THE SENATE UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan bill to provide recourse to victims of porn deepfakes — or sexually-explicit, non-consensual images created with artificial intelligence.
The legislation, called the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act — passed in Congress’ upper chamber on Tuesday. The legislation has been led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House.
The legislation would amend the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow people to sue those who produce, distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography, if they “knew or recklessly disregarded” the fact that the victim did not consent to those images.
Arguing against laws that prohibit sexual exploitation with high tech tools, because of the nature of technology, would be like arguing against laws that prohibit rape because of the nature of human sexuality.
The “it still is going to happen” argument doesn’t matter, because the point of the law isn’t to eliminate something 100%, it is to create consequences for those who continue to do what the law prohibits.
It’s not some slippery slope either, it is extremely easy not to make involuntary pornography of other people.
The worrying aspect of these laws are always that they focus too much on the method. This law claims to be about preventing a particular new technology, but then goes on to apply to all software.
And frankly if you need a clause about how someone is making fake pornography of someone then something is off. Something shouldn’t be illegal simply because it is easy.
Deepfakes shouldn’t be any more or less illegal than photos made of a doppelgänger or an extremely photorealistic painting (and does photorealism even matter? To the victims, I mean.). A good law should explain why those actions are illegal and when and not just restrict itself to applying solely to ‘technology’ and say oh if it only restricts technology then we should be all right.
I am not ok with making art a crime.
Do not give away basic human rights because of emotional appeals.
If sexual blackmail is the problem, prosecute sexual blackmail.
Good thing consent is part of the bill then
Where do you draw the line at “art”. If nonconsensual pornography is acceptable to you, how about child porn? Where does art end and crime begin?
Use existing rules and laws for that.
CSAM is illegal across all mediums.
Okay, and we already have laws against nonconsensual pornography. But here’s the thing: those laws could easily be argued to only count for actual photographs or videos, in that many of these laws were written to tackle “revenge porn” and not “fake porn”, so someone making nonconsensual porn with AI could get charges dropped on the grounds that the porn wasn’t legitimate, or didn’t meet the definition of pornography starring the victim as defined by existing laws (because those laws were written before AI made this a mainstream problem).
Making laws that explicitly list things like photoshop and AI faceswap or “roop” tools that can create artificial nonconsensual pornography lays the groundwork for consequences for people who sexually abuse others in this way.
And let’s be realistic, if you use AI to make nonconsensual porn for personal purposes, you may be a creep, but you also aren’t going to get caught if you keep it to yourself. You also aren’t going to harm the person you’re making porn of if you’re not distributing the content you’re creating. You still shouldn’t do it, but it’s practically legal if you simply keep your weird shit to yourself and don’t publicly victimize someone with it. The people who will get caught are going to be in the latter category, and I have no problem seeing the book thrown at them.
Just as you point out revenge porn laws have a problem because they miss the mark covering fake porn, outlawing the methods amd mediums of art ued today is also going to miss the mark. Aside from the oppression issues, new methods will come along and circumvemt the targeted laws.
Just need to write laws that target the crime, here it would seem to be a combination of defamation, privacy, and assault in play for using sexuality or nudity to harm an individual and/or their reputation. Without harm, what crime is there?
You can tell when a painting is a painting. Even it’s photorealistic. You know a person created it and that it’s fiction. Often these are hung in galleries where people expect to see art.
Deep fakes exist to fool people into thinking someone did something(like pornography) when they didn’t…usually with the intention of causing harm to their reputation. That’s already illegal due to defamation laws, so really it’s just an extention of those combined with revenge porn laws.
The reason they have to include the type of tech in the law is because that tech made it possible for unskilled bad actors to get on it…therefore there’ll be more people committing these types of crimes against others. It’s a good thing they’re addressing this issue.
Yeah, and that’s the part I don’t like. If you can’t define why it’s bad without taking into account the skill level of the criminal then I’m not convinced it’s bad.
As you point out defamation is already illegal and deliberately spreading false information about someone with the intent to harm their reputation is obviously wrong and way easier to define.
And is that not why you consider a painting less ‘bad’? Because it couldn’t be misconstrued as evidence? Note that the act explicitly says a digital forgery should be considered a forgery even when it’s made abundantly clear that it’s not authentic.
Look, I’m a professional artist. The general rule is you have to change something 15% to 30%(depending on location) for it to not come into violation of copyright laws. That’s why you see satirical depictions of brands in cartoons and such.
This new law has to take into consideration art laws, defamation laws, revenge porn laws, slander laws, and the right for a person to own their likeness.
It is absolutely necessary to reign this in before serious harm is done to someone. The point of writing a law to address this specific issue is because for the law actually be effective, it must be written to address the specific problem this technology presents. I listed the other laws to show its consistent with ones we already have. There’s nothing wrong with adding in another to protect people.
As for the unskilled part, the point of that is a skilled person creating deepfake porn by hand, frame by frame should get in as much trouble as an unskilled person using ai. The AI is just going to make it so more unethical people are making this crap…so more if it will exist. That’s a problem that needs addressing.
You have a nice day now.
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There are stark differences between the scenarios you’re presenting, but going to the core of your point, is it even legal to paint a photorealistic nude?
I don’t know of any court cases about this specific subject, but I remember when Rush painted Tiger Woods (“The masters at Augusta”), he was sued.
He got away with not having to pay money to Tiger Woods, but partly because it’s a stylized painting and it pushed towards first amendment rights. This wouldn’t work in a photorealistic depiction, so it seems highly unlikely that such a painting would be OK…
Fair, but then this law serves no purpose. The thing it was designed to prevent was already illegal.
People have been using magazine clippings glued onto porn actress heads since before I was born. Photoshop for over a decade.
How do you delineate between a really good photoshop and “ai”?
You don’t. This law doesn’t distinguish between the two, and quite frankly, shouldn’t.
So you’re saying if someone makes a nude that is remotely similar to your likeness you can sue them.
What do you do about identical twins if one chooses to be a porn star and takes self shots? Wouldn’t it look the same? Is it a crime to sell nudes if you have an identical twin?
What about anybody who is not related but looks VERY SIMILAR - we’ve probably all heard stories of this happening.
Finally, how do you know if it’s a US citizen that created the image vs anybody in any other country not bound by US laws?
What if an AI creates a nude and then a child is born, and 20 years later they grow up to look identical to the ai generated image?
There’s so many reasons why generated images should be treated like art and protected as free speech imo. It’s one thing if someone you know makes fake nudes of you and then uses them to ruin your image - that’s likely covered under many other laws including something like slander.
People have been going to 11 trying to do anything preventing machine learning from being used for absolutely anything. It’s completely predictable because everyone wants a cut of whatever wealth may be generated by a new technology but maybe we should adapt to the new tool rather than punishing everybody for using it. AI is quickly turning into a tool that will only be usable by multibillion dollar companies with in house legal teams that can handle all the lawsuits.
The law specifies that the images are indistinguishable from reality and are presented as you, directly or indirectly.
If the images were of twin A and presented as twin B, I think this law would apply, as it would be fake porn of twin B.
Again, if it’s being presented as someone it’s not, that’s an issue.
Then the law does not apply. That’s literally how all laws work.
Was it presented as a nude of that person that did not yet exist? Impressive that they knew what their parents would name them ahead of time. Again, it must be presented as this person, directly or indirectly. This scenario couldn’t happen.
Regarding trying to ruin someone’s image, I imagine that would indeed fall under some form of defamation laws, although not slander as that is specifically spoken words. I do agree we must tread carefully regarding free speech rights, however are we not also expected to have our rights to privacy? Even if someone isn’t trying to defame us, even if an image is fake, if at face value it’s completely indistinguishable from being real does it make a difference? Obviously there’s no simple solution and I think I agree with you that a law such as this probably isn’t it.
I’m a bit lost on your last bit, however. Are you saying this law will further push AI into the hands of large corporations? I don’t see that, so much as see them being forced to implement stronger filters, while pushing users to the open source community in search to get around them. Horny people gonna horny and this law won’t stop that, it’d only stop public facing models from producing such content and stop individuals from distributing it.
Remember how taxi medallions were worth millions and millions of dollars in NYC and Boston before uber? (1.2m was the peak per medallion in nyc. They dropped to like 35k at one point and are now around 140k.) Remember how uber got billions in VC money to fight the taxi industry lobbyists and effectively operates despite violating the systems that were in place for ages that prevented small independent operators from being taxis without having a bunch of seed money? Those billions of dollars let them win the legal fights and continue operating. You or I could never have challenged it.
That’s the comparison I was making. If you regulate AI into the ground the only innovations and usage will come from big money interests, because they can eat the lawsuits. Individuals can’t eat the lawsuits. The law only applies to the small fries, the big guys cheat and get away with it because there is no transparency and a whole lot of pinky swears.
Eh. The term is ill-defined, so I can see some ultra-orthodox right-wing judge trying to argue that - say - jokes about JD Vance fucking a couch constitute violations of the revenge porn law. I can see some baroque interpretation by Scalia used to prohibit all forms of digitally transmitted pornography. I can also see some asshole trying to claim baby pictures on Facebook leave the company or even the parent liable for child pornography. Etc, etc.
But a lot of this boils down to vindictive and despicable politicians trying to inflict harm on political opponents by any means necessary. The notion that we can’t have any kind of technology regulation because bad politicians and sadistic cops exist leaves us ceding the entire legislative process to the conservatives who we know are going to abuse the law.
We shouldn’t be afraid to do the right thing now on the grounds that someone else might do the wrong thing tomorrow.
I think it’s gross but, it’s not sexual exploitation unless people writing homoerotic fanfictions about YouTubers is also sexual exploitation imo