this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
200 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
68304 readers
5542 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Just for what it's worth, you don't need CSAM in the training material for a generative AI to produce CSAM. The models know what children look like, and what naked adults look like, so they can readily extrapolate from there.
The fact that you don't need to actually supply any real CSAM to the training material is the reasoning being offered for supporting AI CSAM. It's gross, but it's also hard to argue with. We allow for all types of illegal subjects to be presented in porn; incest, rape, murder, etc. While most mainstream sites won't allow those types of material, none of them are technically outlawed - partly because of freedom of speech and artistic expression and yadda yadda, but also partly because it all comes with the understanding that it's a fake, made-for-film production and that nobody involved had their consent violated, so it's okay because none of it was actually rape, incest, or murder. And if AI CSAM can be made without actually violating the consent of any real people, then what makes it different?
I don't know how I feel about it, myself. The idea of "ethically-sourced" CSAM doesn't exactly sit right with me, but if it's possible to make it in a truly victimless manner, then I find it hard to argue outright banning something just because I don't like it.
Its a very difficult subject, both sides have merit. I can see the "CSAM created without abuse could be used in treatment/management of people with these horrible urges" but I can also see "Allowing people to create CSAM could normalise it and lead to more actual abuse".
Sadly its incredibly difficult for academics to study this subject and see which of those two is more prevalent.
There is also the angle of generated CSAM looking real adding difficulty in prosecuting real CSAM producers.
This, above any other reason, is why I'm most troubled with AI CSAM. I don't care what anyone gets off to if no one is harmed, but the fact that real CSAM could be created and be indistinguishable from AI created, is a real harm.
And I instinctively ask, who would bother producing it for real when AI is cheap and harmless? But people produce it for reasons other than money and there are places in this world where a child's life is probably less valuable than the electricity used to create images.
I fundamentally think AI should be completely uncensored. Because I think censorship limits and harms uses for it that might otherwise be good. I think if 12 year old me could've had an AI show me where the clitoris is on a girl or what the fuck a hymen looks like, or answer questions about my own body, I think I would've had a lot less confusion and uncertainty in my burgeoning sexuality. Maybe I'd have had less curiosity about what my classmates looked like under their clothes, leading to questionable decisions on my part.
I can find a million arguments why AI shouldn't be censored. Like, do you know ChatGPT can be convinced to describe vaginal and oral sex in a romantic fiction is fine, but if it's anal sex, it has a much higher refusal rate? Is that subtle anti-gay encoding in the training data? It also struggles with polyamory when it's two men and a woman but less when it's two women and a man. What's the long-term impact when these biases are built into everyday tools? These are concerns I consider all the time.
But at the end of the day, the idea that there are children out there being abused and consumed and no one will even look for them because "it's probably just AI" isn't something I can bear no matter how firm my convictions are about uncensored AI. It's something I struggle to reconcile.
I’d say that’s more of an AI industry issue than anything else. All AI art needs to be easily identifiable and sourced as such, but I doubt AI producers will want to hide tags on all their AI generated work though.
Plenty of hentai out there covering questionable subjects to train AI on as well.