Rep. Joe Morelle, D.-N.Y., appeared with a New Jersey high school victim of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes to discuss a bill stalled in the House.
Think of the children being used to push an agenda that helps the very wealthy? Well I’ll be, what a totally new and not at all predictable move.
Ban all ai that aren’t owned by rich people, make open source impossible, restrict everything that might allow regular people to compete with the corporations - only then will you children be safe!
I’m as suspicious of “think of the children” stuff as anyone here but I don’t see how we are fighting for the rights of the people by defending non-consensual deepfake porn impersonation, of children or anyone.
If someone makes deepfake porn of my little cousin or Emma Watson, there’s no scenario where this isn’t a shitty thing to do to a person, and I don’t see how the masses are being oppressed by this being banned. What, do we need to deepfake Joe Biden getting it on to protest against the government?
Not only the harassment of being subjected to something like this seems horrible, it’s reasonable to say that people ought to have rights over their own likeness, no? It’s not even a matter of journalistic interest because it’s something completely made-up.
We’re not talking about whether we should make fakes. We’re talking about whether people who do, should be prosecuted - IE physically overpowered by police officers, restrained with handcuffs, and locked up in a prison cell. Some empathy?
If some classmate of your little cousin makes a fake, should the police come and drag them out of school and throw them in prison? You think that would help?
Realistically, it’s as likely to happen as prosecution of kids who “get into fights” for assault. Kids tell mean lies about each other but that is not resolved in civil suits over defamation. Even between adults, that’s not the usual thing.
Civil suits under this bill would be mainly targeted against internet services, because they have the money. And it would largely be used over celebrity fakes. That’s the overwhelming part of fakes out there and they have the money to splurge on suing people who can’t pay. It would be wealthy, powerful people using it against horny teens.
Also, this bill is so ripe for industrial abuse. Insert a risqué scene in a movie, and suddenly “pirates” can be prosecuted under this.
You do have a point about the excesses of police work, but if you want to talk about empathy you should also consider the position of the kid who is harassed and traumatized over something they didn’t even have any say over. There is some discussion to be had over what degree of punishment ought to be appropriate, and the need to limit police brutality, well beyond this particular matter.
But as far as demanding that every such work is taken down, and giving vulnerable people the means to demand so without exposing themselves further, it is perfectly reasonable.
Realistically, it’s as likely to happen as prosecution of kids who “get into fights” for assault. Kids tell mean lies about each other but that is not resolved in civil suits over defamation. Even between adults, that’s not the usual thing.
Except that in the case of deepfake porn it’s not a matter of fuzzy two-sided conflicts. One side is creating the whole problem, and one side is just the victim of it despite not being involved in any way. That’s the whole point of deepfake. The most that lies might play into it is in finding out that the porn is real, and in such case there is even more reason to take it down.
Civil suits under this bill would be mainly targeted against internet services, because they have the money. And it would largely be used over celebrity fakes. That’s the overwhelming part of fakes out there and they have the money to splurge on suing people who can’t pay. It would be wealthy, powerful people using it against horny teens.
Gotta say I have a hard time feeling sorry for the people who can’t be satisfied by the frankly immense amount of porn we have and decided that they absolutely must have porn from that one specific person who never consented to it. Maybe they are wealthy and powerful, sure. Does that mean it’s a free pass to fabricate deepfake porn with their likenesses? I don’t think so. Nobody is owed that. As much as you insist that it will be used by the powerful against the poor masses, it still seems to me that whatever regular dude decides to do it is crossing serious boundaries. This is not brave freedom fighter, it’s just an asshole.
I think most likely what will happen is that these internet services will just take those down. As they should.
If my little cousin makes AI child porn, of anyone at all let alone a classmate he knows physically in real life, I dont think he should be allowed to kick his feet and go about his day.
Like… Making kiddie porn of your classmates is not excusable because youre a horny teen. Sorry, bud, its fucking not
The issue is there really is no way to stop it unless you make ai illegal. The cat is already out of the bag. The models and hardware are getting better and faster and cheaper.
How do you suppose you enforce a law like this when people stop even sharing the photos they create, maybe don’t even save them themselves, because it’s so easy and instant to create more when you want to see them. “Put her face on her body in this position”, bam, instant album of photos to jerk off to, then delete them. That’s how good and how available these models are getting.
How do you think restrictions on this should, or could, be enforced?
Nah, making deepfake porn illegal doesn’t require making all of AI illegal. As proposed this law would neither apply to candid photography generation nor to entirely imaginary AI porn. As proposed it’s targetting those generating and distributing such images rather than the technology itself, and giving victims means to defend themselves against being publicly humilliated.
It could be handled much like any matter of copyright is, that anyone hosting and sharing it must take it down or face the punishment.
Technology allows many things to be done quickly and easily, but whether they are legal and protected is a whole different matter. The models can be as good as they want, as quick as copying a file, it doesn’t mean that people won’t be sued over it.
It seems a bit questionable to assume that everything that is technologically possible ought to be permitted, no matter who is harmed. And frankly this is much more harmful than any piracy or infringement.
Mr. Vulpine, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this chat room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Any reason why you are quoting Adam Sandler movies at me?
Because if you have any criticism you could at least be specific and original.
You kind of have to be rich in order to run these image generation AIs. The RTX 4090 TI isn’t cheap.
You kind of have to be rich in order to run these image generation AIs. The RTX 4090 TI isn’t cheap.
Any iPhone or iPad on the current version of iOS can run Stable Diffusion locally with the (free) Draw Things app.
Hell, if you’re willing to run on the CPU instead of the graphics card (which takes much longer) you can get Stable Diffusion working on pretty much any PC. And honestly any semi-recent nVidia card will have drivers to run it.
What’s more, there are free sites for SD image generation.
Image generation isn’t expensive, and it gets cheaper and cheaper every year.
Creating fake child porn of real people using things like Photoshop is already illegal in the US, I don’t see why new laws are required?
Well those laws clearly don’t work. So we should make new laws! Ones that DEFINITELY WILL work! And if they don’t, well I guess we just need more laws until we find ones that do.
Since we need a rule explicitly for AI related cases, even though it’s already covered by others, lets ensure that we also make a 100 page law for if the material is explicitly made in Photoshop, and also another 80 pages if it was made in Gimp. If you use MS Paint to do it, we need a special 200 page law that makes the punishment even harsher, because damn you got skillz and need to be punished more.
Can you point to anything wrong in the specific law that is being proposed?
No, I’m not criticizing the bill’s content. If you don’t enforce laws, new ones won’t work either. The new ones are, at best, an opportunity for people to huff and puff and pat themselves on the back at the cost of actual victims. At worst, it’s smoke and mirrors for what the new law actually does.
This is not at all about protecting children. That’s just manipulation. In truth, kids are more likely to prosecuted than protected by this bill.
There are already laws that could be used against teen bullies but it’s rarely done. (IMHO it would create more harm than good, anyway.)
This is part of an effort to turn the likenesses of people into intellectual property. Basically, it is about more money for the rich and famous.
This bill would even apply to anyone who shares a movie with a sex scene in it. It’s enough that the “depiction” is “realistic” and “created or altered using digital manipulation”. Pretty much any photo nowadays, and certainly any movie, can be said to “altered using digital manipulation”. There’s no mention of age, deception, AI, or anything that the PR bullshit suggests.
Just wait until them tech savvy folks in Congress try to understand the difference between ‘deepfakes’ in the sense of pasting a new face on existing footage and whole cloth generative AI creating the entire scene, and then someone tells them that the latter is derived from multiple existing media sources. Gonna be some smoke pouring out of their ears like in the cartoons trying to slice up all the specifics.
I really wonder whether this is the right move.
This girl, and many others, are victims and I don’t want to diminish that, but I for better or worse I just don’t see how legislation can resolve this.
Surely deepfakes will be just different enough to the subject to create reasonable doubt that it depicts the subject.
I wonder whether, as deep fakes become commonplace, people might be more willing to just ignore it like any other form of trolling.
It’s not trolling it’s bullying. You need to think beyond this being about “porn”. This is a reputational attack that makes the victim more likely to be further victimised via date rape, stalking, murder. These things already happen based on rumours, deepfakes images/videos will only make it worse. The other problem is that it’s almost impossible to erase once it’s on the internet, so the victim will likely never be free of the trauma or danger as the images/videos resurface.
Trolling / bullying is just semantics, which I don’t think will help us very much.
I think the heightened risk of other crimes is… dubious. Is that conjecture?
Your position seems to be framed in the reality of several years ago, where if you saw a compromising video of someone it was likely real, while in 2024 the opposite is true.
Were headed towards a reality where someone can say “assistant, show me a deepfake of a fictitious person who looks a bit like that waitress at the Cafe getting double teamed by two black guys”. I don’t claim to know all the ethical considerations, but I do think that changing social norms are part of the picture.
I don’t have any authority to assert when anyone else should feel victimised. All I know is that in my own personal case, a few years ago I would’ve felt absolutely humiliated if someone saw a compromising video of me, but with the advent of deep fakes I just wouldn’t care very much. If someone claimed to have seen it I would ask them why they were watching it, and why in the world they would want to tell me about their proclivities.
I hope it won’t overregulate technology itself but instead would be ruled by already existing means about defaming people and taking photoes without their consent, sharing them. Plus, if she’s a teen, it’s a production of CSAM. This person had an illegal intent, just used a new tool not unlike others, just more efficient.
Surely deepfakes will be just different enough to the subject to create reasonable doubt that it depicts the subject.
That’s a major assumption. Do people really think a school board will really consider that when a student creates a fake Only Fans of a teacher? A random University or Company doesn’t even give reason for denying an application when they see any form of online nudity? People are lazy as fuck and will just move on to the next candidate or let someone go to save their own image rather than that off the victim.
I think you’re right if the goal is to stop them all together.
But what we can do is stop people from sending them around and saying that it’s true/actually the person.
Once they’ve turned it from a art project into a weapon, it should have similar consequences to “revenge porn.”
I don’t know how strong the laws are on the topic but I feel this falls under harassment or libel. In most cases this will cause emotional distress and harm to a person’s reputation. If you’re trying to show off your AI skills you can use a subject that isn’t real or depict a real person wearing clothes. This is clearly an attack in my mind.
My dude there are people out there thinking they’re in a relationship with Johnny fucking Depp because some Nigerian scammer sent them five badly photoshopped pictures. Step out of your bubble, maybe. This shit isn’t easy to spot for the vaaaaaast majority of people and why would this lie with the victim to sort of clear their name or hope that idiots realize it’s fake?
Especially with and around teenagers who can barely think further than their next meal?
Good lord.
Photos of a person can vary in subtle ways too, perhaps as a person ages or even just changes their makeup or something. It’s not valid to require everything to be perfectly clear-cut in some objective way.
Life is subjective, which is why courts always try to take the mental state of the accused into account, things like whether malice was present, whether the accused was in a rational state of mind, etc. This is why we have first and second degree murder as two different things.
Lol your wife has seemingly zero ability to critically think of a position other than her own, in the context of a discussion.
I think it doesn’t go far enough. Straight up, no one should be permitted to create or transmit the likeness of anyone [prior to, say, 20 years following their death] without their explicit, written permission. Make the fine $1,000,000 or 10% of the offender’s net worth, whichever is greater; same penalty and corporate revocation for any corporation involved. Everyone involved from the prompt writer to the work-for-hire people should be liable for the full penalty. I can’t think of a valid, non-entertainment (parody/humor), reason for non-consensual impersonation - and using it for humor or parody is a slippery slope to propaganda weaponization. There is no baby in this tub of bathwater.
I’m not sure this is practically possible.
A $1m penalty is more or less instant bankruptcy for 99% of the population. It’s probably not much of a deterrent for, say an 18 year old. In my jurisdiction I don’t think there are criminal penalties higher than a few thousand dollaridoos. It doesn’t matter whether you think this act is so aggregious that it deserves a penalty 1000 time higher than any other, my point is that it would be unenforceable ineffective.
Secondly, how do you determine whether an image is someone’s likeness? Create any random image and surely it will look like someone, but that doesn’t mean that creating that image violates that someone.
no one should be permitted to create or transmit the likeness of anyone [prior to, say, 20 years following their death] without their explicit, written permission.
I dig the sentiment. I do. And If this were my own fantasy world, I’d agree. But unfortunately, we don’t live in the timeline where that is considered even close to reasonable.
FOSTA is still in effect and still causing harm to sex workers while actually protecting human traffickers from investigation (leaving victims stuck as captive labor / sex slaves for longer). And it’d still regarded by our federal legislators as a win, since they don’t know any better and can still spin it as a win.
I don’t believe our legislators can actually write a bill that won’t be used by the federal Department of Justice merely to funnel kids for the sake of filling prison cells with warm bodies.
We’ve already seen DoJ’s unnuanced approach to teen sexting which convicts teens engaging in normal romantic intercourse as professional producers of CSAM.
Its just more fuel for the US prison industrial complex. It is going to heavily affect impoverished kids caught in the crossfire while kids in richer families will get the Brock Turner treatment.
This bill is wholly for political points and has nothing to do with serving the public or addressing disruption due to new technology.
Until we reform or even abolish the law enforcement state, anything we criminalize will be repurposed to target poor and minorities and lock them up in unconscionable conditions.
