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from the think-of-the-AI-generated-children dept.
On Wednesday, American attorneys general from all 50 states and four territories sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to establish an expert commission to study how generative AI can be used to exploit children through child sexual abuse material (CSAM). They also call for expanding existing laws against CSAM to explicitly cover AI-generated materials.
"As Attorneys General of our respective States and territories, we have a deep and grave concern for the safety of the children within our respective jurisdictions," the letter reads. "And while Internet crimes against children are already being actively prosecuted, we are concerned that AI is creating a new frontier for abuse that makes such prosecution more difficult."
In particular, open source image synthesis technologies such as Stable Diffusion allow the creation of AI-generated pornography with ease, and a large community has formed around tools and add-ons that enhance this ability. Since these AI models are openly available and often run locally, there are sometimes no guardrails preventing someone from creating sexualized images of children, and that has rung alarm bells among the nation's top prosecutors. (It's worth noting that Midjourney, DALL-E, and Adobe Firefly all have built-in filters that bar the creation of pornographic content.)
"Creating these images is easier than ever," the letter reads, "as anyone can download the AI tools to their computer and create images by simply typing in a short description of what the user wants to see. And because many of these AI tools are 'open source,' the tools can be run in an unrestricted and unpoliced way."
As we have previously covered, it has also become relatively easy to create AI-generated deepfakes of people without their consent using social media photos.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 09 2023, @12:32PM (7 children)
As a legal outlet for such sexual desires?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday September 09 2023, @12:58PM
This link goes into more detail with regard to the UK, and has a section on the (poor) data quality.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/childvictimsofmodernslaveryintheuk/march2022#measuring-the-data [ons.gov.uk]
Recording of slavery and sexual abuse is different across jurisdictions. The UK, counter-intuitively, looks like a major source of child-trafficking victims in international statistics, but that is probably because the detection and recording mechanisms are better than than in other countries. If you don't look for, or record, crimes, then your crime statistics will be fabulous!
As I pointed out, if AI-generated images can be used as plausible deniability such that a user of non-artificial images believed the images to be artificially generated, we have a problem. A producer of illegal images can simply run them though an AI to add the AI watermark. A legal outlet sounds like a sensible idea, except that you cannot guarantee that illegal images will not be mixed into the collection.
How do you prevent counterfeit artificial images produced by abusing real minors from being mixed in with all the proposed legal artificial ones? A guaranteed government cryptographic signature for each image, testifying that it is genuinely artificial?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 09 2023, @02:38PM (5 children)
With that, you help to illustrate the slippery slope thing.
As a parent and a grandparent, and as a former Boy Scout and Girls Scout leader, I want to say that a single case of child sexual abuse is a pressing problem. A large part of who I am says that you can't possibly get too draconian with efforts to track down, prosecute, and execute child traffikers.
At the bottom of that slope, you'll find a hell on earth as bad as those enslaved children already live in.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Disagree) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 09 2023, @05:31PM (1 child)
So you would totally welcome an Orwellian state if it helps with that goal?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 09 2023, @06:11PM
Perhaps you should read my post again, in it's entirety. That Orwellian bit looks attractive, if it would achieve the desired goal, until you stop to think of all the other ways said Orwellian state would affect you. Slippery slope and all that.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday September 09 2023, @06:18PM
I'm afraid you lost me in two places there. It is possible to be too draconian, and I'm not in favour of capital punishment. I understand the sentiment, but I'm not in agreement.
I would like some way in which people who are incarcerated for long sentences to provide enough value to cover the costs of their incarceration, because keeping people in prison is expensive and should be used as a last resort. Rehabilitation is usually the better option, but some people are very resistant to rehabilitation, unfortunately,
(Score: 2) by khallow on Saturday September 09 2023, @11:31PM (1 child)
And yet, here we are already getting too draconian. The fake porn activity in question is harmless, it just might hide something bad hypothetically. The problem is that you go from prosecuting child traffickers to prosecuting people who have nothing to do with the trafficking - not even buying economic products of the trafficking.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 09 2023, @11:55PM
Correct. Case in point: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/teen-sexting-case-revealed-how-judges-let-police-invade-children-ncna830306 [nbcnews.com]
Now that's draconian.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz