Current Events > Paedophiles Illegal trade in AI child sex abuse images exposed

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65932372

Paedophiles are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create and sell life-like child sexual abuse material, the BBC has found.
Some are accessing the images by paying subscriptions to accounts on mainstream content-sharing sites such as Patreon.

meanwhile, in Japan...

This shit is freely and legally posted on 4chan every day. I only skimmed the article but it didn't actually seem to address how it was illegal or how they'd fight it. The law is just decades behind this type of technology.

I imagine if they were real life-like then there could be concerns that it was trained on real images of children

BuzzKilljoy posted...

but it didn't actually seem to address how it was illegal or how they'd fight it.

It's child porn that's how it's illegal.

I am completely unsurprised.

The text and anime/loli style is already bad enough, it's the realistic one that was always the real concern that would invariably happen well before it was 'exposed'.

BuzzKilljoy posted...

but it didn't actually seem to address how it was illegal

Most countries have laws banning even the depiction of underaged sexually explicit material. Be it drawing, photo compositing, or any other means.

BuzzKilljoy posted...

This shit is freely and legally posted on 4chan every day. I only skimmed the article but it didn't actually seem to address how it was illegal or how they'd fight it. The law is just decades behind this type of technology.

Legal is highly debatable and country specific. Pretty sure both America and Australia ban cartoon CP.

highly debatable is probably the wrong word. Lowly debatable, since its just flat out illegal in most of the world

Kloe_Rinz posted...

Legal is highly debatable and country specific. Pretty sure both America and Australia ban cartoon CP.

highly debatable is probably the wrong word. Lowly debatable, since its just flat out illegal in most of the world

Actually it's not here in America. It's only illegal if it's photorealistic or based on an actual child. I honestly don't see the point of it being illegal if no children are actually involved. Seems like a huge waste of resources that could be used hunting down actual child molesters.

Is there any evidence that consumption of AI-generated child pornography drives real abuse? It feels very "violent video games make people violent" to me.

Longbottom posted...

Is there any evidence that consumption of AI-generated child pornography drives real abuse? It feels very "violent video games make people violent" to me.

I'm gonna pretend I didn't actually just read this

SSJKirby posted...

I'm gonna pretend I didn't actually just read this

So there is evidence or there isn't? I genuinely don't know, so I'm open to anyone telling me more about this.

Honestly, you'd think this sort of thing is easily preventable by having companies voluntary restrict programs to not produce certain types of images (or combination of words? phrases? not sure how the program works, exactly).

I imagine variations of restrictions already exist (if, for no other reason, to prevent copyrighted characters like Mickey Mouse from being created)

UnhndredDescole posted...

tbf the anglophone countries being referred to do believe in this rhetoric too and have multiple media banned for violence.

I think Western countries are generally pretty liberal when it comes to violence depicted in media, beyond enforcing age ratings. I know Germany has some weird rules about depicting blood and I've heard of Australia banning some games but beyond that it's pretty much anything goes.

Let me present an example. Here's a video featuring computer generated images that depict people being murdered in a variety of brutal ways. It has been recommended to me on my timeline by major, mainstream video sharing website YouTube.

https://youtu.be/5oSCgYiyOeM

Should viewing this video be illegal? I think most people on this website would find that idea completely ridiculous. Why we do feel strongly the other way when it comes to computer generated images of sexual abuse?

I thought AI generated CP is kind of a breakthrough for pedos because now they can create real lifelike images without having to abuse real children. It's still very wrong though but at least no child is getting hurt.

Throw all the pedophiles in jail for the rest of their lives.

If AI is drawing from actual pictures, that's a problem. If it's just, "Eww, somebody has a disgusting kink," I can't say that this is anyone's business.

The myth that porn causes abuse has been dispelled many times. It must have more lives than a cat because it was first laid to rest before anyone reading this post was likely to have been born. Porn can be an outlet for urges that would be harmful in the real world. You can't stop people from having urges -- not unless you kill, castrate, or lobotomize them.

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Throw all the pedophiles in jail for the rest of their lives.

Being a pedophile=/=being a child molestor. People who suffer from this mental illness are not deserving of scorn or punishment if they haven't harmed a child. They deserve compassion and help.

Kai_Laguna posted...

They deserve compassion and help.

Name one redeemed pedophile. You cant cure someone who looks at images of children. Just keep them in a prison cell where they cant harm anyone.

Again, just because they are pedophiles doesn't mean they will molest children. You are advocating for punishing them for a crime most of them will never commit.

Not worth the risk.

Well then, I guess we might as well kill all the Germans then cause they might try to do another holocaust. Better safe then sorry.

Kai_Laguna posted...

Well then, I guess we might as well kill all the Germans then cause they might try to do another holocaust. Better safe then sorry.

Man don't be stupid about this. This is not the time for strawmanning.

Uhh.. like.. where is the AI pulling the imagery from to be able to even make it?

I can't pretend to know shit about how AI works, but it learns this shit somehow.. right? How did it learn how to fucking do this?

BettyWhite posted...

Uhh.. like.. where is the AI pulling the imagery from to be able to even make it?

I can't pretend to know shit about how AI works, but it learns this shit somehow.. right? How did it learn how to fucking do this?

It doesn't know how to make truly pornographic images, by design. It can make non-pornographic nude pictures, which is what I assume the articles talking about this are referring to when they say 'child pornography'. Stable Diffusion can't and doesn't make realistic images of people engaged in sexual acts.

(It can make unrealistic ones though if that's enough to get you over the line.)

Kai_Laguna posted...

Well then, I guess we might as well kill all the Germans then cause they might try to do another holocaust. Better safe then sorry.

No. Just no. Bad Fandom poster

The_Wheelman1 posted...

I thought AI generated CP is kind of a breakthrough for pedos because now they can create real lifelike images without having to abuse real children. It's still very wrong though but at least no child is getting hurt.

If you understand the way AI generates pictures, you will realise it does still hurt real kids. AI needs a reference to copy essentially. It cant pull that out of its ass. No -additional- kids were abused, but the picture couldnt be generated without abused kids. It also creates demand which indirectly raises child abuse rates which is why cartoon CP is banned in a lot of places

Kloe_Rinz posted...

If you understand the way AI generates pictures, you will realise it does still hurt real kids. AI needs a reference to copy essentially. It cant pull that out of its ass.

Stable Diffusion is not being trained with real child pornography.

Longbottom posted...

Stable Diffusion is not being trained with real child pornography.

Is that what was used to generate the fake CP?

if that is the case, perhaps it is I who does not understand the AI. My bad.

but still, it had to learn it from somewhere

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Name one redeemed pedophile. You cant cure someone who looks at images of children. Just keep them in a prison cell where they cant harm anyone.

A few months ago, my newspaper had an interview with a pedophile.

He never touched someone, nor consumed CP, and instead goes into therapy for years now, having to pay it out of his own pocket.

He know he is sick, he just fights it with therapy.

EDIT: Checked the article again, he actually consumed CP first, 20 years ago, before he went into therapy himself.

Kloe_Rinz posted...

Is that what was used to generate the fake CP?

if that is the case, perhaps it is I who does not understand the AI. My bad.

but still, it had to learn it from somewhere

Stable Diffusion is what has been referenced in articles.

It hasn't learned it from anywhere because Stable Diffusion can't produce real pornographic images - I'm certain that what the media is talking about in these articles is simple nude pictures. I can't say if Stable Diffusion is capable of making convincing nude images of children because I've never tried it but I'd be quite surprised if it was really producing realistic-looking nude features for children because I can't imagine that it's been trained with those images.

Even if its not real, I still would have to be against it. It's not a behavior I'd like to see normalized because of the potential for misuse.

Honestly, this AI shit is getting nuts. Why can't we have nice things without using them to make degenerate shit.....

party_animal07 posted...

Even if its not real, I still would have to be against it. It's not a behavior I'd like to see normalized because of the potential for misuse.

Honestly, this AI shit is getting nuts. Why can't we have nice things without using them to make degenerate shit.....

The problem is finding and fixing these problems without creating new ones.

Pedophiles are sick who need some therapy before they can hurt one, and then became sick bastards in need of "another" therapy after they hurt one.

The question is what the therapy is supposed to be (before and after), and who is going to pay for that.

Currently it's the worst. Hoping that they have themselfes under control and pay their own therapy (whatever that is), and only become active when they do some damage is simply too late, but at the same time they can't be judged and put away if they never did a crime or harmed anyone at all, however sick their thoughts are.

Karovorak posted...

The problem is finding and fixing these problems without creating new ones.

Pedophiles are sick who need some therapy before they can hurt one, and then became sick bastards in need of "another" therapy after they hurt one.

The question is what the therapy is supposed to be (before and after), and who is going to pay for that.

Currently it's the worst. Hoping that they have themselfes under control and pay their own therapy (whatever that is), and only become active when they do some damage is simply too late, but at the same time they can't be judged and put away if they never did a crime or harmed anyone at all, however sick their thoughts are.

Semi-unpopular opinion, but I think we do need to normalize pedophiles outing themselves so that they can get some form of help.

That would imply America has a system that would actually help them though.

Honestly the major issue I have with AI CP is it provides a cover for real CP. I'm not against people with problems having a victimless outlet but it muddies the water too much and people can just claim its not real even when it is and it makes charging real pedo crimes even harder than it already is.

party_animal07 posted...

Semi-unpopular opinion, but I think we do need to normalize pedophiles outing themselves so that they can get some form of help.

That would imply America has a system that would actually help them though.

I would not say "normalize", but yes.

If them watching loli hentai stuff prevents them from touching childs, I'm all for it.

I think it would be useful to let them take it on some prescription from a therapist or something like that. That way they would activily seek out help and get a professional keeping an eye on them

The only way to get a hold on pedophiles before they harm someone, is making them come to us first.

My goodness this AI generated stuff way out of hand. It generates a shitstorm after shitstorm. Its like if you took the worse part of drump and made it a tool every troll in the world could spam including corporations and spies.

The dataset used to train Stable Diffusion is thought to be free from all forms of illegal imagery (minus, of course, the fact that nobody consented specifically or was paid for the use of their content in training the model---but that's a matter of perspective). It can be used create things it was not specifically trained on, or else it'd have no value. Then there are other models, which are almost invariably just the Stable Diffusion base model with more training data added, or amalgamations of several such models. When people claim they are using Stable Diffusion ethically because they trained a "model" on "their" art, this isn't actually true because for the image generation to work, it still needs those billions of other data points. You're just adding additional details.

Depending on the models used and any additional keywords being added behind the scenes, it can be surprisingly easy to have an AI image generator give you photos of people you didn't ask for: different age, different gender, different breast size, different hair, etc. Some popular models will apparently spit out porn in response to innocuous keywords in the prompt. Even the paid services with a ton of users have trouble not giving people porn or going wildly off subject. So in short, a person might be exposed to objectionable imagery while using AI that was not intentional or wanted. This is one danger of harshly criminalizing disturbing photos coming from AI.

The next issue is that, in many places, things like cartoon porn are either granted an exception for free speech or are generally not pursued. Is it morally correct or socially useful to spend time investigating objectionable images of fictional people? If they are cartoons? 3D models? AI generated people from a standard model with no porn? AI generated people from a model including legal porn? AI generated people from a model including illegal porn (it has been argued in the context of regular art that AI models don't copy anything because they retain very little data per image trained)? Does intent count (i.e. you got a weird image intentionally versus not)? How about distribution versus private use?

I think everyone is going to have different answers to these questions. Personally, I've wondered since the beginning about the morality of using AI to generate any porn. The base Stable Diffusion model was trained on billions of images scraped from the web. If the training had been opt-in only, I feel fairly certain that few people would have consented to the use of their photos for making fake people, let alone fake people engaged in sex acts.

Honestly I think banning lolicon and AI generated CP will just makes things worse because now it will make pedos even more likely to go and sexually abuse a real child. Pedos are not going to change their ways ever so they need some type of outlet to keep their urges under control so they don't harm anyone. Because without it then their urges will keep building up inside to the point where they will lose their mind once they get close to a child.

Well that's just my take on this.