A high school's deepfake porn scandal is pushing US lawmakers into action:
Efforts from members of Congress to clamp down on deepfake pornography are not entirely new. In 2019 and 2021, Representative Yvette Clarke introduced the DEEPFAKES Accountability Act, which requires creators of deepfakes to watermark their content. And in December 2022, Representative Morelle, who is now working closely with Francesca, introduced the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act. His bill focuses on criminalizing the creation and distribution of pornographic deepfakes without the consent of the person whose image is used. Both efforts, which didn't have bipartisan support, stalled in the past.
But recently, the issue has reached a "tipping point," says Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, because AI has grown much more sophisticated, making the potential for harm much more serious. "The threat vector has changed dramatically," says Farid. Creating a convincing deepfake five years ago required hundreds of images, he says, which meant those at greatest risk for being targeted were celebrities and famous people with lots of publicly accessible photos. But now, deepfakes can be created with just one image.
Farid says, "We've just given high school boys the mother of all nuclear weapons for them, which is to be able to create porn with [a single image] of whoever they want. And of course, they're doing it."
Clarke and Morelle, both Democrats from New York, have reintroduced their bills this year. Morelle's now has 18 cosponsors from both parties, four of whom joined after the incident involving Francesca came to light—which indicates there could be real legislative momentum to get the bill passed. Then just this week, Representative Kean, one of the cosponsors of Morelle's bill, released a related proposal intended to push forward AI-labeling efforts—in part in response to Francesca's appeals.
Related Stories
A Spanish youth court has sentenced 15 minors to one year of probation after spreading AI-generated nude images of female classmates in two WhatsApp groups.
The minors were charged with 20 counts of creating child sex abuse images and 20 counts of offenses against their victims' moral integrity.
[...] Many of the victims were too ashamed to speak up when the inappropriate fake images began spreading last year. Prior to the sentencing, a mother of one of the victims told The Guardian that girls like her daughter "were completely terrified and had tremendous anxiety attacks because they were suffering this in silence."
[...] Teens using AI to sexualize and harass classmates has become an alarming global trend. Police have probed disturbing cases in both high schools and middle schools in the US, and earlier this year, the European Union proposed expanding its definition of child sex abuse to more effectively "prosecute the production and dissemination of deepfakes and AI-generated material." Last year, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order urging lawmakers to pass more protections.
[...] In an op-ed for The Guardian today, journalist Lucia Osborne-Crowley advocated for laws restricting sites used to both generate and surface deepfake pornography, including regulating this harmful content when it appears on social media sites and search engines.
[...] An FAQ said that "WhatsApp has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation and abuse, and we ban users when we become aware they are sharing content that exploits or endangers children," but it does not mention AI.
Previously on SoylentNews:
A High School's Deepfake Porn Scandal is Pushing US Lawmakers Into Action - 20231203
Cheer Mom Used Deepfake Nudes and Threats to Harass Daughter's Teammates, Police Say - 20210314
(Score: 4, Funny) by khallow on Monday December 04 2023, @11:14PM (14 children)
Why get complicated with a huge list of prohibitions for everyone? Just ban high school boys and be done with it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @02:49AM (10 children)
What I'm wondering is: who is actually being harmed by high school boys jerking off to fake images? Will mere possession of deep fake pornography become a crime? How about having a deep-fake capable app on your phone without any fake images generated yet? If Photoshop is outlawed, then only outlaws will use Photoshop...
What if, instead, the high school boys put hundreds of hours into hand drawing their pornography, is that then O.K.? If the drawings happen to resemble a classmate, does that hurt anyone if the images aren't being published where others can see them? Do we continue onward to outlaw pencil and paper?
>AI-labeling efforts
Oh, that should go well - like the "Parental Advisory - Explicit Content" labels used to promote all kinds of music to teenagers over the past 30 years.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Tuesday December 05 2023, @06:06AM (4 children)
Did you order it extra-obtuse today, Joe?
The subject of said deep-fake porn, Joe. But you counter, "who's to know?" And I still stand here looking at you incredulously. Of course someone's gonna find out! They're high school boys, whose social life, no matter how narrow, no matter how small that circle of friends, someone is gonna show off their handiwork to another pal. And this is just putting aside the "creep" factor (which, considering my audience today, I probably had to point that out). If it's someone outside of the high-school-boy/curious-young-adult, then besides that someone always talks, it's going to be used for identity theft, regardless of the prurience. No "gun for hunting" excuses here, Joe. I can't think of one example where any good could come of this wonderful, new deepfake technology.
If said high school boy (or anyone who is a capable illustrator) is putting "hundreds of hours" into it (I take it you don't remotely draw except maybe diagrams or stick people), then I'd be hard pressed to believe they're making porn. At that point it becomes another endeavor, utilising other mental processes.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2023, @11:32AM
Hoh, I harbor from the times of "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" and instead I find myself surrounded by, "HOW DAY YOU CALL ME THAT!!!1! I am NOT I have CHANGED my XYZ and I'm not THAT any more!1@!!@#!" -- where the worst possible offense is to say something that someone else doesn't like.
So then, how is person A doing thing B damaging to person C who did not do, engage in, know about, etc B? Are you just going to declare that any high schooler saying "Person C did xyz!" to be a crime? Careful there, females spread rumors a great deal more than males -- it's clear you're trying to attack males, but it's obvious your attack will fly astray.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:29PM (2 children)
>They're high school boys, whose social life, no matter how narrow, no matter how small that circle of friends, someone is gonna show off their handiwork to another pal.
That's a huge assumption. High school friends of my brother appeared to be straight Christian arrows, nobody ever suspected them of anything out of line until they blew up their parents ' garage, and themselves, with a pipe bomb. The subsequent investigation found evidence of them experimenting with and researching explosives for some time, but no pornography.
My brother found out about the bombs just like everyone else, after they were dead.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Wednesday December 06 2023, @01:00PM (1 child)
Huge assumption, you say? If your brother's friends didn't literally hit the kill switch on their pyrotechics, somebody eventually would have talked. Pride, pressure, lucre: nobody can indefinitely keep a secret. Think of how many times you yourself have shared privy information with your spouse, regardless how you may have deemed it trivial. Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys. Watergate. Iran-Contra scandal. Bin Laden's location. Somebody always talks.
And what's pornography got to do with your example? Did you think I meant high-school kids will only share secrets involving pornography? Joe, all those creepy and remorseless upskirt photos you've shot over the years and have hurt no one have affected your reasoning.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 06 2023, @02:12PM
>nobody can indefinitely keep a secret
On the topic of pornography, my high school crush went on to be Pet of the Month in the 1980s. Of course I bought a copy. Kept it - secret - through my entire first marriage. 2 years into the 2nd marriage I finally threw it away, but never have told the wife anything about her other than "I visited a friend in Manhattan for a few weeks in 1988."
I agree, most secrets do seem to leak out eventually, but that's the thing about secrets: the ones that are really kept well have no statistics.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday December 05 2023, @11:03AM (3 children)
I don't think the issue is high school boys jerking off to private pictures, even of classmates. Long before deepfakes, putting someones face onto a nude body in order to create a fantasy was done, and probably will continue to be done. The difference is that now:
(a) It is easy to do to a very high standard, so high it can fool most people (old crudely made images in MS Paint by high schoolers only looked convincing if you squinted)
(b) Following on from above, it used to require skill and patience, which most kids did not have. Hence it was limited both in number of kids who could do it and the number of images they could create. Nowadays it is as easy as downloading an app, and they can mass churn them out.
(c) Before the internet these images would have languished on a home computer, only for private use. Perhaps with a strictly limited audience in some cases. Now you can create these images/videos and distribute them far and wide across social media.
The problem is that it affects the classmate. It was very rare in the past that these things would be spread around, and even then distribution was limited. Plus generally the person whose face was used would be unaware of the images. Now you can create a deepfake and post it online for the world to see, and it can cause reputational damage.
Some may well not do it for their personal fantasy, but share it far and wide for more nefarious purposes such as revenge, as a form of bullying, or other things.
Thing is I don't think there is anything that can be done about this, short of banning computational devices. Perhaps like when deepfakes first came about, we may just have to accept that any images/videos we see may not be real.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:02PM (2 children)
>Long before deepfakes, putting someones face onto a nude body in order to create a fantasy was done, and probably will continue to be done
An episode of Marlo Thomas's "That Girl" from 50+ years ago comes to mind...
>The problem is that it affects the classmate.
Agreed. But I disagree that some dramatic change has recently taken place, the technology has been incrementally progressing for a century or more, starting with basic photography...
AI is a convenient new villain on the scene, but the latest trick is automating video manufacture, convincing stills, nearly as psychologically damaging, were easy to make a decade or more ago. And, really, I see little difference in psychological damage between a convincing but easily faked video and a convincing but easily faked verbal rumor spread.
Paul Reubens career as Pee Wee Herman was ended by the Sarasota Police releasing a booking photo along with a story they arrested him in an adult theater. No charges were ever filed, no actual proof offered, just their words and an easily faked booking photo. Enough people believed the story to be true that the damage to his career was irreparable.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:11PM (1 child)
The memory might be somewhat hazy but didn't they arrest him at an adult theater touching himself in public? If an adult theater is a public place and all that. Wasn't it true tho? Did he deny it? Or was the whole thing made up?
I guess one still wonders what people think they do in adult theaters, it's not like they serve popcorn and people go there to enjoy the art-films known for their great stories and so forth. If the place has little private booths etc ...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @01:16PM
>Wasn't it true tho? Did he deny it?
I suspect it was true, but proof was never offered, not even sworn testimony. I believe the defense calculus in his case was: "doesn't matter if you deny it or not, the damage is done, where do you want to go from here? A) fight it in court and risk a loss - win or lose your career is over, B) retire from the Pee Wee Herman role and move on." I suspect Paul was wanting B) anyway.
>Or was the whole thing made up?
Outside a few Sarasota cops, and maybe other theater patrons rounded up that day, nobody will ever really know. Around that same time I had a cop tell me, while handing me a red light running ticket for a light we both knew clearly was not red when I crossed the intersection: "You can take me to court, if you do it'll be your word against mine and the judges just about always side with the cops."
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:23PM
At that point, wouldn't it be called "art" ?
It was drawn without even using a nude classroom model.
Any resemblance to actual persons either living or dead is unintentionally hot and purely carnal.
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:30PM (1 child)
How about just ban high school boys from acting on their hormones?
That should work at least as well as prohibition did a hundred years ago.
Require chastity devices that only the government can unlock?
While being a commercial success, Kellogg's Corn Flakes was a failure at stopping people from masturbating. Couldn't the FDA sue over this failure?
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 07 2023, @03:54AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 05 2023, @04:55PM
The Hienlien method of child rearing: put it in a barrel and feed and water it through the bunghole. When it's grown, drive in the bung.
I've forgotten what story that was from.
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Monday December 04 2023, @11:26PM (15 children)
Aren't these the same legislators that tell us that brains don't develop until 21 or 25?
What are these legislators going to do about teens breaking the law? Kick them out of school? Publicly shame them?
All of this starts to feel like a lot of 1900's pearl clutching in the 21st century.
I'd suggest that instead of parsing what idiotic things teens do, we focus on getting rid of phones in schools, and teaching people how to mentally handle fake things.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:58AM (7 children)
Yes, "mother of all nuclear weapons" is histrionic pearl clutching bull.
I suggest we get used to it. And politicians turn their attention to matters they can do something about. Their voters too. Sadly, social conservatives are real hard headed about such things. Always, in the weeks before an election, there's a crackdown on the pr0n industry. Topless bars and similar businesses raided and people hauled off to jail on bogus charges, or no charge at all, to be released the next day because the law doesn't have anything on them. Most politicians don't actually care about that stuff, not that way (but they might well patronize those businesses), they're just courting the social conservative vote.
I have read of sexting resulting in ridiculously over-the-top consequences, such as the minors involved being branded as sexual offenders for the rest of their lives, their names put on a sex offender registry.
I read somewhere that the classic pr0n print rags have given up on the explicit photos. Said they can't compete with the Internet.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday December 05 2023, @01:57AM (6 children)
Yes, but this really does need to be addressed. Non-consensual images of people who are not public personalities should be considered libel.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 05 2023, @02:14AM (1 child)
What should we do about it? We can, maybe, go after the people who spread deep fakes, because broadcasting is difficult to do anonymously. Anyone who is fool enough to brag about having done someone can be disciplined. But if they stay undercover, and don't make any mistakes that give themselves away, I see no practical way to find them out.
Anyway, never mind the nudity, a bigger problem is that this ruins pics and video as good evidence. "Pics or it didn't happen" won't be true any more. For a while, we may be able to do extensive forensics to determine whether photography is real or faked. Eventually, though, the quality of the deep faking will become so good even forensics won't be able to tell.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 05 2023, @02:14PM
Valid points, but if you're worrying about high school kids, determining the source is unlikely to be a problem. (Proving it may be.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:10AM (2 children)
>Yes, but this really does need to be addressed. Non-consensual images of people who are not public personalities should be considered libel.
I agree, the distribution of such images can cause real and significant distress (harm) to those who have been undressed by the software. Such harms should be addressed with proportionate penalties for the perpetrators, including punative multiples.
However, the private possession of --- anything, really, particularly ones and zeroes on a storage device --- should never be a crime. Proof of distribution viewable by others should be the test, not private possession.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Tuesday December 05 2023, @06:21AM (1 child)
-1 Creepy
Got any other one and zeroes on a storage device in your private possession you wanna share?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @05:15PM
My ones and zeros are private, that's the point.
Further: any decent encryption algorithm will render images, or bitcoin wallet contents, nuclear launch codes, your grandmother's recipe for cornbread, and everything else you might store into an indistinguishable stream of high entropy ones and zeroes. A really good drive encryption system will render a completely boring, innocent image in response to one password, and whatever it is you really want to keep private in response to another password.
Now, in reality, I don't bother encrypting my storage because there's nothing there worth hiding - and it would be much more annoying to lose it due to a decryption fault than for it to be exposed.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Tuesday December 05 2023, @06:18AM
FINALLY someone who gets it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:01AM (3 children)
>focus on getting rid of phones in schools,
That cat is long since out of the bag. Better to teach our children how to put their phones away, on mute or completely off, during class - and maybe in the hallways too. Kids who can afford them are gonna carry those little $20 per month crack pipes until the cell-towers fall, better to teach them how to handle them socially acceptably (like, make them disappear entirely when in a serious social situation) than to attempt to ban them and inevitably fail.
>and teaching people how to mentally handle fake things.
Agreed. This djinni is also well past re-corking. Hollywood has been prepping us for the concept of fictions presented in ways absolutely indistinguishable from real life, not only with the movies themselves, but also with storylines like The Matrix and so many similar variants. The era of "video proof" didn't last very long, did it? We're going to have to get back to trusting peoples' testimony as the imperfect source of proof, because we're less than a few years away from being able to dictate a fiction to an app that runs on local processors which can generate indistinguishable from authentic surveillance footage showing whatever it is you asked it for and uploading it to the cameras' onboard storage. Any attempts at "authentication watermarks" will be more easily circumvented than creating the fake video in the first place.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday December 05 2023, @10:10AM (2 children)
It would be possible to use cryptographic signatures to prove authenticity. The full chain of controlling the hardware, the boot process of the device via something like secure boot would be required. I think this has to and will happen and will allow at least for police/forensic evidence to stay valid (to some degree). Going back to being at the mercy of testimony alone does not seem to be an attractive prospect.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @05:31PM
>It would be possible to use cryptographic signatures to prove authenticity. The full chain of controlling the hardware, the boot process of the device via something like secure boot would be required.
Agreed. And you, and I, and a full 0.01% of the global population (almost a million people) understand what is required to sufficiently trust such a chain of authenticity.
Part of trusting such a chain involves unreadable key storage. I was recently told by some chip salesmen that 5 years ago the "state of the art" in secret storage on-chip could be reliably read by any number of global service providers. The going rate was about $30K per secret read and turn around times were around 4-6 weeks. But, of course, the salesmen were selling "the next generation" which is... currently... unreadable by those established service providers. No doubt new ones will spring up eventually who can break into the new chips by new methods.
>I think this has to and will happen and will allow at least for police/forensic evidence to stay valid (to some degree).
I think the police departments of the world are at least 10x as technically minded / capable of understanding what is required to sufficiently trust such a chain of authenticity, meaning: the other 999/1000 law enforcement personnel don't have a clue about what is right or true, only what authority says, and that's what they'll be going by. I would bet, even today, over half of police believe (or, at least would testify in a court of law as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them God) that a fingerprint match is 100% certain proof of a person having been present at the scene where the fingerprint was found. A few of the "thinking men" might (wrongly) tell you something about identical twins or other "exceptions" while missing the true nature of what it means to have 80 billion human fingers alive on the planet today, partial and degraded prints, etc.
>Going back to being at the mercy of testimony alone does not seem to be an attractive prospect.
Agreed, but it does seem to be the more likely near term future. The interesting question (for me) will be when courts start recognizing ordinary video as no more valuable evidence than hear-say.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday December 06 2023, @07:06AM
One problem with schemes like that that produce "incontrovertibly authentic" video will eventually be subverted by someone. That someone will have the ultimate nuclear weapon of evidence. Their fakes will be accepted as absolutely authentic.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 05 2023, @05:00PM (2 children)
Aren't these the same legislators that tell us that brains don't develop until 21 or 25?
No, they're the same legislators who listen to neuroscientists who tell them that the human brain isn't fully developed until 21-25. Perhaps you should put that bong down until you're grown, son.
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Tuesday December 05 2023, @07:55PM (1 child)
Thanks for being my editor to make this more clear for the pedantic. I could use you on staff. Need a job?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday December 06 2023, @02:25PM
No thanks, I'm comfortably retired. I no longer have to chase dollars.
What did you expect when you voted for a convicted felon, peace and rainbows?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Frosty Piss on Monday December 04 2023, @11:53PM (7 children)
Everyone knows females don't look at porn.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:19AM (5 children)
Are we really gonna act like that's a shocking revelation?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:58AM
3x means 25% are women, much higher than I would have guessed. Careful who you send those dick pics.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 05 2023, @08:00AM
Perhaps, but you shouldn't trust the numbers. There are many systemic biases favoring women in such stats (much as there are in the justice system in general).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday December 05 2023, @09:52AM (2 children)
Got any links to reliable studies for those statistics? If so, please post.
The social tropes about differences in behaviour between the sexes get ingrained from a very early age:
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails and puppy-dog's tails.
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice.
That's what little girls are made of.
Roud Folk Song Index number 821 [wikipedia.org], first record of which is around 1820.
This is not to say that there a no differences: but distinguishing between what everyone believes to be true and what the reality is, is important. There is also the problem that if you expect boys to conform to a particular stereotype, they learn to do so, as do girls; so the question then becomes whether differences in gender behaviour are innate/inherited or learned. If the latter is significant, perhaps we should teach different things.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tork on Tuesday December 05 2023, @05:12PM (1 child)
I had a lot more trouble digging that up this morning than I did yesterday, my apologies for not originally including it.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday December 05 2023, @07:41PM
Thank you - I appreciate it. Interesting website name, but there's a lot of reading there.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:26AM
It might be instructive to think about the number of girls falling victim to this, versus the number of girls perpetrating it. Then try again with but with boys.
Second, think about what portion of teens do *not* have, as their first reaction to injury, "let's craft a new law" and maybe you'll suspect that this is happening a lot already?
In other words, FOAD with the irrelevant bullshit. There's no porn here, unless you get off on sexualizing unwilling children.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:53AM (6 children)
Are they faking adults or classmates or that pretty cheerleader at school they are crushing on? In High school. So they are minors that they are deep faking then? Isn't that digital child pornography? Enjoy being a registered sex offender and pedo for the rest of your lives. I guess they are thinking to much with the wrong head.
(Score: 5, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:03AM
When everybody is a registered sex offender pedo, it ceases to have any stigma attached.
>Are they faking adults or classmates or that pretty cheerleader at school they are crushing on?
All of the above, of course.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:28AM
Statistically, the vast majority of what's legally classed as child pr0n is consumed by children.
And before everyone reaches for their pitchforks, it's more easily understood if you rephrase it as "teenage boys like looking at teenage girls", and vice versa.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 05 2023, @07:55AM (3 children)
Isn't it fine if they're under 18? Fairly sure there's a provision to protect teens from filming their fun activities (at least, until 1 second after their 18th birthday).
And I don't think the law has caught up on whether AI generated media counts as CP. Generally, art is not considered CP in most (all?) US states.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2023, @11:54AM
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/16/scotus.virtual.child.porn/ [cnn.com]
(this bothers me, as the *only reason* given for his dissent.As though that reason overrides all sanity and any other considerations.) The supreme court has considered this, and seems to be essentially 50/50? Having it come up again ... feels unpredictable.
As usual, the FBI doesn't give a shit about the law and will wring your neck anyway. And, of course, you'd be guilty until (and usually even if) proven innocent. 98% conviction rate, and all that, if you don't plead guilty just because of all the trump charges and facing 498 years of jail if you lose on a single one.
---
Australia has already tried what the US wants to do lately -- outlawing small breasts -- and the US has prosecuted for that (Little Lupe - a "young-looking" legal porn star). The Australians were beaten down by women who came out insisting that small breasts were healthy and normal, and that doesn't make them "children".
---
Traditionally, from what I understand, prosecutors usually just turn a blind eye to the "Girl who got passed around the football team's phones" situations because the girl took the pictures - and they have to charge her as a producer of child pornography if they charge the football team with possession. Prosecutors will, and have, convicted kids for this, and very few US states have a close-in-age exemption for CP -- but a couple do.It tends to go against the US abstinence-only policy.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:05PM
It might have been if they had kept it to themselves and nobody knew about it. After all what stays in the private spankbank and all that. But I gather they share these creations. If not for mutual spanking benefits I guess to humiliate, shame or embarrass people. Which sort of makes it a problem, since they are apparently so good now that people can't tell them from reality -- or even if you can they probably still serve the previously mentioned purpose of shaming the target in some regard.
Nude selfies of underage people are still problematic in that regard as far as I know. Even if you are underage and you shared it with someone underage, presumably boyfriend/girlfriend. If you share it with others you have as noted other problems as you are now distributing child pornography. But eventually you won't be underage and/but the image might/will still exists. Certainly so how people keep their files these days -- phones, portable storage devices, the cloud etc etc. It could live on in some kind of backup file someplace you forgot about.
So beyond the whole issue of having to take pictures of everything you do and share them they stick around and cause further problem. What if you took, or AI created, that saucy picture and then kept it on your phone or in the magical cloud for five or ten years or so and then one day or some reason someone, or something -- AI algo cataloging all your images, else find the image and now it's deeply problematic and you are reported for possessing child pornography. After all it can't know this was your high school girlfriend/boyfriend and even if you track down the person they might not be happy about it or even want to acknowledge it. Problems ahead.
Hence I have a strict live performance only policy. Don't take pictures, don't want pictures (or video, or future holographic recordings or whatever ...). If I can't remember it then it was probably not to be remembered. No need to create physical or digital artifacts of things. Only problems ahead.
After all these won't be very artsy, it's not the Mona Lisa of spank material.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:46PM
No.
In some countries, the media simply has to look like abuse of a minor* for it to be classified as illegal to own. This catches manually produced material (such as drawings and painting) and computer (AI) generated material. It's also why there is a grey-area around prosecutions for people owning media showing (provably, by government-issued ID) adult participants who resemble minors engaging in activities that would be abusive, and therefore illegal, for minors.
Furthermore, I think some places also treat text descriptions of activities that are abusive of minors as illegal to own.
Basically, in some countries, media depicting or describing abuse of minors is toxic, and you really, really don't want such data in your possession. Ever.
*By definition, a minor cannot consent to carry out activities reserved to adults. Taking advantage of a minor, or coercing them to carry out such activities is, therefore, abuse as the minor is legally unable to express consent.
(Score: 4, Funny) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 05 2023, @07:50AM (1 child)
There's stupid, and then there's Congress.
They even outright said "We've just given high school boys the mother of all nuclear weapons for them, which is to be able to create porn with [a single image] of whoever they want. And of course, they're doing it."
Of course.
And what do they think criminalizing the behavior is going to do? Magically stop horny teenage boys? Of course the boys are going to continue doing it.
Of course.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday December 05 2023, @06:11PM
I quite like the suggestion elsewhere in the thread of making it count as libel. Hefty fine that goes to the victim would probably be most appropriate punishment.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday December 05 2023, @07:59AM
Part of the issue here is that the people whose likeness is being used to generate a deepfake are upset at the loss of control over their identity. It's the feeling of loss of control that generates both shame and outrage.
There are groups of people who object to having their photographs taken because they believe that it steals their soul, which is something along the same spectrum.
Some teenagers and young people do things that are not fully thought through, egotistical, quite possibly unwise, and can be regarded as disgusting by adults. It's part of the normal spectrum of human behaviour. Criminalising such behaviour doesn't help much, except as a last resort. Social pressure and education can help: but repression can produce strange results. Just look at the perennial sex-related scandals in the Bible -belt.
As a 'bleeding-heart' liberal, I would take the view that educating people with coping strategies for dealing with the loss of control would be a good harm-reduction mechanism. Life often does things that people can't control and don't like, and your own reaction to that is important. Many people take the view that anything that makes them uncomfortable should be banned. I'm not saying you should 'just' accept what is going on, but most teenagers and up reasonably well-adjusted adults (or at least, play them on TV).
This is not 'blaming the victim': this is giving victims tools to cope with the experience. Automatically blaming others for your feelings of discomfort is a flawed strategy. Sometimes, it might be appropriate, but at others, dealing with the inevitable is a skill worth having: look at how differently people with terminal illnesses handle their condition - in the same situation, people's mental health can be very, very different.
In some ways, this is just another means of bullying victims. Boys tend to do it physically, or by verbal abuse; girls use social exclusion and verbal abuse. Circulation of images the victim is embarrassed by is another manifestation of 'power politics' - the point being less that the images are sexual (lots of sexual images are easily available) but they give power and control over the victim, who has loss of control and shame to deal with - which is classic bullying. So strategies for dealing with bullying should help and/or work. The fact that sexual images of minors is involved just confuses things. Deal with the bullying.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DrkShadow on Tuesday December 05 2023, @12:12PM (1 child)
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/16/scotus.virtual.child.porn/ [cnn.com]
Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition, [wikipedia.org] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/00-795 [cornell.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06 2023, @05:23AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_pornography_depicting_minors#2003%E2%80%932007:_PROTECT_Act [wikipedia.org]
The virtual child pornography ban was brought back by the 2003 PROTECT Act. With the advent of generative AI, there are people out there making extremely lifelike images of minors. Some of them may be using image models trained on actual child pornography images, which could knock down an affirmative defense of no actual children being involved. It's only a matter of time until a big court case happens.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by doke on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:37PM
Teachers have been fired for having OnlyFans sites. Deep fakes of them could create similar problems. I hope a deepfake would be investigated, and a teacher wouldn't actually get fired. However, they could easily get in temporary trouble with administration. They might even have to pay for a lawyer.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 05 2023, @03:38PM (3 children)
⠀
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Tuesday December 05 2023, @07:51PM (2 children)
Because both meteorology and meteor come from a Greek root word, μετέωρος (metéōros) [wiktionary.org] which means roughly "lifted up, on high, in air", so it applies to both atmospheric phenomena.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday December 05 2023, @08:09PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday December 05 2023, @08:23PM
That is a good answer. Thank you. So I'll change my sig.
Thank goodness the 1st amendment forces people to listen to you and agree with you.