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?
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.
And doesn’t the AI learn from real images?
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.
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.
networking between abusers absolutely emboldens them and results in more abuse.
Is this proven or a common sense claim you’re making?
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.
Actually, that’s not quite as clear.
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 (regular) 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.
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.
I didn’t know that, my bad.
Fair but depressing, it seems like it barely registered in the news cycle.
You know whats better? Having none of this shit
Yeah as I also said.
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.
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.
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.
Better only means less worse in this case, I guess
Yes, but the perp showed the images to a minor.
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No?
It feeds and evolves a disorder which in turn increases risks of real life abuse.
But if AI generated content is to be considered illegal, so should all fictional content.
Or, more likely, it feeds and satisfies a disorder which in turn decreases risk of real life abuse.
Making it illegal so far helped nothing, just like with drugs
That’s not how these addictive disorders works… they’re never satisfied and always need more.
Bad title.
They caught him not simply for creating pics, but also for trading such pics etc.
You can get away with a lot of heinous crimes by simply not telling people and sharing the results.
You consider it a heinous crime to draw a picture and keep it to yourself?
Read the article. He was arrested for sending the pictures to at least one minor.
Re-read RickyRigatoni’s comment.
That’s sickening to know there are bastards out there who will get away with it since they are only creating it.
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?
Society is not ok with the idea of someone cranking to CSAM, then just waking around town. It gives people wolf-in-sheep-clothing vibes.
So the notion of there being “ok” CSAM-style ai content is a non starter for a huge fraction of people because it still suggests appeasing a predator.
I’m definitely one of those people that simply can’t accept any version of it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Physical things are much easier to regulate than software, much less serverless.
We already regulate certain images, and it matters very little.
The bigger payoff will be from educating the public and accepting that we can’t win every war.
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.
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.
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The fuck are you talking about? No one’s “enslaving” you because they’re trying to stop you from generating child porn.
Fucking libertarians dude.
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Ah yes, we need child porn because it’s a slippery slope.
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.
Most states will let grown men marry children as young as 14. There is a special carve out for Christian pedophiles.
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 .
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.
How do you think they train models to generate CSAM?
Some of yall need to lookup what an LoRA is
Lol you don’t need to train it ON CSAM to generate CSAM. Get a clue.
https://purl.stanford.edu/kh752sm9123
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.
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 use of CSAM in training generative AI models is an issue no matter how these models are being used.
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.
partly because they are obvious fictions
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.
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.
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.
Looks like they might do it on their own.
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.
The market is slightly different tho. Most CSAM is images, with Porn theres a lot of video and images.
It’s also a victimless crime. Just like flooding the market with fake rhino horns and dropping the market price to a point that it isn’t worth it.
The headline/title needs to be extended to include the rest of the sentence “and then sent them to a minor”
Yes, this sicko needs to be punished. Any attempt to make him the victim of " the big bad government" is manipulative at best.
Cartoon CSAM is illegal in the United States. Pretty sure the judges will throw his images under the same ruling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003
https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/possession-of-lolicon
It won’t. They’ll get them for the actual crime not the thought crime that’s been nerfed to oblivion.
Breaking news: Paint made illegal, cause some moron painted something stupid.
Some places do lock up spray paint due to its use in graffiti, so that’s not without precedent.
No no no guys.
It’s perfectly okay to do this as this is art, not child porn as I was repeatedly told and down voted when I stated the fucking obvious
So if it’s art, we have to allow it under the constitution, right? It’s “free speech”, right?
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.
That thing over there being wrong doesn’t mean we can’t discuss this thing over here also being wrong.
So perhaps pipe down with your dumb whataboutism.
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.
How is this whataboutism.
Because it’s two different things.
We should absolutely go after the Catholic church for the crimes committed.
But here we are talking about the creation of child porn.
If you cannot understand this very simple premise, then we have nothing else to discuss.
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.
I guess we’re done here then.
Isn’t there evidence that as artificial CSAM is made more available, the actual amount of abuse is reduced? I would research this but I’m at work.
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He then allegedly communicated with a 15-year-old boy, describing his process for creating the images, and sent him several of the AI generated images of minors through Instagram direct messages. In some of the messages, Anderegg told Instagram users that he uses Telegram to distribute AI-generated CSAM. “He actively cultivated an online community of like-minded offenders—through Instagram and Telegram—in which he could show off his obscene depictions of minors and discuss with these other offenders their shared sexual interest in children,” the court records allege. “Put differently, he used these GenAI images to attract other offenders who could normalize and validate his sexual interest in children while simultaneously fueling these offenders’ interest—and his own—in seeing minors being sexually abused.”
I think the fact that he was promoting child sexual abuse and was communicating with children and creating communities with them to distribute the content is the most damning thing, regardless of people’s take on the matter.
Umm … That AI generated hentai on the page of the same article, though … Do the editors have any self-awareness? Reminds me of the time an admin decided the best course of action to call out CSAM was to directly link to the source.
Wait do you think all Hentai is CSAM?
And sending the images to a 15 year old crosses the line no matter how he got the images.
Hentai is obviously not CSAM. But having a hentai image on an article about CSAM and child grooming is pretty poorly thought out
You know, looking at it again, I think it’s an ad.
It’s an ad for another article on that site.
Umm … That AI generated hentai on the page of the same article, though … Do the editors have any self-awareness? Reminds me of the time an admin decided the best course of action to call out CSAM was to directly link to the source.
The image depicts mature women, not children.
Correct. And OP’s not saying it is.
But to place that sort of image on an article about CSAM is very poorly thought out
OMG. Every other post is saying their disgusted about the images part but it’s a grey area, but he’s definitely in trouble for contacting a minor.
Cartoon CSAM is illegal in the United States. AI images of CSAM fall into that category. It was illegal for him to make the images in the first place BEFORE he started sending them to a minor.
https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/possession-of-lolicon
Yeah that’s toothless. They decided there is no particular way to age a cartoon, they could be from another planet that simply seem younger but are in actuality older.
It’s bunk, let them draw or generate whatever they want, totally fictional events and people are fair game and quite honestly I’d Rather they stay active doing that then get active actually abusing children.
Outlaw shibari and I guarantee you’d have multiple serial killers btk-ing some unlucky souls.
Exactly. If you can’t name a victim, it shouldn’t be illegal.
The problem with AI CSAM generation is that the AI has to be trained on something first. It has to somehow know what a naked minor looks like. And to do that, well… You need to feed it CSAM.
So is it right to be using images of real children to train these AI? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks that’s okay.
If the images were generated from CSAM, then there’s a victim. If they weren’t, there’s no victim.
The images were created using photos of real children even if said photos weren’t CSAM (which can’t be guaranteed they weren’t). So the victims were are the children used to generate CSAM
Let’s do a thought experiment, and I’d look to to tell me at what point a victim was introduced:
- I legally acquire pictures of a child, fully clothed and everything
- I draw a picture based on those legal pictures, but the subject is nude or doing sexually explicit things
- I keep the picture for my own personal use and don’t distribute it
Or with AI:
- I legally acquire pictures of children, fully clothed and everything
- I legally acquire pictures of nude adults, some doing sexually explicit things
- I train an AI on a mix of 1&2
- I generate images of nude children, some of them doing sexually explicit things
- I keep the pictures for my own personal use and don’t distribute any of them
- I distribute my model, using the right to distribute from the legal acquisition of those images
At what point did my actions victimize someone?
If I distributed those images and those images resemble a real person, then that real person is potentially a victim.
I will say someone who does this creepy and I don’t want them anywhere near children (especially mine, and yes, I have kids), but I don’t think it should be illegal, provided the source material is legal. But as soon as I distribute it, there absolutely could be a victim. Being creepy shouldn’t be a crime.
I think it should be illegal to make porn of a person without their permission regardless of if it was shared or not. Imagine the person it is based off of finds out someone is doing that. That causes mental strain on the person. Just like how revenge porn doesn’t actively harm a person but causes mental strafe (both the initial upload and continued use of it). For scenario 1 it would be at step 2 when the porn is made of the person. For scenario 2 it would be a mix between step 3 and 4.
My main issue with generation is the ability of making it close enough to reality. Even with the more realistic art stuff, some outright referenced or even traced CSAM. The other issue is the lack of easy differentiation between reality and fiction, and it muddies the water. “I swear officer, I thought it was AI” would become the new “I swear officer, she said she was 18”.
That is not an end user issue, that’s a dev issue. Can’t train on scam if it isn’t available and as such is tacit admission of actual possession.
I think the challenge with Generative AI CSAM is the question of where did training data originate? There has to be some questionable data there.
There is also the issue of determining if a given image is real or AI. If AI were legal, that means prosecution would need to prove images are real and not AI with the risk of letting go real offenders.
The need to ban AI CSAM is even clearer than cartoon CSAM.
