from doing criminal stuff?
And I'm using the article as an example of that it doesn't just stop at "victimless" images, because they are not fucking normal people. They are mentally sick, they are sexually turned on by the abuse of a minor, not by the minor but by abusing the minor, sexually.
In what world would a person like that stop at looking at images, they actively search for victims, create groups where they share and discuss abusing minors.
Yes dude, they are fucking dangerous bro, life is not fair. You wouldn't say the same shit if some one close to you was a victim.
What do you mean focus your energy, how much energy do you think I spend on discussing perverts? And what should I spend my time discussing contact sports. It's sound like you are deflecting.
Pedophiles get turned on abusing minors, they are mentally sick. It's not like its a normal sexual desire, they will never stop at watching "victimless" images. Fuck pedophiles they don't deserve shit, and hope they eat shit he rest of their lives.
they will never stop at watching “victimless” images.
How is that different from any other dangerous fetish? Should we be arresting adult couples that do Age Play? All the BDSM communities? Do we even want to bring up the Vore art communities? Victimless is victimless.
No because its two consenting adults otherwise its illegal. Wtf is vore art, not going to google that. How do you know it's victimless. Like I said they are turned on by abusing minors, and don't know how else I can put it, I can't be more clear.
Let me ask you this, do you think pedophiles care about their victims? If yes, then I want to hear why you think that. If no, why are we even having this argument?
I haven't given you a ultimatum I gave you a question, and you can answer it anyway you want. Do or can pedophiles feel remorse for their victims? Are there pedophiles who feel remorse for their victims but still abuse children?
But let me say this again, pedophiles have no remorse towards their victims, they get turned on by it, I'm trying to tell you it's not a just a sexual desire. They like the abuse part of it, abusing some one helpless, that is why they are turned on by abusing children.
Bro I can't continue this, you're not willing to understand it's not about the kid, it is about abusing the kid, that is what they want. And if you can't rigster that it's not just a sexual desire, then we can agree to disagree.
You're correct, pedophilia is a mental illness. A very tragic one since there is no hope and no cure. They can't even ask for help because everyone will automatically assume they are also child molesters. Which is what you're describing, but not all child molesters are pedophiles, and most pedophiles will never become child molesters... Like you said, some people just get off on exploiting the power dynamic and aren't necessarily sexually attracted to children. Those people are the real danger.
Real children are in training data regardless of if there is csam in the data or not (which there is a high chance there is considering how they get their training data) so real children are involved
Nobody is arguing that it's moral. That's not the line for government intervention. If it was then the entire private banking system would be in prison.
They've actually issued warnings and guidance, and the law itself is pretty concise regarding what's allowed.
(8) "child pornography" means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where-
(A) the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(C) such visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
...
(11) the term "indistinguishable" used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct. This definition does not apply to depictions that are drawings, cartoons, sculptures, or paintings depicting minors or adults.
If you're going to be doing grey area things you should do more than the five minutes of searching I did to find those honestly.
It was basically born out of a supreme Court case in the early 2000s regarding an earlier version of the law that went much further and banned anything that "appeared to be" or "was presented as" sexual content involving minors, regardless of context, and could have plausibly been used against young looking adult models, artistically significant paintings, or things like Romeo and Juliet, which are neither explicit nor vulgar but could be presented as involving child sexual activity. (Juliet's 14 and it's clearly labeled as a love story).
After the relevant provisions were struck down, a new law was passed that factored in the justices rationale and commentary about what would be acceptable and gave us our current system of "it has to have some redeeming value, or not involve actual children and plausibly not look like it involves actual children".
The major concern to me, is that there isn’t really any guidance from the FBI on what you can and can’t do, which may lead to some big issues.
The Protect Act of 2003 means that any artistic depiction of CSAM is illegal. The guidance is pretty clear, FBI is gonna raid your house.....eventually. We still haven't properly funded the anti-CSAM departments.
Asked whether more funding will be provided for the anti-paint enforcement divisions: it's such a big backlog, we'll rather just wait for somebody to piss of a politician to focus our resources.
That's a very important distinction. While the first part is, to put it lightly, bad, I don't really care what people do on their own. Getting real people involved, and minor at that? Big no-no.
Sure is. I report the ones I come across as clickbait or missleading title, explaining the parts left out...such as this one where those 7 words change the story completely.
Whoever made that headline should feel ashamed for victimizing a grommer.
Based on the blacklists that one has to fire up before browsing just about any large anime/erotica site, I am guessing that these "laws" are not enforced, because they are flimsy laws to begin with. Reading the stipulations for what constitutes a crime is just a hotbed for getting an entire case tossed out of court. I doubt any prosecutors would lean hard on possession of art unless it was being used in another crime.
I'd be torn on the idea of AI generating CP, if it were only that. On one hand if it helps them calm the urges while no one is getting hurt, all the better. But on the other hand it might cause them not to seek help, but problem is already stigmatized severely enough that they are most likely not seeking help anyway.
