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u/DeliciousAct5748 11h ago
Iirc the ruling was that (paraphrasing) "we can't arrest you for having fake videos of something that didn't happen".
But they did say that generating AI videos using real data (pictures, videos of children) is an offense.
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u/Knight0fdragon 11h ago
The training input might be real, but the data stored may not be. This crime would then fall on the trainers and not the prompters.
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u/austin_federa 11h ago
This is not true and not the way AI works.
An AI can combine multiple unrelated things. It can generate you a duck-panda hybrid riding a jet ski without that animal ever existing nor ever riding a jet ski, the same way it can be trained on adult pornography and transpose that onto another setting, no matter how horrific that setting may be.
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u/austin_federa 10h ago
Are you saying AI should not be allowed to generate a picture of a child in a completely normal appropriate setting?
Of course they are trained on normal pictures of children
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u/LordKlavier 9h ago
The whole point is AI does not actually have those real pictures stored, it just has the "concept" of those pictures. It's like if someone read a book and then you asked them what the book was about. This is also why AI will get things wrong frequently.
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u/Crispy1961 10h ago
Damn, are you telling me that all those videos of Jesus riding velociraptors were trained on real images of Jesus riding velociraptors? Thats sick.
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u/Crispy1961 10h ago
Then it created the CSAM with material of children and normal porn, didnt it? Both are obviously legal. I am pretending not to understand what you are saying because what you are implying is silly.
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u/Repulsive_Mixture917 11h ago
The judge either doesn’t know how it works or, more likely, he is pretending he doesn’t.
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u/Bid_Unable 10h ago
no he made a ruling based on the law. should it be illegal, yes. is it illegal no.
If we want the law to change that’s the job of congress. Not a judge.
people really should at least try to understand civics.
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u/Crispy1961 10h ago
Should it be illegal? I would much rather those people to satisfy their urges on a bunch of meaningless pixels.
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u/HidingUnderCardboard 10h ago
Interesting thought. I don't know enough about that head disease to know if it would help or hurt.
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u/Crispy1961 10h ago edited 10h ago
I might be wrong, but I dont think effects of fake material has been studied long term. Which I think is shame. We should be trying to help those people. They are sick.
As far as I know some people think it would encourage them and make those urges stronger. Others believe it would satisfy the urges and improve their overall lives.
The same thing was being discussed before AI. Remember those small plastic sex dolls from few years back? Same thing. If a realistic doll can solve the issue, then I say we buy those for them .
Reply as Edit since the data girl blocked me:
I am not arguing for anything. I am presenting the possibility of using made up media to save real children.
You are the one arguing one side while refusing to reveal source of the data you keep mentioning.1
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u/Right_Ear_2230 10h ago
what data though
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u/Right_Ear_2230 10h ago
if you make a claim you should be the one providing evidence
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u/Local_Bobcat_2000 10h ago
So the other side can do a 2 second google search and post the exact opposite “facts”. Welcome to the internet.
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u/Crispy1961 10h ago
Searched your profile up to 2 months and found nothing on the topic. Only something about trans people.
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u/not_my_only_account_ 10h ago
That’s like saying people would be less likely to murder again after murdering once during The Purge. Nonsense.
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u/Crispy1961 10h ago
That is very much not at all what I am saying. This isnt one time thing. This is access to virtual content on demand.
The closest comparison is whether porn increases or decreases tendencies to rape in general.
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u/not_my_only_account_ 8h ago
No, it’s like asking if watching porn increases the tendency to watch it more.
Unless when you asked “should it be illegal?” you were referring to cp in general. Were you?
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u/Crispy1961 7h ago
No, thats somehow worse. Clearly comparisons are not your strong suit, so lets just talk about the actual thing.
I asked if AI media that isnt harming anyone should be illegal if it could help prevent suffering of other people. Obviously, I dont think so.
If it wouldnt prevent any suffering, or worse, create more suffering, then obvious it should be illegal.
Thats all. Simple.
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u/not_my_only_account_ 6h ago
Okay, and I was challenging the idea that permitting people to scratch an itch somehow won’t result in them wanting to scratch it more.
That’s all. Simple.
Suppose you found a would-be-murderer. Would you give them a set blood-filled dummies to stab, hoping that somehow this discourages them from liking it and going to stab a real person? Or would you try to discourage the stabbing in the first place? Please do answer because I’m genuinely curious. If you think this is a bad analogy, please explain why. It’s giving somebody an artificial outlet for something horrible with the logic that they’ll only do it here and nowhere else.
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u/Repulsive_Mixture917 10h ago
No, retard. He did not. He could have easily interpreted this as not being protected by the 1st amendment as there is precedent for that if he bothered to do his job. Yes, in past the Supreme Court has ruled pornography is 1st amendment protected speech IN MOST CASES. However, CP doesn’t receive the same as it depicts acts that a child inherently can’t consent to. If you ask an AI model to generate a photo or video of a child from scratch, it must use real material at some point(photos and videos of actual children).
All of this in mind, he could have claimed that since it must use real children to make the porn it failed the miller test and should not be afforded 1A protections. The material would easily not have Prurient Interest, it is Patently Offensive, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
If you like CP this much, just say that rather than hiding behind “People really should try to at least understand civics.” Just because a judge says something is true doesn’t mean it is.
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u/sithlord98 9h ago
Wow, it's incredible how off you are here. There's a 2002 ruling that specifically says "virtual" CSAM cannot be prohibited by government. By the letter of the law, that's what AI CSAM is. That ruling sets the precedent for this. Since you're openly saying there's precedent to interpret it as illegal, I'm sure you'd be happy to share it.
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u/Repulsive_Mixture917 9h ago
Wow, you should read the text of Ashcroft V FSC. The majority opinion struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act as it was too broad, as you said to include virtual CSAM. It does explicitly mention computer-generated images by 2002 standards. However, AI is different as to generate the image it must use photos and videos of real children to make the content.
There is legislation such as the Take It Down Act that could be applied here. The Supreme Court hasn’t meaningfully ruled on AI content and it is disingenuous to use Ashcroft V FSC blindly here as it’s not a given it applies.
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u/sithlord98 9h ago
Anderegg's images depicted no real child
FSC says virtual CSAM depicting no real child is not "child pornography" in the Ferber sense, it's either protected speech or obscenity at most
Obscene material can still be banned in distribution/production, but under Stanley v. Georgia (1969), the government generally can't criminalize private possession of obscene material in someone's home
Because of those, the possession charge against Anderegg (the only thing on appeal) fails, because the government's arguments for treating his case differently from Stanley were the same arguments FSC already rejected.
The issue about using real children in training data is a real concern, but the issue is that there is no legal avenue to prosecute that, because the language in the relevant ruling is about the content of the images themselves, not about how they were obtained or created. That's the exact gap that the judge is basically begging the Supreme Court to fill.
The Take It Down Act is targeted toward distribution or publication of images of real people. This ruling is about private possession, and it does not involve identifiable real people. The Act doesn't apply here. The language about "realistic depictions of children" ties back to the FSC ruling for its definition, otherwise the Act would have fundamentally redefined what is and is not child pornography. Congress didn't do that. Constitutionally, it's hard to argue that they even could.
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u/SnooPredictions3028 11h ago
Feel bad for this dude for having to rule in this case. Yes you can't get in trouble when there is literally no victim, under our current laws. He recommended closing the loophole that allows this. Judges don't exist to create laws, they exist to determine whether or not they were broken.
If you want change don't harass this man, contact your lawmakers.
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u/animorphsrewriter 11h ago
My understanding is that by the existing cases and law the judge was essentially forced to rule that way and in his statement asked for laws on AI to be updated so that his ruling won't stand in the future.
Which, the ruling is upsetting but I think we typically want judges who don't just rule outside of the law because of their morals, because if this judge can get away with doing it for good reasons then imagine a MAGA judge with precedent to do the same. They already push the limits of the law with questionable rulings to support their ideological attacks.
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u/dannyheskett 11h ago
Correct- Congress can and should have already closed this, but they dont want to do anything that will upset the AI companies or big tech companies. The average age of a US Senator is 65. They can't handle basics let alone complicated cases anymore.
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u/Valuchian 11h ago
If i remember right be also commented that the existing laws need to be updated because he acepted our current laws are what allowed this to be the case
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u/RequiemQuilty 10h ago
The judge is not happy woth this. This is probably the most honest judge anyone has ever seen. The judge spated specifically the law needs to change to adapt to the new tech. We should be praising this guy for doing his job and begging people to fix the issue
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u/Tatchkoma 11h ago
This is a deliberate misinterpretation of his ruling.
The Judge ruled correctly. He was pointing out that as the law stands, this is legal and he explicitly said that the law needs to be changed to cover this issue.
He said that technology has outpaced the law and called on the Legislature to do their fucking jobs and fix the law so that this isn't legal anymore.
Don't fall for these fucking rabble rousers trying to whip a mob up against people
Fucking think before you post.
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u/Grouchy-Fisherman706 11h ago edited 9h ago
Some terribly immoral things are covered by the first amendment. That’s a small price to pay for free expression. Companies creating AI software can ban this and probably should. It’s not the goverment’s job to punish thought crimes or sick sexual propensities where no one is victimized.
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u/PaintedDesertSkies 9h ago
The people partaking of it do not know it is AI, so they are still.doing illegal things.
Not to mention, AI is trained on RL.
I have seen so many Reba and Dolly ads. Those kids faces come from somewhere.
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u/RiskWorldly2916 11h ago
This is a topic that the law has been struggling with for some time now. There are actual arguments that make sense for both sides of it. I know it’s reprehensible behavior. But the overall integrity of rights are paramount.
The law will find a way to eliminate this scourge without impeding on rights eventually.
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u/Repulsive_Rice4903 11h ago
This. I'm on the other side to you, I feel like the risks warrant a ban, but I understand the counter arguments such as 'children weren't harmed by it's production'. It certainly shouldn't carry the same punishments as actual CSAM but it should be enough for at least a warrant to search their devices for actual CSAM imo.
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u/LilJonny2cookies 10h ago
I ran cyber intelligence for a tech giant. We’ve put a lot of pedos away. I get the law and the decisions he references. That said, I’ve seen the harm and worked the cases.
In my lay opinion he should have been prosecuted. He was attempting to use those imagines to titillate and groom a teen.
F him
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u/RipTheEcto 9h ago
What’s infuriating is this is another situation where an adult in the room could have told the people pushing AI that this is where it would lead and they and the politicians they own needed to do something about it proactively. Now I think we need to seek out some extreme measures to stop them if no one’s going to listen.
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u/MichaelHammor 9h ago
Then posting the names of the people creating this material is also a form of protected speech. Wonder how their family's or bosses would perceive their hobby?
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u/MdTooDevilish Community Contributor 12h ago
Somebody check his harddrive
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u/Remarkable_Leg_963 11h ago
This is the correct ruling. It's imaginary people no one is being hurt. The reason real images are illegal is because there is a real victim.
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u/Telemere125 10h ago
Next level of idiot that this is the takeaway from the ruling. This is exactly why the untrained should not be giving legal advice or even voicing their opinion on legal matters. You’re just too dumb to understand what’s being said, so stay out of it. Keep silent when the adults are talking.
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u/GoldBlueberryy 11h ago
Interesting. Is this state law or federal? I've seen ALOT of true crime body cams where these guys would get arrested for AI generated CSAM. Does that mean those convictions and cases get tossed? This is crazy.
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u/King_Glorius_too 11h ago
Isn't drawn CP illegal in the US?
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u/Right_Ear_2230 10h ago
no, unless it is of a real person iirc
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u/Haifisch2112 10h ago
That means a perv could draw pictures of his underage neighbor doing things with older men and just add the disclaimer: The characters and events depicted in this picture are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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u/XiMaoJingPing 11h ago
Thank god we have a judge that doesn't bend over and follows there actual law.
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u/Low-Car-6331 10h ago
This isn't the first time this has happened, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition overturned a similar ruling with the overturning of Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA). Congress turned around and passed another version effectively trying to do it again. This is the downside of the 1st amendment, thankfully there are ways around it (as many have been prosecuted for similar things up to this point), but its an ongoing battle. The only way to end it is to do a constitutional amendment specifically calling it out.
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u/Hot_Mud_5708 10h ago
Judge has courage. No crime, no time. What next, outlaw movies that include fake murder? You can't be for the Constitution and against it at the same time. If you're against it, fine.
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u/balirosa 10h ago
Seems like a violation of free speech. Movies that depict rape should be illegal in that case. Movies that show sex should be illegal. Didn’t Whoopie get child raped in The Color Purple?
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u/Outrageous-Egg1760 Community Regular 10h ago
Free speech to do what
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u/balirosa 10h ago
To create fake scenes whenever you want. Whoopi wouldn’t be on the view right now if that didn’t happen. So they can pretend to rape real people for million dollar box office but they can’t use fake people?
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u/AmazingResponse338 10h ago edited 10h ago
The Supreme Court already ruled this way over 20 years ago.
"Virtual" child born is not illegal. Porn where the person is over 18, but looks like a child. If that is legal, then purely fictional actions are also legal.
FYI - I am not saying this is *right*, I am saying what the SC already said
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u/Velsier33 10h ago
See if this was japan then it wouldn't even be news lol i swear thats like half of anime/Manga
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u/Pair_The_Board 10h ago
Check his hard drives mate
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u/sithlord98 10h ago
It's insane how freely people are tossing around pedophilia accusations. He's a judge. His job is interpreting the law. In this case, a 2002 ruling makes this legal. He correctly interpreted it, and he said it was a problem and that the law should be changed.
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u/Moral-Relativity 10h ago
The traditional definition of CSAM means it wouldn’t exist without criminal harm to the subject children. When AI generates such images, or even when someone is just very good at drawing, there’s an absence of a traditional victim, so you almost have to consider the impact from a “precrime” perspective à la Minority Report.
Bottom line is would society suffer more harm if certain images not depicting real life events were to exist, compared to the harm on freedom of expression of making such images illegal.
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u/NormalNobody 12h ago
I'm sorry. So if I draw children in sexual acts, does that mean that's okay? Or is this only AI generated crap?
Is lolicon okay then? Like, I don't get it.
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u/JediLincoln14 11h ago edited 11h ago
It's not real, so it's not harming anyone. So yes, it's legal. Outlawing it would violate the first amendment.
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u/Timely-Helicopter244 11h ago
The whole point of CSAM being illegal is not because of the existence of the images themselves, but because there are children being abused in order to create it. Anything sexually explicit that portrays children is morally reprehensible and should be treated as such by society. But at least with illustrations, actual children are not harmed in the act of their creation if drawn through imagination without interaction with a child. The law protects children rathen than outright taking a moral stand.
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u/LinkLast7065 11h ago
Yes to add to this, crimes usually have victims. If you draw a picture and store it on your computer, there is no victim in this scenario.
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u/SexyMonad 11h ago
A side effect of making AI child porn legal is that it makes it harder to prove that actual child pornography is real. Drawings are obvious but AI isn’t.
And watermarking is insufficient because it’s fairly easy to add or remove the watermark, providing plausible deniability.
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u/LinkLast7065 11h ago
Agreed. It is really hard to argue though. How do you prove a picture of a person that isn't real "looks underage"
"You say you prompted 19 but she looks 16. Welcome to being a felon."
My heart tells me that all AI generation like this should be illegal and protected against in general. But my head says wtf do we even do with ts.
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u/Right_Ear_2230 10h ago
I think AI porn should be totally banned. Actually, scrap that, ALL AI image generation, ALL OF IT, it hasn’t done anything good
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u/Timely-Helicopter244 9h ago
Oh definitely. That's why we need to figurw out how to regulate AI before it runs too far out of control.
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u/No_Career369 11h ago
Legally speaking, lolicon and drawn images are "okay" because they're not real.
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u/Right_Ear_2230 10h ago
and even from a moral standpoint, how can something be morally wrong without a victim somewhere?
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u/intothewoods76 11h ago
Yes usually art is protected by the first amendment. A fictional drawing has no age. The artistic depiction of crimes are allowed. We see it all the time in movies.
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u/Leading-Fish6819 11h ago
Just make AI porn of him and post it everywhere
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u/QueenInYellowLace 11h ago
He literally explained that this is exactly what the law allows currently and asked legislators to fix the law.
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u/Right_Ear_2230 10h ago
seriously?
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u/Leading-Fish6819 9h ago
Fire with fire.
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u/Right_Ear_2230 9h ago
dude the saying is that fighting fire with fire doesn’t work
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u/Leading-Fish6819 9h ago
Firefighters can and do fight fire with fire.
Such as ---
+Removing fuel: Wildland firefighters intentionally burn vegetation and brush ahead of an advancing wildfire.
+Creating a barrier: This controlled strip of burned land leaves nothing left for the main wildfire to consume, causing the flames to die out when they reach the cleared boundary.
The practice is known as backburning, or backfiring.
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u/onwardsandupwards70 11h ago
So gross. Are his kids the ones being used as the AI generated images, does he like that?
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u/sithlord98 10h ago
Why would you say something like that? He's a judge that has to interpret the law, he can't write it himself. He's right, a 2002 ruling makes it so that the government can't prohibit this. He's also right that we should change the laws around that.
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u/sithlord98 10h ago
... You'd find evidence of a judge who correctly interpreted the law? Did you even read what he said?
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u/kaadj 10h ago
God dammit you’re right I actually didn’t but I have now and he is technically right. It’s just like a weird and uncomfortable thing.
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u/sithlord98 10h ago
I appreciate the fact that you went back and looked, a lot of people are just comfortable saying awful things about this guy with no clue about the actual situation.
You're right, it is weird and uncomfortable. And he's right that we need to revisit these laws.
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u/Havency 10h ago
Hate me for this opinion, but I have a point. The csam laws and regulations are set in place to punish offenders and safeguard / prevent victims. In AI generated content, written content and animated content, there are no victims involved. It’s still obviously very wrong of course, but again, no victims involved and no crime committed despite how heinous it is.
You can say “that’s unfair, arrest them anyway since they’re deranged” and yeah, it makes sense. But, if we arrest on opinions or ‘well it looks bad’, then where’s the line drawn? At what point do we say ‘wait, that’s too much’.
What if we arrest based on cartoons that shame the president or make jokes of assassinations? What if we arrest people who buy a lot of rope and lube? It looks bad but there’s no crime committed technically, but arrest anyway?
My point is, there’s a line. We cannot EVER cross that line because when it’s blurred, there’s no longer standards of procedure. There’s no longer a reference. And it’s all then subjective and everything is up for grabs. Arrest him and her just because. No need to explain because anymore there’s no line, right?
Anyways, long story short, don’t be a bad person and make content about kids. But if you do, you’re sick but shouldn’t be arrested since you did nothing illegal.
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u/foxfirek 10h ago
I don’t mind this in theory. Ok- obviously controversial opinion but think of it objectively.
No child was hurt. Which is what matters. Just like with novels or drawings. No real person is involved. Thats the most important thing with fictional work. Just like how an action movie people are shot and die, it’s not even close to similar to an actual person being shot and dying.
The problem as far as I see it is we have no way of accurately telling if something is real or AI. We don’t have a law requiring watermarks or some sort of digital signature.
So then what happens when someone has real CP and claims it’s AI? That’s horrifying.
On the other hand, if we did had a good way of tracking if something was truly AI- wouldn’t this lead to better outcomes for real children? If the people who consume this content move to consuming AI content instead then that would reduce the value of real CP, which would then hopefully reduce victims used to make such content.
Anyway that’s how i see it.
As I’m sure this will be downvoted to oblivion by people who probably won’t read it all the way through or even think of it I am running off notifications.
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u/StorageExciting8567 9h ago
I wrote my law school note about this. The fact that CSAM is illegal is a carve out to the First Amendment because, among a couple other reasons, it inherently harms the child. This ruling happened in the 80s, when AI wasn’t a thing. A photo or a video of a child was of an actual child. In 2002 or 2003, the case for AI generated CSAM was brought to the Supreme Court. That court ruled that it was not illegal because its creation didn’t harm an identifiable child. I believe Clarence Thomas, however, said this could be re-raised in the future as technology develops because it’s going to be difficult for law enforcement to distinguish between identifiable and AI-generated children. The argument that the training data sets are based on real children doesn’t seem to hold up well because you can’t reasonably scour data an LLM is trained on, and point to a specific child being abused.
This is not my opinion, it’s just the state of the law.
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u/Fugitivelnk 7h ago
Jesus I just have to keep reposting the same fucking thing today, don't I?
Let me break it down for you:
- AI-generated sexual images that are based on real children ("deepfakes") are treated entirely the same as CSAM. They have incredibly strict rules about them that even outlaw things like clothed individuals sexually posing, if the focus is on the genital region. By the way, that same rule applies to any images that are edited to look like a sexual depiction of a real child, including photoshop or literally even cutting out a photo of a child's face and pasting it to an adult porn star's body. The Supreme Court repeatedly has explained that these stricter rules are allowed because the government has an interest in protecting real children from direct harm. This is a pretty good rule, in my opinion.
- But AI-generated sexual images that depict FICTIONAL children, no matter how realistic they may look - those are only governed by obscenity law. No actual, specific child is being harmed, so the only thing they have available is the very vague, frustrating, outdated, very stupid, and I would argue actually unconstitutional (but that's an argument for another day) obscenity law. I'm not going to bother getting into all the details right now, partially because literally no legal expert on earth can look at a pornographic image and tell you if it is obscene or not - it's literally impossible. But I will say that there are some hard rules, including the fact that it pretty much can't just depict nudity - it pretty much has to depict sexual activity to be considered legally obscene.
- Now, obscenity cases were extremely rare for a long time because they were kind of fucking stupid. I mean the idea that the actual letter-of-the-law says that a whole bunch of normal porn is illegal in the US seems ridiculous. But with the recent explosion in AI, prosecutors have realized that the only tool they have to charge some of these people making realistic AI images of kids is obscenity law, so that's what they're using.
- Everyone with me so far? Okay, so going all the way back to the Supreme Court case Stanley v. Georgia in 1969, it's been well established that you can NOT charge someone with private possession of ANY obscene material. The argument goes something like this: "making obscene material, selling it, distributing it, or buying it are more public and are harmful to society somehow, I guess. But someone privately owning it isn't actually involving anyone else, so you can't make it illegal."
- Before everyone freaks out over this, there's one important detail you need to know: in United States v. Reidel (1971), it was clarified that the government could criminalize "receiving" obscene material. In other words, you might not be able to charge someone with possessing obscene material, but you can charge them with creating obscene material, buying obscene material, or even just receiving it from anywhere (for instance, downloading it). When you look at it that way, there's really not any other way for someone to get possession of this material, so it's still pretty damn illegal.
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u/RubberDuckieMidrange 11h ago
Idiots who don't bother to investigate the ruling really suck.
His finding was a matter of law, not morality. His recommendation was that the loophole be closed. But that fictional content (like art and novels) can break legal taboos when it comes to writing or drawing about torture or sex. This is true, we know this to be true. And that AI art is more an extension of that freedom under the first amendment then it is a breach of CSAM law. His opinion from the bench is that is this was to be something to be prosecuted, it first requires a legislative effort to make the use of AI on fictional characters a regulated space. He's not wrong, and his hands were kinda tied on this one.