A Telegram user who advertises their services on Twitter will create an AI-generated pornographic image of anyone in the world for as little as $10 if users send them pictures of that person. Like many other Telegram communities and users producing nonconsensual AI-generated sexual images, this user creates fake nude images of celebrities, including images of minors in swimsuits, but is particularly notable because it plainly and openly shows one of the most severe harms of generative AI tools: easily creating nonconsensual pornography of ordinary people.
And is that OK? I mean I get it, free speech, but just because congress can’t stop you from expressing something doesn’t mean you actually should do it. It’s basically bullying.
Imagine you meet someone you really like at a party, they like you too and look you up on a social network… and find galleries of hardcore porn with you as the star. Only you’re not a porn star, those galleries were created by someone who specifically wanted to hurt you.
AI porn without consent is clearly illegal in almost every country in the world, and the ones where it’s not illegal yet it will be illegal soon. The 1st amendment will be a stumbling block, but it’s not an impenetrable wall - congress can pass laws that limit speech in certain edge cases, and this will be one of them.
I’m going to jump in on this one and say yes - it’s mostly fine.
I look at these things through the lens of the harm they do and the benefits they deliver - consequentialism and act utilitarianism.
The benefits are artistic, comedic and political.
The “harm” is that Putin and or Trump might feel bad, maaaaaaybe enough that they’d kill themselves. All that gets put back up under benefits as far as I’m concerned - they’re both extremely powerful monsters that have done and will continue to do incredible harm.
The real harm is that such works risk normalising this treatment of regular folk, which is genuinely harmful. I think that’s unlikely, but it’s impossible to rule out.
Similarly, the dissemination of the kinds of AI fakes under discussion is a negative because they do serious,measurable harm.