A new report warns that the proliferation of child sexual abuse images on the internet could become much worse if something is not done to put controls on artificial intelligence tools that generate deepfake photos.
As long as no one is getting hurt I don’t really see the problem.
It’d be hard to actually meet that premise, though. People are getting hurt.
Child abuse imagery is used as both a currency within those circles to incentivize additional distribution, which means there is a demand for ongoing and new actual abuse of victims. Extending that financial/economic analogy, seeding that economy with liquidity, in a financial sense, might or might not incentivize the creation of new authentic child abuse imagery (that requires a child victim to create). That’s not as clear, but what is clear is that it would reduce the transaction costs of distributing existing child abuse imagery, which is a form of re-victimizing those who have already been abused.
Child abuse imagery is also used as a grooming technique. Normalization of child sexual activity is how a lot of abusers persuade children to engage in sexual acts. Providing victimless “seed” material might still result in actual abuse happening down the line.
If the creation of AI-generated child abuse imagery begins to give actual abusers and users of real child abuse imagery cover, to where it becomes more difficult to investigate the crime or secure convictions against child rapists, then the proliferation of this technology would make it easier to victimize additional children without consequences.
I’m not sure what the latest research is on the extent to which viewing and consuming child porn would lead to harmful behavior down the line (on the one hand, maybe it’s a less harmless outlet for unhealthy urges, but on the other hand, it may feed an addictive cycle that results in net additional harm to society).
I’m sure there are a lot of other considerations and social forces at play, too.
The model being able to generate something convincingly means it has seen equivalent examples, at least of parts of it in large enough quantity. That in itself means the model can’t exist in an ethical way.
I’m not sure that has to be true. Like you can ask an AI to give you a picture of a sailboat on the moon, while it has not ever seen a sailboat on the moon.
It could be trained on photos that are not pornografic containing kids and images that are pornografic containing adults.
you can ask an AI to give you a picture of a sailboat on the moon
Yes, correct. I’ll try to explain why that comparison isn’t entirely correct in this case and why my point stands: If you ask the model to draw an image of a sailboat on the moon it will take its context definition of “on the moon” and will likely end up selecting imagery of moon landscapes and will then put a sailboat in there. That sailboat will likely be assembled from frontal or sideviews of sailboats it has seen and will contain typical elements like a small bow pointing up and a keel line down the middle and some planks or a fibreglass-like structure to fill the are in between, depending on the style of things it has seen in the context of “lots of sailboat in this training picture”.
If the model has never seen the underside of a sailboat it will likely reduce to “boat” and start to put a freightship or containership-type of bow and keel there, it probably has seen imagery of those in drydocks - the output wouldn’t look convincing to you as a viewer. In order to create a convincing sailboat in your example, the model needs a good idea what a sailboat looks like under the waterline. Which means, it has seen enough of that. Whithout further elaborating, I am sure you can understand how this implies massive ethical problems with generating a model for content that contains exploitative and abusive elements.
Yeah exactly, I don’t want to see it but the same goes for a lot of weird fetishes.
As long as no one is getting hurt I don’t really see the problem.
It’d be hard to actually meet that premise, though. People are getting hurt.
Child abuse imagery is used as both a currency within those circles to incentivize additional distribution, which means there is a demand for ongoing and new actual abuse of victims. Extending that financial/economic analogy, seeding that economy with liquidity, in a financial sense, might or might not incentivize the creation of new authentic child abuse imagery (that requires a child victim to create). That’s not as clear, but what is clear is that it would reduce the transaction costs of distributing existing child abuse imagery, which is a form of re-victimizing those who have already been abused.
Child abuse imagery is also used as a grooming technique. Normalization of child sexual activity is how a lot of abusers persuade children to engage in sexual acts. Providing victimless “seed” material might still result in actual abuse happening down the line.
If the creation of AI-generated child abuse imagery begins to give actual abusers and users of real child abuse imagery cover, to where it becomes more difficult to investigate the crime or secure convictions against child rapists, then the proliferation of this technology would make it easier to victimize additional children without consequences.
I’m not sure what the latest research is on the extent to which viewing and consuming child porn would lead to harmful behavior down the line (on the one hand, maybe it’s a less harmless outlet for unhealthy urges, but on the other hand, it may feed an addictive cycle that results in net additional harm to society).
I’m sure there are a lot of other considerations and social forces at play, too.
The model being able to generate something convincingly means it has seen equivalent examples, at least of parts of it in large enough quantity. That in itself means the model can’t exist in an ethical way.
I’m not sure that has to be true. Like you can ask an AI to give you a picture of a sailboat on the moon, while it has not ever seen a sailboat on the moon.
It could be trained on photos that are not pornografic containing kids and images that are pornografic containing adults.
Yes, correct. I’ll try to explain why that comparison isn’t entirely correct in this case and why my point stands: If you ask the model to draw an image of a sailboat on the moon it will take its context definition of “on the moon” and will likely end up selecting imagery of moon landscapes and will then put a sailboat in there. That sailboat will likely be assembled from frontal or sideviews of sailboats it has seen and will contain typical elements like a small bow pointing up and a keel line down the middle and some planks or a fibreglass-like structure to fill the are in between, depending on the style of things it has seen in the context of “lots of sailboat in this training picture”.
If the model has never seen the underside of a sailboat it will likely reduce to “boat” and start to put a freightship or containership-type of bow and keel there, it probably has seen imagery of those in drydocks - the output wouldn’t look convincing to you as a viewer. In order to create a convincing sailboat in your example, the model needs a good idea what a sailboat looks like under the waterline. Which means, it has seen enough of that. Whithout further elaborating, I am sure you can understand how this implies massive ethical problems with generating a model for content that contains exploitative and abusive elements.
Eh… I’m skeptical.
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It doesn’t seem right to me to prosecute someone for computer generated images.