I assume the anti-porn crowd will still dislike this on the principle that porn is inherently bad, even though one of their main arguments is how the porn industry exploits the performers.
And presumably the sex work positive crowd will dislike this because it is taking jobs away from real women.
I fully understand porn, but I don't understand that. What is the point of having porn with the specific face of a non porn actor/actress? Is this a fetish I don't get? Artificial revenge porn? Having fun putting the face of $(your least favorite personality) on top of a lascivious body?
Not sure what you mean. Maybe it's just my biases, but I don't think most people would be against fake OnlyFans performers or AI porn with 100% fake personas. But generating porn of real people without their consent, let alone of children... Yikes, it gets problematic fast.
Wait, are they talking about porn of real people (much less children)? My assumption was they were talking about 100% AI generated people where any similarity to real people was purely coincidental.
The article even says "Now, certain corners of the internet are inundated with these explicit images of women who don’t exist".
It is mostly celebs/influencers who are deepfaked into porn. That's where the money is. But it has also happened at schools where someone does it another student/teacher and passes it around.
I don't know if it is true that "that's where the money is" (some of the people quoted in the article are making a whole lot more money that I do at my six-figure tech job). But deepfakes of celebs or students is not what the article is about.
A substantial part of the model-sharing site Civitai's available content is models or LoRAs based entirely on specific people (protected by personality rights, depending on jurisdiction) or characters (usually protected by copyright and often by trademark).
For a more-or-less work-safe example, here's one made to specifically reproduce Christian Bale's appearance as Patrick Bateman: https://civitai.com/models/8476
But that's exactly my point - it's reasonable to expect Christian Bale to 1. agree to this, 2. expect compensation if he does, 3. take legal action if he doesn't agree but someone does it anyway, 4. have people who make these face criminal charges if he gets deepfaked into some kind of child porn. You have to be a hardcore libertarian to argue for less regulation around this.
I can also understand parents of teenagers argue for more regulation - we've got enough teen suicides as is and I don't see how this tech helps with that. I can see plenty of ways it makes it worse.
But all of the above is just not a thing if the generated person doesn't exist and is hardly similar to anyone alive.
Not that I support people's likeness being used without their consent, but how is banning something related to AI going to resolve this problem?
I can draw an illustration right now that uses someone's likeness without their consent that they may not like so much - who is stopping me? So why are we trying to stop AI?
Seems like an issue to address on another layer/level. Or a veiled attempt to control something for other reasons under convenient cover.
Their lawyer, if your depiction is covered by personality rights and the situation is significant enough to pursue damages. This is pretty much never going to be the case with an individual drawing (especially if only available non-commercially), but there are plenty of examples of people winning or settling for substantial sums after, for example, their likeness was used to advertise something without their consent.
> So why are we trying to stop AI?
Because a bunch of companies are trying to launder various legal liabilities (copyright, personality rights, etc) through the claim of 'it was just training data'.
> Sam’s models and photos are fictional, but to make the accounts more believable, he buys videos of real-life adult creators and then deepfakes in his AI models’ heads. He says his partner sources the videos from contacts in the adult industry, who know that their faces will be cut from the footage, but doesn’t specify whether they know exactly what the videos are being used for.
The "real women" are still working, it just doesn't look like them at the point of sale.
We need to figure out what exactly we want to ban. Banning AI generated porn just because we had, since deeply Christian days, banned anything sex related just doesn't make sense anymore as a sole justification.
I'm not for it or against it, I just see crusades on this topic based on... well pretty much nothing, just strong convictions.
If you've read enough of these articles, you have heard every permutation of why this is bad based on the author's personal biases and convictions.
Subjects are all blonde and white? White supremacy. Subjects are all Asian and submissive? Fetishization of minorities. Fake models cater to male fantasies? Incel chauvinism sets unrealistic expectations for real women. Better than OnlyFans performers? Oppressing a vulnerable sex worker class already struggling with making fair wages.
Whatever your personal position, there's a brand-building opportunity for endless sanctimonious tweets.
Your post reminds me of a music forum I’m on where a lot of regulars seem to have got bored discussing music, and now are more keen on discussing how a certain band or genre is either harmful to whatever minority, or progressive and liberatory for whatever minority. Room for endless sanctimonious tweets indeed. How did contemporary anglophone society end up like this?
Being a victim, or a righteous defender of victims, is a guaranteed source of prestige and lift in status in the anglosphere's college-educated middle class.
It’s actually about unkindness. Kind people would give others the benefit of the doubt. This is the type of kindness you see from politicians, where individuals are aggressively attacked due to some microaggression to a group.
Compassion and solidarity should not be imposed without compassion, though. You don’t fight hate and oppression with more hate and oppression. When most people are annoyed with in-your-face militant attitudes it’s not because they don’t want to be nice. It’s because they don’t want to be bullied into following the dogma of the day. Of course you also have plain old racists, but putting them in the same bag as the big chunk of the population who just wants to get on with their day is bound to alienate quite a few people. Hence the blowback.
When someone explains that I cannot not be racist because I have pale skin (which does happen), well it just makes me want to punch them in the face. If we are supposed to all belong and accept each other regardless of our external appearance, then people making assumption about me based on it is just prejudice.
Being holy is good, being "holier than thou" is bad.
Doing things to support minorities is good, having a row based on who is the biggest friend/foe of various minorities… it's not literally "Munchausen by proxy" but it seems to have similar vibes.
My experience is that the content of those arguments often doesn't matter. This sticks out to me particularly in music discussions because those discussions have always had room for endless sanctimonious opinions. One of the most valuable things I read when I was younger on the Internet was a SomethingAwful columnist explaining how to be a fake music snob and pointing out that "people involved in music discussions don’t actually care what other people think, they’re merely concerned about the politics of domination and submission." It's not just music discussions: human discussions in general are prone to this, and when the discussion is really about the politics of domination and submission (a topic that people, usually correctly, care a whole lot about), the "real" subject matter of the discussion will become the building blocks of the social dominance exercise and its connection to the underlying thing will quickly be severed. There is no political tendency or fandom or faith that is immune to this, it's an emergent feature of humans' monkey brain hardware.
Why so quick to blame this on old Christian puritanism? Current opposition to AI-generated porn comes also from a school of feminists directly opposed to what you view as traditional Christian puritanism.
Your call for “statistics” is snarky inasmuch as I made no claim in my post for which statistics would be relevant. Please don’t do this here. But as far as the existence of feminist opposition to these developments, did you miss the last major HN link about this topic?[0] Zero Christian basis to that woman’s concerns, nor are the women in her comments section agreeing with her out of professed Christian morality.
It's not a fringe thing. Even The New York Times has written about how "sex-positive" feminism is dying; and being replaced with an anti-porn feminism.
In her new book, “The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century,” the philosopher Amia Srinivasan, who is quickly becoming one of the most high-profile feminist thinkers in the English-speaking world, describes teaching Oxford students about second-wave anti-porn activism. She assumes her students, for whom porn is ubiquitous, will “find the anti-porn position prudish and passé.” They do not. Rather, they’re in complete agreement with assertions that could come straight from Andrea Dworkin.
“Could it be that pornography doesn’t merely depict the subordination of women, but actually makes it real? I asked. Yes, they said,” writes Srinivasan. She continues, “Does porn bear responsibility for the objectification of women, for the marginalization of women, for sexual violence against women? Yes, they said, yes to all of it.”
True, some feminist movements became very anti-porn. It’s a fringe of the overall population, though, and they are very far from having the influence conservative and religious fundamentalists have.
It’s also a mistake in the long run if you ask me, because this can only lead to more oppression, injustice, and shame. People won’t stop fucking because someone told them to; witness the number of high-profile conservatives having (sometimes homosexual) affairs.
I personally feel like there's no reason to ban AI-made porn, but that we need some kind of copyright enforcement and enforcement of publicity rights around training data for AI content in general. We will always have porn, but I think it's perfectly cromulent to require that commercially available AI-made porn all ultimately derives from legally acquired sources.
Or, to put it another way, I would treat it as if the training data was legally the same as using a source (however minimally) in Photoshop to produce some final image.
Actually even before that we have to figure out how the logistics of any sort of ban involving porn models will even work when said models are made open-source and are smeared out across a million websites, discord servers, and torrents; with new varients coming out as fast as the various overpowered gaming and mining machines of the masses can shoot them out.
Like, I really don't understand someone can look at how well suppressing something like piracy has gone and then go and be like "Yeah an AI ban could work"
Not to change drastically from the subject matter of the original article, but I think really the most troubling thing to me listed here is how willing many men are to interacting with openly fake AI accounts on these apps. And this is not meant at all to mock these men, I'm genuinely concerned for the welfare of the kind of man who is so deprived and isolated of attention that he's ready to swipe his credit card for an AI-powered chat-bot with generated titties to tell him it loves him. It makes me think of all the Replika users who got (somewhat rightfully I feel) pissed off when they paywalled erotic/romantic engagement. Again, not judgement. Pity. I feel bad for these people who are so without any kind of social connections and/or the ability to get them that chat bots feel like their only options.
There are so many social sicknesses here that technical and market solutions are attempting to band-aid and it's genuinely depressing.
Also as an aside, using real people's faces for deepfake pornography should be prosecuted just like any other kind of sexual assault with similar consequences. That shit is disgusting and I will not respond to any comment saying otherwise, I don't care if you didn't actually touch her, or whatever excuse you have on offer. You have created exploitative material of a sexual nature without consent, that's assault, period, paragraph.
Those sad men aren't necessarily interacting with AI-powered chat bots. OnlyFans models have been outsourcing their chatting with fans to workers in the developing world for years now. As anglophone countries, Nigeria and Kenya have been able to draw a lot of this outsourcing, and the person pretending to be the model is male probably more often than not.
I mean, even the "best" version of this is men ready to put down money to interact with a performer which is some combination of AI/exploited overseas worker/exploited sex worker to attempt via the only way they see as viable to fill the yawning chasm of loneliness in their souls. That's still depressing.
It’s not always the sex worker masterminding the operation. Especially in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, the models are often under the exploitive control of pimps, and it is the pimps who outsource the model’s chatting for the sake of greater income.
I mean, in a perfect world, sex workers would choose sex work because it's work they wanted to do. However there are numerous factors that complicate this:
1) The existence of sex pests like Andrew Tate who openly recruit and exploit young women into working for them as adult performers
2) The socio-economic realities of where a given person grows up and is raised in, which greatly affects their prospects in life in general which may artificially make sex work a more appealing option
3) The overarching threat of starvation which may force someone with literally no other options to do it, lest they end up homeless and freeze to death.
This is where some feminists and "anti-porn" activists have problems with it, because in an exploitative system that demands you work in some way to survive, there is an argument to be made that no sex work can be truly thought to be entirely devoid of some form of coercion, and therefore the sex involved in that sex work cannot, in turn, be entirely devoid of coercion, which makes it, by definition, rape. I don't particularly subscribe to that belief as I believe it trivializes the free will and agency of performers, but like, I also can't entirely say that it's incorrect. I see the bones of the reasoning and it does make sense to me, and there surely are a ton, an absolutely stressful amount of sex workers out there right now, who are doing it because it is the only path to a decent quality of life available to them (or worse, their sole method of survival due to systemic or more direct threats). And if I found out a given performer who's content I enjoy was one of those people, I can't say I wouldn't be uncomfortable with it.
> This is where some feminists and "anti-porn" activists have problems with it, because in an exploitative system that demands you work in some way to survive, there is an argument to be made that no sex work can be truly thought to be entirely devoid of some form of coercion, and therefore the sex involved in that sex work cannot, in turn, be entirely devoid of coercion, which makes it, by definition, rape.
The part where they completely discredit themselves is where they (almost invariably) draw from this the conclusion that paying for sex work must be made illegal.
If women turn to sex work as the only available means to survive, how exactly does it help them to take away that option?
> The part where they completely discredit themselves is where they (almost invariably) draw from this the conclusion that paying for sex work must be made illegal.
Agreed.
> If women turn to sex work as the only available means to survive, how exactly does it help them to take away that option?
Well I don't think the goal is to help them, I think the goal is to take away the ability for people to pay to rape them with legal cover. Like it's one thing for sex workers to be selling access to their bodies if it's under the table and illegal, even technically. It's quite another for the justice system of your particular country to go on the record and, in writing, state that you are allowed to coerce sex from another person in exchange for money. And like, again, I don't entirely disagree with that, if you accept the underlying logic that goes:
- Anything done for survival is coerced
- Sex work for survival is therefore coerced
- Sex during sex work done for survival is coerced sex
- Coerced sex is rape
- Therefore, no sex work done within a system where it is required for survival is consensual.
Like, there is a there there. It's uncomfortable but I can't argue it down. Making it illegal surely doesn't help them, but making it entirely legal means you are basically legalizing the ability for people with money to rape women who cannot say no, lest they starve to death. And like... that doesn't feel great either.
Under this argument wouldn't any type of paid labor be coercive? Hell, it seems like any interpersonal activity in a capitalistic society be considered coercive since every activity is just X number of steps away from 'survival'.
I mean, you say that like it isn't a well-worn meme that people loathe the companies they work for but have no real choice to get different jobs. I know dozens of people who work for companies they believe are actively worsening the world because they literally don't have a choice. If they quit, they would die. And that's just like, the basic money problem. If you happen to be in the United States, your ability to access healthcare is also extremely tightly tied to your employment status.
Would anyone at all work food service if the alternative wasn't starvation? I don't know a single person who's worked that sort of job that would do it if they didn't need to to eat, not because it's antithetical to the human experience to serve food, but because it pays like garbage and the customers treat you like shit.
I don't care for all that "logic" which is not logical at all, just a bullshit attempt to avoid confronting that reality doesn't work the way you wish it would and you have no way to change that.
>Well I don't think the goal is to help them, I think the goal is to take away the ability for people to pay to rape them with legal cover.
In other words: you are willing to make life worse for people in order to protect your own sensibilities.
> I don't care for all that "logic" which is not logical at all, just a bullshit attempt to avoid confronting that reality doesn't work the way you wish it would and you have no way to change that.
I am so very curious which part of this is breaking with reality in your mind. But given you aren't refuting any particular assertion I'm guessing you're just uncomfortable with the conclusion and don't have a logical refutation for any part of it, so you're just discarding it.
To be clear, I do not fully agree with this either which I spelled out quite plainly above. I'm just saying I do understand how they get to the point they're at, which like, you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to understand why people think a certain way without agreeing with it, but just saying "well that's not how reality works!" as though our modern world, legal system and basis of governance was handed down to us by the Almighty on Mount Sinai is the epitome of intellectual cowardice. Most everything about our "reality" is malleable should we will it.
> In other words: you are willing to make life worse for people in order to protect your own sensibilities.
I literally outlined that I don't agree with this conclusion because I feel it discards too much of the given sex worker's autonomy! I am completely fine with sex work, as long as it's safe for all involved.
Not to be that guy but why is a fictional depiction of porn different than a fictional depiction of anything else? What makes sex so special?
If I made fake porn of Donald Trump under your explanation, that is considered sexual assault, even if I tell everyone it is fake. Why?
Would making a parody video of Donald Trump getting beaten up also be considered assault?
Would making a parody video of the pope denouncing god be considered the same?
I'm sure all three are genuinely offensive. I'm just trying to understand, maybe its because I have a background growing up in a clothing optional community and being in poly relationships so I just have a much less taboo view of sexuality. But how can a fake video of someone that everyone knows is fake by itself be assault? It sounds like you just want it to be illegal because it offends you.
Instead of making it illegal to generate AI porn of celebrities, maybe we should examine our culture and why we see sexualization as so threatening. Why do we freak out if our kids see two people having sex but don't blink an eye when they see violence in movies?
Most countries have exemptions around satire. If you did not you could not do things like puppet shows for example. Hence you could distribute any AI generated image if it looks like satire. With porn however you have no such exemptions, as such the copyright law applies and you cannot simply duplicate somebodies likeness without their explicit approval.
> the copyright law applies and you cannot simply duplicate somebodies likeness
In many countries (like the US), someone's likeness is not covered by copyright law in the first place (in some US jurisdictions, publicity/personality rights may apply, but these are state-law rights and more likely to apply to people, e.g. celebrities, with already-commercialized identities, and against commercial use; they are much more limited than copyright rights.)
For porn/nudes specifically, revenge porn laws (which mostly are aimed at unauthorized release of actual imagery of the targeted kind, but aren’t always narrowly crafted) might also apply.
> If I made fake porn of Donald Trump under your explanation, that is considered sexual assault, even if I tell everyone it is fake. Why?
Because, as I said, you are using someone's likeness to make sexually explicit material without their consent. What are you not understanding here?
> Would making a parody video of Donald Trump getting beaten up also be considered assault?
No.
> Would making a parody video of the pope denouncing god be considered the same?
No.
> I'm sure all three are genuinely offensive.
It being offensive isn't the problem.
> I'm just trying to understand, maybe its because I have a background growing up in a clothing optional community and being in poly relationships so I just have a much less taboo view of sexuality. But how can a fake video of someone that everyone knows is fake by itself be assault?
I am also poly (though never been clothing optional) but the problem is the "if" in your statement there, if everyone knows it's fake, that's doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting there. Do we know it's fake? Will we know the next model version of it is fake? If it is perfectly, completely realistically rendered, which as I understand it, is plus or minus the goal of generative art, to be completely and totally realistic?
We have a whole ass 63% of the United States who think angels are real, and that's based on nothing but the bible and indoctrination, do you think it's that big of a stretch for them to think that video of Trump pounding Obama in the backside is real, even if Obama has six fingers?
> Instead of making it illegal to generate AI porn of celebrities, maybe we should examine our culture and why we see sexualization as so threatening. Why do we freak out if our kids see two people having sex but don't blink an eye when they see violence in movies?
It's not about sex being threatening, it's about sex requiring informed, understood, and enthusiastic consent. Because if you don't own your own fucking face anymore, what do you own? If you can't even hold your own private bare ass naked form as something that is yours, only yours, and something no one else may have access to without your consent, what can you even say you do own anymore?
I posit the exact opposite question: why is it you are entitled to make pornography featuring the absolutely stunning likeness of Emma Watson? Because she's a "public figure?" Simply because you have the capability?
I think that you definitely have a point regarding people claiming images are real, and I hadn't considered that even if you make an image and say on the same page it is fake, somebody could copy the image and redistribute it.
I suppose my concern is that I believe it is important for people to be able to freely share ideas. If someone has an idea of drawing someone naked, they should be able to share that. Painting it is a way of sharing it. And I generally interpret AI imagery as that form of art and a high-fidelity expression of that idea. I generally reject the concept that an artist needs consent to display someone in a non-commercial situation, because ultimately it is just an expression of an idea.
I agree that sex requires informed consent. But this isn't sex. This is someone making art that pisses another person off because people typically feel that sex and nudity are very private and very personal. And while I believe you have autonomy of your bare naked ass, I don't believe people have ownership over someone else saying "Here's what I think so-and-so's bare naked ass would probably look like."
I mentioned my background because I don't feel like my bare naked ass needs to be private, I don't really see the issue of someone sharing a picture of me naked, anymore than any other sort of picture. The same goes for sexuality. And of course we aren't talking about real pictures, we're talking about a person's impression. Photorealistic perhaps, but still an impression, an idea, a construct.
But there's another point I want to bring up. Sure, just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's right or should be encouraged. And these tools have a lot of potential to hurt people. I mean, I could take an AI generation of someone proudly masturbating on camera, threatening to spread it around Facebook unless the victim pay me. And if they don't? Their friends could reject them. Family members might accuse them of being a slut. They could lose their job. That would be a terrible thing to happen to the victim. And I am sure it would be incredibly distressing for the victim. I'm not sure 'sexual assault' would be the correct term, but it is in the same category of awfulness. And these continuing improving tools make such scenarios possible.
But there is another thing that makes such scenarios possible: western society's bizarre view of sexuality, or at least bizarre in my mind. Even nudity is bad, I guess because it reminds people of sex? I don't think it's a bad thing to masturbate, I think most people would agree. And I think most people would agree that our hypothetical victim shouldn't be subject to social ostracism, shame, and possible unemployment. Perhaps even the image wasn't AI generated but real.
And yet...I get scam emails claiming that someone has a webcam picture of me masturbating and will share it if I don't send bitcoin to some address all the time. I've seen people get fired from their jobs for a lot less than a picture of them masturbating. Call it prudishness, call it what you will, but most Americans have very strong and frequently negative reactions to sex and nudity. I remember reading an article not too long about about a teenager girl who took her life after someone leaked some sexting pictures she took of herself to social media. Have you considered that perhaps someone seeing a (in this case fake) picture of you doing something sexual shouldn't be a life-destroying event?
As I said, our hypothetical blackmailer in this situation is doing something terrible. But they are allowed to do it because of our society's deranged obsession/fear of sex. Even though sex is something nearly everyone does (and should do), we are far more comfortable with our 10 year old kids seeing a fictional depiction of somebody's brains being blown out that a fictional depiction of two people making passionate love. I want you to just stop and think about that fo...
On the one hand, they might be very specific, like "anything other than the Missionary Position between heterosexual couples of the same race and age are banned."
On the other hand, they might have a 100-page document filled with legalese that nobody understands, nor follows.
Perhaps we could look at this from another perspective: If we were in North Korea, how would they regulate the use of AI for the reproduction of the likeness of the Dear Leader?
Edit: To put it another way:
* They either define in clear terms what IS allowed.
* Or they define in clear terms what IS NOT allowed.
Nah, they're not limited to your options. They don't have to define anything - they can just keep the rules secret and punish/reward as they like without explaining anything.
It keeps everyone on their toes, forces over-compliance, and it's easier too!
What's the point of having power if you don't get to be arbitrary after all? All the megacorps do it, from Visa to PayPal to Facebook, Google, Meta, Reddit, and so on.
I hope that the rise of machine generated porn, and other such content, leads to the realisation that it's all empty of value anyway, and always has been.
Then, millions of people will finally get back focusing on useful uses of their time.
True. I think there’s an argument to be made that a market which seeks AI-generated content of specific people isn’t exactly looking for basic entertainment.
If traditional adult content isn’t stimulating enough that you need to seek fake video of $CELEBRITY, then that’s a pretty solid indicator that there’s a problem
Why would machine generated porn be different from, say, machine generated minecraft worlds? Both seem useful as a form of distraction and for entertainment to whomever wants to enjoy it.
I am not in the adtech space, but a question I have always wondered. Does the monetization rate of the tracker go down if the site will embed anyone and everyone? That is, if Site A embeds 5 trackers, but Site B uses 500 would each of the sites receive the same revenue per tracker?
I don't think people are willing to pay money for pictures in general. There are many many nude picturesets online with women whose bodies are similarly idealized but are actual people. Without the video component I can't see people shelling out memberships, and video generation isn't as far along or as simple to do as image generation. I also don't think AI models can fool humans in terms of "fan engagement" for any significant period of time.
> By 2025, over half of the top OnlyFans accounts will be AI-generated models secretly run by men.
Damn, well there goes my senior project idea... I got the inspiration from YT cracker:
Push the gas - escalate the gauges
Escalate hits on our camgirls' pages
Blaze it and hit em with a script full of sexy phrases
Slow down and turn the corner
We been cornering the game since the five and quarter
Represent that nerd world order
Replacing all the brick and mortar
Sending mails off an auto forwarder
From a girl in florida with a case of boredom
And you can't ignore em cuz the filters weak
Into the inbox they all creep while you sleep
There is enough content out there to train models to do this, and scraping all the social media for more content made this inevitable.
Back in 2019 I went to an album release party, indie label artist, and I saw the cover of the album and it looked pretty damn near a girl I worked at but... Cyberpunked hero.
I was shocked of not just the resemblance (the face had a lot of detail) but of how likely the ability to this had started to become commonplace with deepfakes starting to hit their stride. Weeks later I was talking to her friend, and mentioned it in passing: she asked me to show it to her as she thought it was funny, so I did. Her response was not what I expected: 'Wow, you think I look like that? I guess I'm really hot.'
Honestly, this is why I always questioned the implicit disorienting nature of online dating apps and their effects on the psyche as non=participating observor: there was a mantra back in the late 90s early 2000s that 'no girls are on the internet' [0], with hindsight it turns out it wasn't just pervy dudes catfishing, but it would end up being bots run and operated for profit by said guys.
Most people I know who makes AI porn are kind of on a quest to generate the best porn in the world. It's a very wierd feeling no one understands until they put their first adult prompt in SD.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadAnd presumably the sex work positive crowd will dislike this because it is taking jobs away from real women.
I fully understand porn, but I don't understand that. What is the point of having porn with the specific face of a non porn actor/actress? Is this a fetish I don't get? Artificial revenge porn? Having fun putting the face of $(your least favorite personality) on top of a lascivious body?
The article even says "Now, certain corners of the internet are inundated with these explicit images of women who don’t exist".
A substantial part of the model-sharing site Civitai's available content is models or LoRAs based entirely on specific people (protected by personality rights, depending on jurisdiction) or characters (usually protected by copyright and often by trademark).
For a more-or-less work-safe example, here's one made to specifically reproduce Christian Bale's appearance as Patrick Bateman: https://civitai.com/models/8476
I can also understand parents of teenagers argue for more regulation - we've got enough teen suicides as is and I don't see how this tech helps with that. I can see plenty of ways it makes it worse.
But all of the above is just not a thing if the generated person doesn't exist and is hardly similar to anyone alive.
I can draw an illustration right now that uses someone's likeness without their consent that they may not like so much - who is stopping me? So why are we trying to stop AI?
Seems like an issue to address on another layer/level. Or a veiled attempt to control something for other reasons under convenient cover.
Their lawyer, if your depiction is covered by personality rights and the situation is significant enough to pursue damages. This is pretty much never going to be the case with an individual drawing (especially if only available non-commercially), but there are plenty of examples of people winning or settling for substantial sums after, for example, their likeness was used to advertise something without their consent.
> So why are we trying to stop AI?
Because a bunch of companies are trying to launder various legal liabilities (copyright, personality rights, etc) through the claim of 'it was just training data'.
The core argument should be how it messes up your dopamine system real good, addicts don't even realise it. AI isn't fixing that one anytime soon.
The "real women" are still working, it just doesn't look like them at the point of sale.
I'm not for it or against it, I just see crusades on this topic based on... well pretty much nothing, just strong convictions.
Subjects are all blonde and white? White supremacy. Subjects are all Asian and submissive? Fetishization of minorities. Fake models cater to male fantasies? Incel chauvinism sets unrealistic expectations for real women. Better than OnlyFans performers? Oppressing a vulnerable sex worker class already struggling with making fair wages.
Whatever your personal position, there's a brand-building opportunity for endless sanctimonious tweets.
When someone explains that I cannot not be racist because I have pale skin (which does happen), well it just makes me want to punch them in the face. If we are supposed to all belong and accept each other regardless of our external appearance, then people making assumption about me based on it is just prejudice.
this does not happen, nobody says that. It's a strawman argument.
Doing things to support minorities is good, having a row based on who is the biggest friend/foe of various minorities… it's not literally "Munchausen by proxy" but it seems to have similar vibes.
[0] https://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/we-cant-compete-with-ai-girlf...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/opinion/sex-positivity-fe...
Quote:
In her new book, “The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century,” the philosopher Amia Srinivasan, who is quickly becoming one of the most high-profile feminist thinkers in the English-speaking world, describes teaching Oxford students about second-wave anti-porn activism. She assumes her students, for whom porn is ubiquitous, will “find the anti-porn position prudish and passé.” They do not. Rather, they’re in complete agreement with assertions that could come straight from Andrea Dworkin.
“Could it be that pornography doesn’t merely depict the subordination of women, but actually makes it real? I asked. Yes, they said,” writes Srinivasan. She continues, “Does porn bear responsibility for the objectification of women, for the marginalization of women, for sexual violence against women? Yes, they said, yes to all of it.”
It’s also a mistake in the long run if you ask me, because this can only lead to more oppression, injustice, and shame. People won’t stop fucking because someone told them to; witness the number of high-profile conservatives having (sometimes homosexual) affairs.
Or, to put it another way, I would treat it as if the training data was legally the same as using a source (however minimally) in Photoshop to produce some final image.
Like, I really don't understand someone can look at how well suppressing something like piracy has gone and then go and be like "Yeah an AI ban could work"
There are so many social sicknesses here that technical and market solutions are attempting to band-aid and it's genuinely depressing.
Also as an aside, using real people's faces for deepfake pornography should be prosecuted just like any other kind of sexual assault with similar consequences. That shit is disgusting and I will not respond to any comment saying otherwise, I don't care if you didn't actually touch her, or whatever excuse you have on offer. You have created exploitative material of a sexual nature without consent, that's assault, period, paragraph.
1) The existence of sex pests like Andrew Tate who openly recruit and exploit young women into working for them as adult performers
2) The socio-economic realities of where a given person grows up and is raised in, which greatly affects their prospects in life in general which may artificially make sex work a more appealing option
3) The overarching threat of starvation which may force someone with literally no other options to do it, lest they end up homeless and freeze to death.
This is where some feminists and "anti-porn" activists have problems with it, because in an exploitative system that demands you work in some way to survive, there is an argument to be made that no sex work can be truly thought to be entirely devoid of some form of coercion, and therefore the sex involved in that sex work cannot, in turn, be entirely devoid of coercion, which makes it, by definition, rape. I don't particularly subscribe to that belief as I believe it trivializes the free will and agency of performers, but like, I also can't entirely say that it's incorrect. I see the bones of the reasoning and it does make sense to me, and there surely are a ton, an absolutely stressful amount of sex workers out there right now, who are doing it because it is the only path to a decent quality of life available to them (or worse, their sole method of survival due to systemic or more direct threats). And if I found out a given performer who's content I enjoy was one of those people, I can't say I wouldn't be uncomfortable with it.
The part where they completely discredit themselves is where they (almost invariably) draw from this the conclusion that paying for sex work must be made illegal.
If women turn to sex work as the only available means to survive, how exactly does it help them to take away that option?
Agreed.
> If women turn to sex work as the only available means to survive, how exactly does it help them to take away that option?
Well I don't think the goal is to help them, I think the goal is to take away the ability for people to pay to rape them with legal cover. Like it's one thing for sex workers to be selling access to their bodies if it's under the table and illegal, even technically. It's quite another for the justice system of your particular country to go on the record and, in writing, state that you are allowed to coerce sex from another person in exchange for money. And like, again, I don't entirely disagree with that, if you accept the underlying logic that goes:
- Anything done for survival is coerced
- Sex work for survival is therefore coerced
- Sex during sex work done for survival is coerced sex
- Coerced sex is rape
- Therefore, no sex work done within a system where it is required for survival is consensual.
Like, there is a there there. It's uncomfortable but I can't argue it down. Making it illegal surely doesn't help them, but making it entirely legal means you are basically legalizing the ability for people with money to rape women who cannot say no, lest they starve to death. And like... that doesn't feel great either.
Would anyone at all work food service if the alternative wasn't starvation? I don't know a single person who's worked that sort of job that would do it if they didn't need to to eat, not because it's antithetical to the human experience to serve food, but because it pays like garbage and the customers treat you like shit.
>Well I don't think the goal is to help them, I think the goal is to take away the ability for people to pay to rape them with legal cover.
In other words: you are willing to make life worse for people in order to protect your own sensibilities.
I am so very curious which part of this is breaking with reality in your mind. But given you aren't refuting any particular assertion I'm guessing you're just uncomfortable with the conclusion and don't have a logical refutation for any part of it, so you're just discarding it.
To be clear, I do not fully agree with this either which I spelled out quite plainly above. I'm just saying I do understand how they get to the point they're at, which like, you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to understand why people think a certain way without agreeing with it, but just saying "well that's not how reality works!" as though our modern world, legal system and basis of governance was handed down to us by the Almighty on Mount Sinai is the epitome of intellectual cowardice. Most everything about our "reality" is malleable should we will it.
> In other words: you are willing to make life worse for people in order to protect your own sensibilities.
I literally outlined that I don't agree with this conclusion because I feel it discards too much of the given sex worker's autonomy! I am completely fine with sex work, as long as it's safe for all involved.
If I made fake porn of Donald Trump under your explanation, that is considered sexual assault, even if I tell everyone it is fake. Why?
Would making a parody video of Donald Trump getting beaten up also be considered assault?
Would making a parody video of the pope denouncing god be considered the same?
I'm sure all three are genuinely offensive. I'm just trying to understand, maybe its because I have a background growing up in a clothing optional community and being in poly relationships so I just have a much less taboo view of sexuality. But how can a fake video of someone that everyone knows is fake by itself be assault? It sounds like you just want it to be illegal because it offends you.
Instead of making it illegal to generate AI porn of celebrities, maybe we should examine our culture and why we see sexualization as so threatening. Why do we freak out if our kids see two people having sex but don't blink an eye when they see violence in movies?
In many countries (like the US), someone's likeness is not covered by copyright law in the first place (in some US jurisdictions, publicity/personality rights may apply, but these are state-law rights and more likely to apply to people, e.g. celebrities, with already-commercialized identities, and against commercial use; they are much more limited than copyright rights.)
For porn/nudes specifically, revenge porn laws (which mostly are aimed at unauthorized release of actual imagery of the targeted kind, but aren’t always narrowly crafted) might also apply.
Because, as I said, you are using someone's likeness to make sexually explicit material without their consent. What are you not understanding here?
> Would making a parody video of Donald Trump getting beaten up also be considered assault?
No.
> Would making a parody video of the pope denouncing god be considered the same?
No.
> I'm sure all three are genuinely offensive.
It being offensive isn't the problem.
> I'm just trying to understand, maybe its because I have a background growing up in a clothing optional community and being in poly relationships so I just have a much less taboo view of sexuality. But how can a fake video of someone that everyone knows is fake by itself be assault?
I am also poly (though never been clothing optional) but the problem is the "if" in your statement there, if everyone knows it's fake, that's doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting there. Do we know it's fake? Will we know the next model version of it is fake? If it is perfectly, completely realistically rendered, which as I understand it, is plus or minus the goal of generative art, to be completely and totally realistic?
We have a whole ass 63% of the United States who think angels are real, and that's based on nothing but the bible and indoctrination, do you think it's that big of a stretch for them to think that video of Trump pounding Obama in the backside is real, even if Obama has six fingers?
> Instead of making it illegal to generate AI porn of celebrities, maybe we should examine our culture and why we see sexualization as so threatening. Why do we freak out if our kids see two people having sex but don't blink an eye when they see violence in movies?
It's not about sex being threatening, it's about sex requiring informed, understood, and enthusiastic consent. Because if you don't own your own fucking face anymore, what do you own? If you can't even hold your own private bare ass naked form as something that is yours, only yours, and something no one else may have access to without your consent, what can you even say you do own anymore?
I posit the exact opposite question: why is it you are entitled to make pornography featuring the absolutely stunning likeness of Emma Watson? Because she's a "public figure?" Simply because you have the capability?
I suppose my concern is that I believe it is important for people to be able to freely share ideas. If someone has an idea of drawing someone naked, they should be able to share that. Painting it is a way of sharing it. And I generally interpret AI imagery as that form of art and a high-fidelity expression of that idea. I generally reject the concept that an artist needs consent to display someone in a non-commercial situation, because ultimately it is just an expression of an idea.
I agree that sex requires informed consent. But this isn't sex. This is someone making art that pisses another person off because people typically feel that sex and nudity are very private and very personal. And while I believe you have autonomy of your bare naked ass, I don't believe people have ownership over someone else saying "Here's what I think so-and-so's bare naked ass would probably look like."
I mentioned my background because I don't feel like my bare naked ass needs to be private, I don't really see the issue of someone sharing a picture of me naked, anymore than any other sort of picture. The same goes for sexuality. And of course we aren't talking about real pictures, we're talking about a person's impression. Photorealistic perhaps, but still an impression, an idea, a construct.
But there's another point I want to bring up. Sure, just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's right or should be encouraged. And these tools have a lot of potential to hurt people. I mean, I could take an AI generation of someone proudly masturbating on camera, threatening to spread it around Facebook unless the victim pay me. And if they don't? Their friends could reject them. Family members might accuse them of being a slut. They could lose their job. That would be a terrible thing to happen to the victim. And I am sure it would be incredibly distressing for the victim. I'm not sure 'sexual assault' would be the correct term, but it is in the same category of awfulness. And these continuing improving tools make such scenarios possible.
But there is another thing that makes such scenarios possible: western society's bizarre view of sexuality, or at least bizarre in my mind. Even nudity is bad, I guess because it reminds people of sex? I don't think it's a bad thing to masturbate, I think most people would agree. And I think most people would agree that our hypothetical victim shouldn't be subject to social ostracism, shame, and possible unemployment. Perhaps even the image wasn't AI generated but real.
And yet...I get scam emails claiming that someone has a webcam picture of me masturbating and will share it if I don't send bitcoin to some address all the time. I've seen people get fired from their jobs for a lot less than a picture of them masturbating. Call it prudishness, call it what you will, but most Americans have very strong and frequently negative reactions to sex and nudity. I remember reading an article not too long about about a teenager girl who took her life after someone leaked some sexting pictures she took of herself to social media. Have you considered that perhaps someone seeing a (in this case fake) picture of you doing something sexual shouldn't be a life-destroying event?
As I said, our hypothetical blackmailer in this situation is doing something terrible. But they are allowed to do it because of our society's deranged obsession/fear of sex. Even though sex is something nearly everyone does (and should do), we are far more comfortable with our 10 year old kids seeing a fictional depiction of somebody's brains being blown out that a fictional depiction of two people making passionate love. I want you to just stop and think about that fo...
On the one hand, they might be very specific, like "anything other than the Missionary Position between heterosexual couples of the same race and age are banned."
On the other hand, they might have a 100-page document filled with legalese that nobody understands, nor follows.
Perhaps we could look at this from another perspective: If we were in North Korea, how would they regulate the use of AI for the reproduction of the likeness of the Dear Leader?
Edit: To put it another way:
* They either define in clear terms what IS allowed.
* Or they define in clear terms what IS NOT allowed.
It keeps everyone on their toes, forces over-compliance, and it's easier too!
What's the point of having power if you don't get to be arbitrary after all? All the megacorps do it, from Visa to PayPal to Facebook, Google, Meta, Reddit, and so on.
Then, millions of people will finally get back focusing on useful uses of their time.
If traditional adult content isn’t stimulating enough that you need to seek fake video of $CELEBRITY, then that’s a pretty solid indicator that there’s a problem
When it's something like porn, which has no value and is highly addictive, then it's a bad thing.
Humans need sleep and can't focus on anything 24/7 for longer than a day or so.
I'm happy that opinions like yours are the minority, and people like you are seen as prudish freaks.
They are telling you straight up that they'd like to your permission to share your data with 100 to almost 700 partners depending on the permission.
I've never seen so many trackers connected to a single cookie!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35337233
I don't think people are willing to pay money for pictures in general. There are many many nude picturesets online with women whose bodies are similarly idealized but are actual people. Without the video component I can't see people shelling out memberships, and video generation isn't as far along or as simple to do as image generation. I also don't think AI models can fool humans in terms of "fan engagement" for any significant period of time.
Damn, well there goes my senior project idea... I got the inspiration from YT cracker:
Push the gas - escalate the gauges
Escalate hits on our camgirls' pages
Blaze it and hit em with a script full of sexy phrases
Slow down and turn the corner
We been cornering the game since the five and quarter
Represent that nerd world order
Replacing all the brick and mortar
Sending mails off an auto forwarder
From a girl in florida with a case of boredom
And you can't ignore em cuz the filters weak
Into the inbox they all creep while you sleep
There is enough content out there to train models to do this, and scraping all the social media for more content made this inevitable.
Back in 2019 I went to an album release party, indie label artist, and I saw the cover of the album and it looked pretty damn near a girl I worked at but... Cyberpunked hero.
I was shocked of not just the resemblance (the face had a lot of detail) but of how likely the ability to this had started to become commonplace with deepfakes starting to hit their stride. Weeks later I was talking to her friend, and mentioned it in passing: she asked me to show it to her as she thought it was funny, so I did. Her response was not what I expected: 'Wow, you think I look like that? I guess I'm really hot.'
Honestly, this is why I always questioned the implicit disorienting nature of online dating apps and their effects on the psyche as non=participating observor: there was a mantra back in the late 90s early 2000s that 'no girls are on the internet' [0], with hindsight it turns out it wasn't just pervy dudes catfishing, but it would end up being bots run and operated for profit by said guys.
Bizarre times indeed.
0: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-int...
The whole point of AI/automation is to slowly chip away what needed exclusively humans.
From the perspective of folks accessing and paying, does it matter if it is AI or real human if their brain perceives it to be the same?