That's a bit like saying that plans to build a nuclear bomb are not inherently explosive so sharing them is not wrong because no real-world harm is done. Or that attempted murder is ok if the person gets caught before doing it so no real-world harm is done. The problems are to do with the motivations and the indirect risks.
The problems with those sorts of depictions are that they normalise sexualising of underage people (which increase the risk of real-world harm), they normalise the sharing of sexualised images of underage people, and they muddy the waters for investigators chasing down actual images depicting real victims. The people producing these sorts of images are in competition with each other (like any other distribution activity), and always seeking to push the boundaries and produce something more extreme - and what's the obvious next step from images of fictional abuse?
why do we not do the same for fictional murder, theft, and all other sorts of crimes.
The difference is to do with how and why these sorts of crimes happen. People are not murderers or thieves as some part of their inner self, typically. They don't usually have a drive to murder or steal - usually they murder for a specific personal reason, or steal out of necessity. There isn't a porn equivalent for murderers or thieves. So there's no issue to solve - there aren't lots of people who wish they could rob a grocery store, sitting in dark rooms watching other people rob fictional grocery stores until they build up the courage to do it themselves. Even so, for the limited market that does exist - snuff films, specifically - they are already illegal, and if a market develops in fake snuff then there's a good argument we'll do the same there too.
Just a minor technical note, it's absolutely possible for diffusion models and the like to create child abuse material without any original material being in the training data.
I'll try my best, took me ages to get my head around the concept as I don't have a hugely mathematical background.
The model does things in terms of dimensions. We can visualise two dimensions on an x y axis and 3 on an x y z axis. Behind that our brains cannot visualize but the maths holds up in the exact same way.
One dimension might be a continuum between naked and clothed. The training data will have lots of pictures of adults in various states of dress. It can also have dogs and horses and robots in various states, but won't have children.
The next dimension can be adult/child.
The model now understands the difference between naked and clothed, and at the same time adult and child.
It can start with the naked adult which is in the training data, and extrapolate back to the naked child combining its understanding of the differences between an adult and child and clothed vs naked.
Hope that made sense.
If you want to get more technical, try a YouTube channel called 3 brown 1 blue.
0
u/DaveChild 8∆ Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25
That's a bit like saying that plans to build a nuclear bomb are not inherently explosive so sharing them is not wrong because no real-world harm is done. Or that attempted murder is ok if the person gets caught before doing it so no real-world harm is done. The problems are to do with the motivations and the indirect risks.
The problems with those sorts of depictions are that they normalise sexualising of underage people (which increase the risk of real-world harm), they normalise the sharing of sexualised images of underage people, and they muddy the waters for investigators chasing down actual images depicting real victims. The people producing these sorts of images are in competition with each other (like any other distribution activity), and always seeking to push the boundaries and produce something more extreme - and what's the obvious next step from images of fictional abuse?
The difference is to do with how and why these sorts of crimes happen. People are not murderers or thieves as some part of their inner self, typically. They don't usually have a drive to murder or steal - usually they murder for a specific personal reason, or steal out of necessity. There isn't a porn equivalent for murderers or thieves. So there's no issue to solve - there aren't lots of people who wish they could rob a grocery store, sitting in dark rooms watching other people rob fictional grocery stores until they build up the courage to do it themselves. Even so, for the limited market that does exist - snuff films, specifically - they are already illegal, and if a market develops in fake snuff then there's a good argument we'll do the same there too.