“CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM,” DOJ says after rare arrest
“CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM,” DOJ says after rare arrest
Software engineer arrested, suspected of grooming teen with AI-generated CSAM.
You're viewing a single thread.
I find it interesting that the relabeling of CP to CSAM weakens their argument here. "CP generated by AI is still CP" makes sense, but if there's no abusee, it's just CSM. Makes me wonder if they would have not rebranded if they knew about the proliferation of AI pornography.
The problem is that it abets the distribution of legitimate CSAM more easily. If a government declares "these types of images are okay if they're fake", you've given probable deniability to real CSAM distributors who can now claim that the material is AI generated, placing the burden on the legal system to prove it to the contrary. The end result will be a lot of real material flying under the radar because of weak evidence, and continued abuse of children.
Better to just blanket ban the entire concept and save us all the trouble, in my opinion. Back before it was so easy to generate photorealistic images, it was easier to overlook victimless CP because illustrations are easy to tell apart from reality, but times have changed, and so should the laws.
Not necessarily. There's been a lot of advances in watermarking AI outputs.
As well, there's the opposite argument.
Right now, pedophile rings have very high price points to access CSAM or require users to upload original CSAM content, adding a significant motivator to actually harm children.
The same way rule 34 artists were very upset with AI being able to create what they were getting commissions to create, AI generated CSAM would be a significant dilution of the market.
Is the average user really going to risk prison, pay a huge amount of money or harm a child with an even greater prison risk when effectively identical material is available for free?
Pretty much overnight the CSAM dark markets would lose the vast majority of their market value and the only remaining offerings would be ones that could demonstrate they weren't artificial to justify the higher price point, which would undermine the notion of plausible deniability.
Legalization of AI generated CSAM would decimate the existing CSAM markets.
That said, the real question that needs to be answered from a social responsibility perspective is what the net effect of CSAM access by pedophiles has on their proclivity to offend. If there's a negative effect then it's an open and shut case that it should be legalized. If it's a positive effect than we should probably keep it very much illegal, even if that continues to enable dark markets for the real thing.
Not necessarily. There’s been a lot of advances in watermarking AI outputs.
That presumes that the image generation is being done by some corporation or government entity that adds the watermarks to AI outputs and doesn't add them to non-AI outputs. I'm not thrilled that AI of this sort exists at all, but given that it does, I'd rather not have it controlled by such entities. We're heading towards a world where we can all run that stuff on our own computers and control the watermarks ourselves. Is that good or bad? Probably bad, but having it under the exclusive control of megacorps has to be even worse.
How about any photo realistic image without a watermark is illegal? And the watermark kind of has to be traced back to author so you can’t just add it to real CP?
If you can generate the watermarks, you can put them on non-AI images.
Well the watermark would be a kind of signature that leads back to a registered artist.
I think it makes sense to enforce this for all AI art, basically label it in a way that can be traced back to who produced it.
And if you don’t want people to know you produced it, then you probably shouldn’t share it
Sorry but the concept of a "registered artist" sounds dystopian.
It would be for using AI, not creating art.
I’m just brainstorming here, but I can’t imagine how you would control AI art without some sort of regulation or licensing on the side of the AI creator…
You're quite correct your thinking it seems unrealistic to actually detect AI generated imagery after the fact so the only fill solution would be a trusted chain of custody - it wouldn't necessarily need a centralized authority but it would require some highly trusted issuers of trust and, unfortunately, trust in media is currently at an all time low and those companies are in the best position to serve as those issuers.
This is a very complicated problem and we need a social (rather than a technical) solution.
Is the average user really going to risk prison, pay a huge amount of money or harm a child with an even greater prison risk when effectively identical material is available for free?
Average users aren't pedophiles and it would appear that yes they would considering he did exactly that. He had access to tools that generated the material for free, which he then used to entice boys.
I agree, just the linguistics are interesting.
Better to just blanket ban the entire concept and save us all the trouble, in my opinion.
That’s the issue though, blindly banning things that can be victimless crimes never ends, like prohibition.
Well, you don't hear many people decrying the places that already have. Canada many US states, parts of Europe too have outlawed sexual imagery of children, real or fake.
I am just proposing that that should be the standard approach going forward, for the sole fact that the fake stuff is identical to the real stuff and real stuff can be used to make more convincing "fake" stuff.
Isn’t Canada’s law based on age and not if they “look like children”, so all they have to say is that the subject isn’t human and is over 18 years of age?
My entire point was that things like this become a game of wack o mole.
I don’t think that’s a good standard, reminds me of 0 tolerance policies and war on drugs.
placing the burden on the legal system to prove it to the contrary.
That's how it should be. Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise.
Right, but what I am suggesting is that laws should be worded to criminalize any sexualized depiction of children, not just ones with a real victim. It is no longer as simple to prove a photograph or video is actual CSAM with a real victim, making it easier for real abuse to avoid detection.
This same "think about the children" -argument is used when advocating for stuff such as banning encryption aswell which in it's current form enables the easy spreading of such content AI generated or not. I do not agree with that. It's a slippery slope despite the good intentions. We're not criminalizing fictional depictions of violence either. I don't see how this is any different. I don't care what people are jerking off to as long as they're not hurting anyone and I don't think you should either. Banning it haven't gotten rid of actual CSAM content and it sure wont work for AI generated stuff either. No one benefits from the police running after people creating/sharing fictional content.
I think you're painting a false equivalency. This isn't about surveillance or incitement or any other pre-crime hypotheticals, but simply adjusting what material is considered infringing in light of new developments which can prevent justice from being carried out on actual cases of abuse.
How do you prove what is fictional versus what is real? Unless there is some way to determine with near 100% certainty that a given image or video is AI generated and not real, or even that an AI generated image wasn't trained on real images of abuse, you invite scenarios where real images of abuse get passed off as "fictional content" and make it easier for predators to victimize more children.
Who's even in charge of that lol
Have to agree. Because I have no clue what CSAM is. My first glance at the title made me think it was CSPAN (the TV channel)... So CP is better identifier, as of at least recognize the initialism.
If we could stop turning everything, and especially important things, into acronyms and initialisms that'd be great.
A generative AI could not generate CSAM without access to CSAM training data. Abuse was a necessary step in the generation.