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.”
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.
The world progresses faster than any bureaucratic entity.
There was a trend a while back showing ancient laws still technically in effect that don’t make any sense at all in a modern world.
Like this argument saying the laws [as they exist] may become impossible to enforce, it’s saying that the world has changed too much for the way we handle this.
Which of course laws from 10/20/50/100 years ago may not be able to apply in a useful manner to AI technology that is massively rapidly advancing beyond our ability to control or even understand what’s even all possible with it as it evolves.
That part of what this POS wrote shouldn’t be particularly news to anyone or even controversial.
THAT part shouldn’t…