The solution is on two fronts: championing legislation prohibiting this and matching attorneys who will ruthlessly litigate to those infringed upon (when civil statute allows). I encourage you on both. Call your representatives.
And even what exists in state law wouldn't usually cover this for most people (some revenge porn laws that didn't specifically intend to cover AI were nonetheless written broad enough that they inherently cover AI-generated nonconsensual porn of recognizable individuals, but that is separate from normal likeness rights laws.)
How is non consensual porn different than hiring a look alike? There is even the term “dopelbanger”. There have always been actresses who made their careers from striking similarities to celebrities. As long as it’s not claimed to be legitimate there ought to be no case.
> How is non consensual porn different than hiring a look alike?
Hiring a lookalike and presenting it (whether by explicit claim or implicitly by context) as the person who they look like is a mechanism for nonconsensual porn (other mechanisms besides AI are using true images and distributing them without consent, and using non-AI photomanipulation/compositing.)
I think the interesting thing is that this lower barrier to entry reveals some opinions people have about image that may have been incongruent with the way the law was written, that is now driven into sharper focus by making the barrier to entry almost zero. Clearly people seem to have some opinions about “image” etc that are much more aligned with “elvis laws” etc - ie that some forms of expression should be outlawed if they conflict with someone else’s right to control their own image especially commercially etc.
Under such Elvis laws, hiring an Elvis impersonator would be illegal, because their right to image trumps your right to expression. There are specific carveouts for basically traditional Elvis impersonation itself (and to try and stave off the obvious 1st amendment issues) but everything else is outlawed - you cannot be a Dolly Parton impersonator or a Taylor Swift impersonator today, under these laws, because it is treated differently now.
But it’s the same problem as “students learning is diffusion too” problem - the model is not different in kind, it is diffusing and remixing ideas and infringing copyright just like a student writing a paper, it just does the same things enormously faster etc, which throws the inherent contradictions into light by removing the cost/barrier to entry. And it’s able to rapidly and skillfully generate photoshops at a rate and quality far higher than humans could achieve too.
Since this was a commercial operation for-profit the likesness rights argument could indeed apply. But lets keep in mind that it only makes sense within this context. It does not apply more broadly to non-commercial activities by people.
The defamation claim seems unfounded since there is no claim these are actually photos of the person(s) involved. In fact they are certainly not photos and just synthetic generated images.
Not if the damages are presumed (e.g., if the false defamatory statement published to a third party consists of a claim that the plaintiff has a venereal disease, is unfit for their profession, or is a sexual deviant). Then, damages are presumed to exist.
How is that different than a caricature? Or how about a painting of the person? What about a a figure like what was made of a naked Trump? Or how about the Trump diaper balloon? Or like Kanye did of a a naked Taylor Swift? Or what about SNL “lookalikes”?
"Nonconsensual porn" sounds like a strategic choice of words to give the impression you're banning porn about rape, not pasting someone's head on a generated body. If I write erotic fan fiction about Tom Brady without his permission that is "nonconsensual porn" by this definition.
The fan fiction comparison also suggests this is not defamation -- for celebrities, defamation needs to show real damages as well as malicious intent and knowing falsity.
I hope we end up with a distinction between commercial and private use, so this stuff isn't advertised or commercialized but people can enjoy it in private where it doesn't disturb anyone else.
> This is in the context of using replicating someone’s appearance specifically for porn using their images as an input.
this fundamentally has nothing to do with AI and people have been using photographs as feedstock for photoshops since forever.
it’s undeniable that AI has lowered the barrier to entry but at the end of the day it’s still fundamentally the same thing as someone who pasted princess diana’s head onto calm.jpg back 20 years ago.
Why is it defamation if it isn’t claimed to be that person?
And maybe a more interesting question - if you can think about your favorite celebrity, why is expressing it visually bad? Isn’t that just (free) speech? Or maybe it’s art? Digitally generated art is still art.
While I think it's gross and disgusting, it still seems like it would be protected by the First Amendment so long as they aren't producing CP content. Not sure I have a real issue even though I have kids and think this will be used to hurt people in the real world, I think any laws restricting it would set a more harmful precedent to free speech. Just because something is gross and horrible and offensive and should probably not exist--doesn't necessarily make it illegal. It also seems like the issue is more over the industrialization of this technology... manipulated images of celebrities were manually created for decades... seems like the only issue here is that when AI is involved it can be created at a greater scale and with lower end user skill.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 91.2 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
You have a right to make artwork of other people, even if it's naked artwork.
In America, we don’t have this federally.
Hiring a lookalike and presenting it (whether by explicit claim or implicitly by context) as the person who they look like is a mechanism for nonconsensual porn (other mechanisms besides AI are using true images and distributing them without consent, and using non-AI photomanipulation/compositing.)
https://www.adamsandreese.com/news-knowledge/elvis-act-tenne...
Under such Elvis laws, hiring an Elvis impersonator would be illegal, because their right to image trumps your right to expression. There are specific carveouts for basically traditional Elvis impersonation itself (and to try and stave off the obvious 1st amendment issues) but everything else is outlawed - you cannot be a Dolly Parton impersonator or a Taylor Swift impersonator today, under these laws, because it is treated differently now.
But it’s the same problem as “students learning is diffusion too” problem - the model is not different in kind, it is diffusing and remixing ideas and infringing copyright just like a student writing a paper, it just does the same things enormously faster etc, which throws the inherent contradictions into light by removing the cost/barrier to entry. And it’s able to rapidly and skillfully generate photoshops at a rate and quality far higher than humans could achieve too.
The defamation claim seems unfounded since there is no claim these are actually photos of the person(s) involved. In fact they are certainly not photos and just synthetic generated images.
The fan fiction comparison also suggests this is not defamation -- for celebrities, defamation needs to show real damages as well as malicious intent and knowing falsity.
I hope we end up with a distinction between commercial and private use, so this stuff isn't advertised or commercialized but people can enjoy it in private where it doesn't disturb anyone else.
And some people appear to think that drawing those thoughts should be criminalized.
this fundamentally has nothing to do with AI and people have been using photographs as feedstock for photoshops since forever.
it’s undeniable that AI has lowered the barrier to entry but at the end of the day it’s still fundamentally the same thing as someone who pasted princess diana’s head onto calm.jpg back 20 years ago.
And maybe a more interesting question - if you can think about your favorite celebrity, why is expressing it visually bad? Isn’t that just (free) speech? Or maybe it’s art? Digitally generated art is still art.
Shit we accept as art today would have probably caused riots 500 years ago.
For example, Maryland specifically excludes art [1]
IIRC a good majority of the US states (but not all) do as well.
[1]: https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?arti...
Doesn’t strike me as a business model where anyone sane thinks it’ll end well