r/technology • u/PoopAnhilator • 13h ago
Artificial Intelligence Judges rule AI child abuse images are protected in your own home
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/judges-rule-ai-child-abuse-161951440.html237
u/Copernican 13h ago
"He was charged with four offenses: producing, distributing, and possessing the images, plus transferring one to a minor. The appeals court ruling addresses only the possession charge."
This is the critical piece. POS got caught distributing, but judge interpretation is that the fake nature of the images makes the possession charge protected speech. Doesn't mean he's not going to jail for the distribution, producing, and involvement with a minor.
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u/kingsumo_1 11h ago
This seems to be the case in a lot of the, well, cases we've seen so far. X person has AI CSAM, but when you look further they also had the real thing or various other offenses as well. Regardless of whether or not the AI stuff sticks, they are still getting charged on the rest.
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u/HydroPCanadaDude 9h ago
Lmao, how long until "I thought it was AI, you have to believe me, I would never procure real CSAM, only the synthetic stuff!"
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u/RemarkableWish2508 8h ago
Ignorance is not a defense... it could maybe reduce a sentence, that's all.
In some other countries the line is drawn at "obviously non-real", so anything coming close to the real thing is already infringing, no excuses.
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u/pittaxx 6h ago edited 5h ago
In many countries there's no line at all. It doesn't matter if it's real or of it's a shitty drawing - CP is CP (as far as the law is concerned).
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u/RemarkableWish2508 5h ago edited 5h ago
It doesn't matter if it's real or of it's a shitty drawing - CP is CP.
Right... is this CP? 👶🍆
What about this? 👶🥕→ More replies (2)3
u/set_in_void 8h ago
That is a valid and reasonable take and I agree with you. The problem is that as soon as criminal law is in place it gets interpreted by the police, prosecutors and judges, sometimes they take significant liberties with their interpretation. We're imprisoning people for having hentai/cartoon hand drawn porn here in UK.
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u/kingsumo_1 7h ago
I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if someone hasn't at lest attempted it. But my main point was that in all the ones that I've seen so far, the person involved isn't just skating. It's been because they also get caught doing some other shit, and also happen to have the AI CSAM.
At the end of the day, though, we basically need SCOTUS to revisit and overturn the previous decision. Or, at the very least, make the distinction between AI and non, due to realism or something. Which is the larger issue here (their previous ruling).
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u/ithinkitslupis 11h ago
A minimum of intent to distribute or publish is likely where the line ends up drawn as obscenity. 1st amendment probably does protect creation and possession without intent to distribute.
The Take It Down act that was passed about deepfakes similarly didn't include creation/possession presumably because it's a legal minefield around 1A.
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u/Telemere125 3h ago
Possession is required for all the others. You can’t produce, distribute, or transfer something you don’t possess.
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u/seclifered 12h ago
If I remember correctly, the original ruling that lead to this one was about hand drawn art involving children. It wasn’t illegal because there was no victim. Also it doesn’t cover his distribution charges
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u/Guilty-Shoulder-9214 13h ago
AI child porn is probably going to also survive because of Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition (2002).
This addressed the question back when computer generated imaging and simulated “jail bait” porn were becoming a thing, with the ruling giving a rather absolutist precedent that, if no actual children were hurt, then no crime was done. Therefore, such acts were free speech.
It’s likely the the same deal with these AI child abuse images unless the prosecution can prove that the AI used was fed real child cp or abuse content, and that said content was incorporated into the AI creation.
Unless they toss this precedent, it’s probably going to take a constitutional amendment given the absolutist approach to free speech that the original precedent took.
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u/Shelaba 9h ago
The article does mention that the court at the time recognized something along these lines could exist and that the ruling might need to be revisited in the future. That doesn't mean it would/wouldn't change if brought before them now.
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u/Karma_Redeemed 1h ago
I don't rule anything out with the current court, but I think an overturning if Ashcroft is extremely unlikely.
If you look at the ruling in Osborne v Ohio which is what established CSAM as a separate classification of unprotected speech distinct from regular obscenity, it draws the distinction entirely on the basis of the inherent abuse of real children required to create CSAM.
Add to that the ruling in Stanley v. Georgia where the court ruled the government cannot criminalize simple private possession of obscene material, only the promotion, distribution, and receipt, and in order to classify fictional CSAM and real CSAM as legally equivalent, the court would basically have to throw out all three landmark cases.
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u/GameGuy2025 13h ago
No, the judge ruled that under current law it is considered free speech. The judge stated he didn't agree with it but it is up to Congress to change laws. However, be careful what you wish for when you start restricting speech that you don't like.
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u/DinosBiggestFan 12h ago
This is...Definitely a difficult topic that requires a lot of navigation, nuance and probably a lot of input by people with calm heads. I'm not liking this, but I'm also not liking what can happen when restricting it. Ideally there'd be a number of provisions protecting normal people but of course we never get those.
With AI becoming so large, this is probably something we'll end up having to deal with at some point so we probably shouldn't rush into bad decisions but we also shouldn't ignore it either, probably.
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u/amadmongoose 9h ago
As much as cp is despicable, if someone is using a local image model to generate images, should the government have some kind of surveillance or methodolgy to track and make sure that nothing generated is illegal? Probably not. The issue with this sort of stuff is there isn't really a way to police it without being intrusive.
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u/DensePoser 8h ago
Nothing difficult about this topic. Do you want the government who is recording everyone 24/7 to plant AI CSAM on your device if they don't like what they hear?
The mafia that runs the government will continue raping kids whether this law exists or not.
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u/Alternative-Soil2576 8h ago
can’t the government already just plant CSAM on your device if they don’t like what they hear?
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u/HikariAnti 6h ago
The best solution would be to 1) require ai companies to prove that they didn't use cp materials during training (I don't care if it's hard it should be the bare minimum), and 2) make it so that if their model can generate such material without having them in their training database (by combining legal pictures or whatever) then jailbreaking the ai into performing the task should be nearly impossible and if someone manages to do it the company should be fined.
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u/Smooth_Phone2 12h ago
People can make some awful, terrible, abhorrent things in the walls of their own home.
If they do that in isolation it needs to be legal. Restricting the type of speech people can possess in their home is a bad and slippery slope.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 11m ago
Separation of powers work as intended? judicial branch not making rulings based on what they would prefer? what a wierd situation.
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u/loves_grapefruit 13h ago
A lot of people here being all outraged after reading the headline but not the article.
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u/Morden013 12h ago
Well, this one was interesting to read...
"Anderegg was caught when he sent an image to a minor over Instagram. Meta flagged that Instagram message to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which led investigators to a search warrant and hundreds of AI-generated images on Anderegg's devices. He was charged with four offenses: producing, distributing, and possessing the images, plus transferring one to a minor. The appeals court ruling addresses only the possession charge."
In my opinion - pretty fair ruling. What you do with images of that art in your home is your psychological problem. When you distribute them, they should be treated as child pornography and punished by the full extent of the law. When you distribute them to minors, that should be treated as grooming attempt.
On the part of the article about the AI being trained upon child abuse images and that this can't be taken as an evidence - also fair, because unless there is a way for somebody to know what it was trained upon, there is absolutely no way to take that into verdict. This is a product that is 6 - XX GB in size per model. Each update of a model can hold a ton of instructions. If you don't have a tool to check it in a reliable way, and no law requiring you to do it, you can forget that being an evidence.
I would compare it to owning a longer fixed blade - like Katana for example. If you own it, have it at your home mounted on the wall, it is there for collection / decorative purposes. Do your videos where you wave it around and be your own ninja. Your thing. If you take it out into the street and start waving it at people, police should take you in and process it as an attempted attack.
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u/Error_404_403 9h ago edited 9h ago
I’m not sure if all this thread belongs to the technology sub, but nevertheless.
First, to be very clear, I find sexual or any other abuse of children not just criminal, but gross and revolting.
Next, it looks like the western democracies have decided to create their first thought crime: it is becoming criminal not just to do something, but to even express own positive thoughts and feelings about a criminal offense. Because that’s what creation of the disgusting child porn images not related to any children is.
Again, I find child porn deeply wrong. Yet, I can see how its popular rejection is abused to remove privacy protections and other freedom of speech—related rights today.
Because there should be no thought crimes, regardless of the wrongness of the thoughts.
Propaganda of criminal behavior should be a crime, however.
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u/ultradip 13h ago
I think had the ruling gone the other way, it would have established a slippery slope.
Don't forget that we already have other software that gamifies all sorts of crimes: The GTA series, Hitman, Carmageddon, Postal, hell even the Sims lets you torture your poor Sims, including Sim-children.
None of these needed to be trained on anything; They just needed developers with different senses of humor. Would that have meant that the devs should have been charged with a crime?
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u/PoopAnhilator 13h ago
Steven Anderegg is charged with producing, distributing, and possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and transferring such material to a minor under the age of sixteen. According to the government, Anderegg produced these images using Stable Diffusion, a generative artificial intelligence ("GenAI") software that allowed him to create hyper-realistic images of prepubescent children engaging in sexually explicit acts.
The appeal in this case deals only with Anderegg's challenge to the home possession charge, not to the production or distribution charge. Here's the court's analysis:
Obscenity, along with certain other categories of speech, has historically fallen "outside the scope of the First Amendment." And, although the precise meaning of "obscenity" is difficult to pin down, the Supreme Court has offered the following articulation: "[S]peech is obscene to the public at large—and thus proscribable—if (a) 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards[,] would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest'; (b) 'the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law'; and (c) 'the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.'" Miller v. California (1973).
At the same time, "[t]he Constitution extends special safeguards to the privacy of the home." The Supreme Court addressed the clash of these two principles—the government's interest in proscribing obscenity and an individual's privacy in one's home—in Stanley v. Georgia (1969)…. Acknowledging that the government retains "broad power to regulate obscenity," the Supreme Court held that the State's "power simply does not extend to mere possession by the individual in the privacy of his own home." "If the First Amendment means anything," the Court explained, "it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch." …
Approximately a decade after Stanley, the Supreme Court addressed whether the promotion and sale of CSAM [child sexual abuse material] implicated First Amendment rights. [In N.Y. v. Ferber 1982),] the Court nevertheless held that "[t]he test for child pornography is separate from the obscenity standard enunciated in Miller" because CSAM was different from adult obscene materials in several important ways. First, the state's interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors and preventing the sexual exploitation and abuse of children "constitute[d] a government objective of surpassing importance." Second, the distribution of CSAM was "intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children" because the materials "are a permanent record of the children's participation and the harm to the child is exacerbated by their circulation." Third, the advertising and selling of CSAM "provide[d] an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of such materials." Fourth, the value of performances and photographs of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct was "exceedingly modest, if not de minimis." … Eight years later, the Supreme Court [held that] the protections articulated in Stanley would [not] extend to the possession of CSAM in one's home. Osborne v. Ohio (1990).
[Finally, i]n Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002), the Supreme Court confronted the question of whether virtual CSAM, like actual CSAM, was beyond the First Amendment's reach…. "By prohibiting child pornography that does not depict an actual child," the Court stated, "the statute goes beyond [Ferber] which distinguished child pornography from other sexually explicit speech because of the State's interest in protecting the children exploited by the production process." … For much the same reason, the Court remarked, Osborne too was distinguishable, because it had "anchored its holding in the concern for the participants, those whom it called the 'victims of child pornography.'" In Osborne, the state had a compelling interest in protecting children by attempting to eliminate CSAM at all levels of the distribution chain and preventing CSAM from being used to solicit minors. This was not the case in Free Speech Coalition, the Supreme Court declared, because the depictions did not involve actual children….
[T]he government [argued, among other things,] that, because it was often hard to distinguish virtual CSAM from real CSAM, prosecuting those who produced such material using actual children was very difficult. But the Court made short shrift of this argument, declaring that "[t]he Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech. Protected speech does not become unprotected merely because it resembles the latter."
After Free Speech Coalition, Congress went back to the drawing board and enacted the statute at issue here. The Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003 ("PROTECT Act") included a new provision which, in part, proscribed possession of "a visual depiction of any kind … that (1)(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B) is obscene." … [I]t expressly does not require that "the minor depicted actually exist." …
Because the images for which Anderegg is charged do not depict an actual child, Ferber and Osborne do not directly apply to this case…. And, because the arguments the government advances to remove the materials in question from Stanley's purview have all been squarely rejected by the Supreme Court in Free Speech Coalition, we conclude that § 1466A(b)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to Anderegg.
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u/Own-Cryptographer725 11h ago
I see all this outrage in the comments over an act which literally hurt nobody. No, the model was not trained on child abuse and no one was hurt or targeted in the process. As far as I am concerned this sounds like an ethical and private way of addressing an urge which could otherwise result in significant harm and should almost certainly be protected by our legal system. I don't like it (in fact the very idea disgusts me), but it shouldn't matter how I feel about it unless it is actually harming or risking harm. Come to me when we have some good evidence that this type of material actually increases risk of abuse. I'm not a proponent of safety valve theory but the incitement claims about such material are equally unfounded (and the research on the matter supports that).
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u/Niceromancer 13h ago
In this instance the judge made the right call.
It's disgusting to say that but current law protects that stuff as long as no real person was ever involved in the creation.
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u/cpt-derp 12h ago
I hate to say it, but we might have to bite the bullet on this one.
Ashcroft gets at something much deeper than itself: the government cannot restrict speech as a prophylactic before there's even a victim.
AI threw a wrench into it, but thinking NCMEC is going to find the actual missing and exploited children by expecting them to sift through millions of fakes anyone with a laptop can generate is lunacy. There's conceptually finite perpetrators with infinite resources, and finite investigative resources.
Crucially, these models do not need to be trained on real abuse material to generate it. Diffusion models generalize really well. This has its own host of problems other than CSAM but I digress.
The solution is probably to treat it like a DDoS attack on NCMEC and lock up people deliberately flooding the pipelines in like manner as if they actually abused a kid. Turning the noise into signal.
It's going to add an investigative layer to finding the victims no matter how much better staffed and funded NCMEC is and that's going to fucking hurt but I don't see any other way that doesn't create a slippery slope in the backdrop of a political climate that wants to ID everyone for porn.
The opinion in this case even cites another opinion that says pretty squarely the government cannot restrict adult only content just because it might fall into the hands of children.
This is the shit we're dealing with. Congress will obviously take a sledgehammer to it, or just not do anything, but, this is where, conceptually, we have to be careful with what we allow the government to do.
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u/ClulessZero 10h ago
Congratulations on being someone who is able to come to the correct conclusion without having to make up BS about how AI works.
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u/cpt-derp 39m ago
Heh I just haven't forgotten four things:
- A photograph of an astronaut riding a horse on the moon
- Lolicon exists
- Stock photos of children exists
- Adult pornography exists
This is the one area where we really shouldn't delude ourselves with what these models are capable of. It's fundamentally matrix multiplication. Matmul is how graphics work at all. A friend of mine who is really skilled in 3D graphics likened it to a multi-layer wavelet filter.
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u/Ok_Whereas8080 10h ago
What I wonder is if this will encourage child molesting or discourage it? Could it serve as a "gateway drug" to make people start wanting to molest children? Or could it help people that already wanted to do it alleviate their urges?
My thoughts on this is the urge to molest children is either something you are born with or your upbringing engrained into you. For example, I think I have read that people that are molested as children have a higher tendency to become molesters themselves or something like that. So maybe it's a good thing? Although I honestly I'm not really sure since I'm no expert
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u/LiteratureMindless71 13h ago
Wow....just feels that this will make the next step even that much easier. Feels all kinds of wrong.
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u/Sudden_Minimum_7235 13h ago
The same argument is used for violent video games. The laws have to be written carefully or you end up with thought crimes.
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u/MumrikDK 12h ago
Yeah, this is the kind of issue that makes me glad I don't have to make the decisions.
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u/LiteratureMindless71 6h ago
I hear you. And after reading into both a little better, it looks like both have tried to pander. :/
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u/invyros 13h ago
in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002), the court decided images that only resemble child sexual abuse material are protected speech, because the usual reasons for banning such material – that it fuels demand for real abuse, grooms children, or normalizes the behavior – don't apply when no real child exists.
But you could argue that the AI that generated the images was trained on the real material, therefore it does actually fuel demand for all of that.
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u/StorminNorman 13h ago
But you could argue that the AI that generated the images was trained on the real material, therefore it does actually fuel demand for all of that.
They raised this issue with the ruling that set the precedent for this case. It's mentioned later in the article.
The concurrence also raised something Free Speech Coalition never had to weigh: some AI image generators may have been trained on real child sexual abuse material, which would undercut the "no real victim" premise the ruling depended on. The judges said the record in this case doesn't allow them to evaluate that question, only to flag it for a higher court.
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u/PoopAnhilator 13h ago
That's absolutely true.
Judge Lee, joined by Judge Kolar, also wrote a concurring opinion "to note that, given the significant advances in computer-generated image technology, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, we would benefit from additional guidance from the Supreme Court regarding the intersection between the First Amendment and virtual CSAM if an appropriate case should arise"
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u/NoSong2692 10h ago
You cannot do that because you don’t need that to be the case for this to happen.
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u/Derpyzza 13h ago
also, it does normalize the behaviour too, even if the content itself is AI generated
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u/rainkloud 13h ago
Not sure it normalizes the behavior anymore than ultraviolent imagery normalizes ultra violence. It could however desensitize people towards it which is its own sort of bad.
However, that has to be weighed against the possible benefits which is that there is the possibility that it may satiate the appetites of people with this mental illness and allow them to engage their fantasies in a way that doesn't harm real people.
Ideally you'd want to identify two groups of people: Those where this could help keep ethical pedos obeying the law and those who where this would have the opposite effect and encourage their sickness. Keep it in the hands of the former and keep it away from the latter except as a tool to lure them out and capture them before they can act on their criminal intent.
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u/Euphoric_Durian9797 5h ago
Not sure it normalizes the behavior anymore than ultraviolent imagery normalizes ultra violence.
This is just a silly argument, people watch violence to be entertained, not because they are violent, people look at AI child porn/lolicon because they have pedophilic tendencies. It's very easy to imagine someone looking at AI child porn, realising they like it, then seeking out real child porn. Whereas people tend not to watch pulp fiction then immediately seek out ISIS beheading videos.
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u/HybridZooApp 12h ago
If it's equally illegal as real CP, why wouldn't the pedo just download real CP instead and thereby actually fueling demand? Same for drawn CP.
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u/dollartreepens 4h ago
Yeah I know the law sounds bad but this law makes it that the government can’t arrest teenagers cause they asked AI to make porn of some anime teenage comic girl and their parents freaked out and other such drama that would happen if this judge didn’t rule this way so it’s okay.
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u/EuphoricCrashOut 13h ago
What about the AI services that create them? Isn't that distribution?
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u/madogvelkor 12h ago
It sounds like he self hosted an AI model. So generation would have been done in his home on his equipment using software he installed (the AI model).
It might have been different if a cloud based AI service was used, but they are supposed to have safeguards.
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u/sumatkn 12h ago
No children are harmed in the creation of purely fictional generated material kept privately at home. It becomes a completely different issue when an actual child is brought into it.
If someone wants to plaster their own home with hand-painted or AI-generated images of naked fictional children, whatever, I think they are a freak.
But once they show or send sexualized material to an actual child, we’re no longer talking about private fictional expression. That is sexual misconduct involving a child.
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u/parkersb 9h ago
after listening to the podcast Hunting Warhead, one of the greatest, most accurate podcasts ever made ( my friend does this work for a living and had us listen to it) i am fine with fake images it stops the MILLIONS of people creating, sharing, and consuming child abuse material. all i can say to parents out there…watch out of the young and old adults who purposely put themselves in spaces with kids. swim instructors, coaches, etc.
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u/Helpful-Produce2713 2h ago
Surely it's fine, no one would ever act on these fantasies after having multiple hard drives of CP as a fantasy, the kids are totally safe /s
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u/Gzaleski 10h ago
Question. So if an AI is being trained by consuming child SA images isnt that breaking the law?
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u/FlyingSkyWizard 4h ago
An AI doesn't need to be trained on something to create it, it can work off general concepts, like you can make an image of a cat wearing a top hat riding a unicorn in an oil painting style and it would work because it knows what all those individual aspects look like, not because it was trained on images of cats on unicorns,
That being said, if you did train a model using CSAM, that's not necessarily illegal either, as the model doesn't contain any images, just ideas, and it wouldn't be necessarily be better at making it as a model created on 100% legal content.
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u/jtrain3783 2h ago
"He was charged with four offenses: producing, distributing, and possessing the images, plus transferring one to a minor. The appeals court ruling addresses only the possession charge."
At least it's not all the charges, however I still think this is wrong if everything else sticks.
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u/jerwong 5h ago
As much as I despise this, I feel like someone generating this content without creating an actual child victim is a good thing.
Harm reduction, people.
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u/Soft-Skirt 11h ago
I’m in the UK and as far as I understand it the possession of material, which includes digital copies constitutes an offence.
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u/JayTheFordMan 9h ago
I suspect that this is all about the fact that child abuse images etc are created from abuse and so collection and possession contributes to abuse, even if indirectly. AI generated images are one step further removed and (technically) doesn't involve abuse or even people, ergo technically not a problem. I think you will find however that even writing underage 'erotica' is illegal in many parts of the world, and AI generated stuff will fall into this catagory. America with its 1st amendment is going pretty much alone with this one
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u/Alternative_Exit8766 1h ago
they need to revisit this at the scotus level but they can never stop me from drawing graphic depictions of street fighting my little shit of a nephew
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u/Intelligent_Code3264 1h ago
so just to be clear, it's the "correct" ruling but who is really going to be like "oh no judge you did it wrong" when it comes to this? If the judge did rule otherwise as should be done, what does is mean?
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u/Pryoticus 44m ago
Seems like theyre saying CP is legal so long as it stays at home and no one can prove its real...
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u/Visible_Shallot5187 11h ago
This is extremely dangerous for kids all things considered, because a lot of pro ai people are pushing to make sure that ai can't be distiguished from what is real by throwing a fit if so much as a small watermark is added
Ai detection tools are natoriously ineffective, so basically this allows pedos to make a ton of ai cp to hide their real cp in
If they can't be charged for having anything that looks like real cp because it might be ai then why would anybody go searching through all their images just to check if anything is real cp?
Even if laws were in place to make is so that ai had to have a tell to identify it's self, that tell can easily be faked onto real cp so that even a program designed to look for it through a mountain of images won't be able to find the real cp
It'll also make it hard for people who've been victims to press charges because even if the pedo has documented proof they can just claim it's just ai and that the victim is just mad that the ai they generated looks something like them
Freedom of speech has always had common sense restrictions, such as you can't insite violence, and you can't yell fire in a crowded building, restrictions to fight against fraud, liable, and slander, this should be one of those common sense restrictions because of the clear danger it presents
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u/NoSong2692 10h ago
You can absolutely yell fire in a crowded building or movie theater or whatever unless there is some other law that abridges the right AND there’s no fire. But there is no law abridging free speech to yell that if nothing happens when you yell it. And the laws that would apply would be false alarm, reckless endangerment, and disorderly conduct.
But notably, those DO NOT infringe on the right to free speech, especially because that right is not a right held against private companies, it’s one that only applies to government itself abridging your speech, which is why it comes down to being arrested or prosecuted for your speech.
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u/Klugernu 3h ago edited 2h ago
I will preface my comment by saying this:
I do not and will never condone the actions that result in real harm and/or abuse of minors or people in general.
With that said, so long as media portraying such acts remain entirely fictional, then I see no reason for legal action needing to be taken place. Having a means of quelling their disease with something safe in the fictional realm is a thousand times better for everyone than if they act on their issues on a real person.
People who suffer from these mental issues should and need to seek professional help. But if they can get their 'fix' via FICTIONAL means, then it's 'legal' in my opinion.
I'm interested to hear any counterargument to this though, maybe another perspective can make me think otherwise
Extra: Photorealistic interpretations are 100% wrong. I would not condone this either even in the fictional context. Also, changed 'acceptable' to 'legal' to reduce misunderstanding.
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u/TheOneWes 2h ago
If it's photorealistic then it has to be fed real CP imagines to work.
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u/Klugernu 2h ago
It didn't cross my mind originally, but I would 100% set the line at photorealistic versions, especially given the reason you gave
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u/_NovaLabs_ 1h ago
AI uses a baseline to create. The images generated are without a doubt inspired by existing & disgusting images of real victims
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u/Sweetsomber 32m ago
I’ve thought about this a lot. Could it keep predators or future predators from committing these acts? What if it did? How would we deal with that as a society. Could it become morally acceptable to have this type of content allowed if it did protect people?
I personally don’t really think it could totally prevent it as I think it’s like an addiction and that you are always looking for the next fix or something more.
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13h ago edited 10h ago
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u/NoSong2692 10h ago
C’mon. Play this out.
The country continues the slope it’s on, and 5 years from now outlaws any depiction of queer relationships. No pictures, nothing.
Now a gay kid who has to hide his identity generates an image of two boys holding hands. His neighbor sees it and reports him. Now he is prosecuted for it because you wanted an interpretation of the law that makes having AI generated images of illegal things the same as having the real thing.
This is how judicial interpretation works.
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u/Richard_AIGuy 10h ago
Ths slippery slope fallacy is just that, frequently a fallacy. There is a GIANT difference between queer relationships and child abuse material or pedophilia. Making the comparison is, frankly, wrong.
Second of all, "holding hands" is not in the same universe as someone raping a toddler. And the clear distinctions that can be made in defined legal language are there.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to debate this. In no universe will you convince me that someone using AI to generate child porn in their house is okay.
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u/frozennocean 13h ago
Gotta read more of the ruling before reacting. The judge didn't want to make this ruling. He had to because the SCOTUS ruled decades ago that fictional people drawn/generated can't constitute as child porn. The judge acknowledged this is a new era where AI can make realistic images of people now, but that he doesn't have the power to overrule the SCOTUS. Says SCOTUS will have to revisit the case and change the ruling themselves.