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?
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.
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.
