Justice Thomas too forecasted that “technology may evolve to the point where it becomes impossible to enforce actual child pornography laws because the Government cannot prove that certain pornographic images are of real children.” In his view, “if technological advances thwart prosecution of ‘unlawful speech,’ the Government may well have a compelling interest in barring or otherwise regulating some narrow category of ‘lawful speech’ in order to enforce effectively laws against pornography made through the abuse of real children.”
That right there seems like a great reason to ban ai-geneated CSAM, because that shit is never okay no matter what.
It should probably be illegal, but the rational here isn’t great. Something shouldn’t be made illegal just because it makes a detective’s job more difficult.
One way around it is we might see legislation require AI watermark generated images. If you have CSAM that isnt watermarked you used software thats against law, or its real CSAM unless you can somehow prove otherwise. If you prove its AI, hit them with the illegal software charge assuming they didnt do any of the other illegal things that can be done with the content (e.g uploading it somewhere)
A watermark law seems like its going to happen.
Edit: and some are starting to watermark of their own choice. Claude is altering text output to make it identifiable, they claim without altering the meaning or intention of its output.
I think AI images should be watermarked, but this would just lead people to watermarking their CSAM and detectives putting no effort into determining if the watermark was added by a person or a program. All the sudden a hard drive full of CSAM looks legal because they slapped a filter on it. AI generated CSAM should be illegal, like all CSAM.
Writing one of these is a weekend project for any seasoned developer.
Any idea that you can make software illegal ignores the reality that the code itself is free speech.
Wouldn’t this be more like, writing a computer virus is legal, but using the virus isn’t?
Yeah that’s almost exactly what the judge ruled. Possession is legal but production and distribution are illegal. You could have the code to a virus, but no you can’t write one.
I don’t 100% follow the judge’s logic, but it’s a simple parallel.
I think distribution is actually a stronger claim. There is a lot of precedence on distribution of things that are otherwise covered under free speech.
I’m not sure who could claim standing.
It would be a criminal case, no one would have to have standing to sue.
That honestly makes absolutely zero sense…
Transmitting it is illegal.
If creating it is illegal (e.g hand drawn), it is impossible to possess it, and not have transmitted it. Either you created it, or transmitted it, and while maybe they can’t prove one or the other, you broke a law?
Yes, but they have to prove it in court. I don’t think it really makes sense as is, and the laws should be changed.
Sometimes the law is really fucking bizarre hah.
This will stand until the first wave of child rapes and sexual assaults happen wherein the cops find huge amounts of the ai-created child porn in the perpetrators computers.
The prurient interest angle of the images an will then be unavoidable as an enticement and incitement to the assaults and it will be banned.
Unfortunately, the law has to see actionable harm FIRST from something before it can be banned.
Just give it time, as you notice the language the judge used - the “compelling interest” the government has - they know that it should ne illegal, but have to wait until the balance of content is ai-generated and the predators come out to play.
It absolutely sucks to have to unfold this way.
The interesting part of this is you can’t have good discussions on the different aspects because any leniency towards the broader parts of prejudging something that doesn’t exist yet means people will jump on you as supporting the current topic. And the danger later if and when such things develop into actual incidents is some level of Patriot Act where everyone says “we told you so” and approve blanket laws that supposedly take care of that problem, but also affect totally not connected things.
It’s been something talked about in the tech world for a long time, how slow government is to react to changes in technology, and the gap widens as things speed along. Meanwhile we still aren’t talking about things like AI safety and how to regress some of the damage done by how LLMs were developed ILLEGALLY. Rather than trying to be ahead of the curve (if that’s even possible at this point) the laws will be late and draconian to appease the loud crowds.
I fear it’s more likely that the silent majority of this culture has turned out to be pedophiles and this is the subtle ground work for their inevitable legalization of child rape.
That will likely not happen. The greater risk to the billioinaires is to high.
All it takes is for one father to catch a member of the Epstein Class touching his kid and the rich pervert gets beat to death and the father gets away with it (as they usually do in these cases) then people will start to realize they should just pre-emptively go after the lot.
The magats are so well brainwashed that some have even said it would be an honor for trump to touch their daughters. They may be a minority, but the slow creap that we’ve all watched without stopping could eventually push us to that end. Sure we wouldn’t tolerate it now, but 10 years ago we wouldn’t tolerate a convicted felon as president and 20 years ago we’d have collectivly linched the guy that Nazi salutes at an official government function.
Those are men that are already fucking their own. That shit is real and the conservatives are more into it than people realize.
Honestly I’m genuinely looking for a proper therapist at this point because I can’t stop seeing the pattern. Guestimating off the current statistics and being conservative with the numbers, 1 in 13 Americans were molested as a kid or are currently being molested. Its in our music, our movies, our art, our comedy. It’s been consistently ignored for generations.
As a victim myself, I came to terms with it on the understanding that I was a rare case and the fact that so many of my friends were also victims was coincidental or proof that I give off a comforting aura or something. Instead it’s looking more and more like the minority are the people who make it through life unscathed…
This is the number one compelling argument for me. Largely, I feel passionately about having uncensored models for a variety of reasons not salient to the thread, but I draw a line when it protects abusers. That boundary trumps other considerations for me.