A Florida man is facing 20 counts of obscenity for allegedly creating and distributing AI-generated child pornography, highlighting the danger and ubiquity of generative AI being used for nefarious reasons.
Phillip Michael McCorkle was arrested last week while he was working at a movie theater in Vero Beach, Florida, according to TV station CBS 12 News. A crew from the TV station captured the arrest, which made for dramatic video footage due to law enforcement leading away the uniform-wearing McCorkle from the theater in handcuffs.
It’s already illegal to do basically most of the things leading up to a murder. You’re not allowed to conspire to commit one, stalk your target, break into a building, torture animals, kidnap, hire a hitman, etc.
But you are allowed to stage a murder; hire a film crew to record your staged murder; pay television stations and websites to show a preview of your staged murder, and sell a recording of your staged murder to anyone who wants to buy. Depending on how graphic it is, you might be required to put an age advisory on your work and not broadcast it on public airwaves; but that is about the extent of the regulation.
You can even stage murders if children and show that.
Even if the underlying murder is real, there is still no law outlawing having a recording of it. Even producing a recording of a murder isn’t technically illegal; although depending on the context you might still be implicated in a conspiracy to commit murder.
Sexual assult of children is the only crime for which the mere depiction of the crime is itself a crime.
Okay. Why should I care that this is an exception case?
Laws aren’t derived from clean general principles. They’re passed based upon many societal aims and values.
Another thing that you “can’t we think of the poor, helpless pedos that want to nut?” people don’t seem to think of is that if AI CSAM grows increasingly more realistic and we carve out an exception for it, how can you enforce laws against non-generated CSAM? You’d have to have some computer forensics asshole involved in every case to prove whether or not the images are generated, which would likely produce a chilling effect over time on regular CSAM cases, and all of this for the “societal benefit” of allowing pedos a more gratifying wank.
For the societal benefit of not ceding our rights to government.
Today it’s pedophilia, but what about if Trump wins and legally designates trans people as pedophiles?
This is a power we cannot allow the government to have.
The right to create realistic looking CSAM is not a right I give a shit about having.
What if a lawless dictator does crazy things? I’m not sure the law (or lack thereof) will have anything to do with that scenario.
The whole idea of “if X is illegal, then the government will use the law against X against us” only matters in the context of a government following the law.
If they’re willing to color outside the lines and the courts say the law doesn’t apply to them then it doesn’t matter one fucking bit.
I’m not suggesting they’ll abandon the rule of law. I’m suggesting they’ll use this as precedent to legally oppress us.
And I’m saying that they won’t have to.
Which is a terrible excuse for allowing bad laws. Sure, ok, let’s assume you’re right and this specific group will break the law anyway. Maybe let’s prepare for other tyrannical groups?
TV and movies should not be able to show crimes, because images depicting crimes should be illegal.
(I’m just illustrating the slippery slope criminalizing “artistic” renderings)
I’m not advocating for what you’re saying here at all.
So there you go, your slope now has gravel on it.
Why should this be illegal?
Because it’s illegal.
It should be illegal for a number of reasons. One is a simple practical one: as the technology advances towards increasing levels of realism it’ll become impossible for law enforcement to determine what material is “regular” CSAM versus what material is “generated” CSAM.
So, unless you’re looking to repeal all laws against possession of CSAM, you’ll have a difficult time crafting a cut-out for generated CSAM.
And honestly, why bother? What’s the upside here? To have pedos get a more fulfilling wank to appease them and hope they won’t come after your kids for real? I really doubt the premise behind that one.
Allowing for victimless crimes simply because a group is undesirable is a terrible precedent. We can’t ban things just because they make us uncomfortable. Or because it makes law enforcements job easier.
I wouldn’t even call it victimless, and we have all kinds of actual victimless crimes that are already illegal so I don’t care about supposedly setting this “precedent” that has already been set a million times over.
And we should be undoing those laws
We aren’t though, so it’s frankly pretty odd that you’re fixated on this one.
It’s frankly pretty odd that Lemmy in general seems to be fairly pro-generated-CSAM. I’m betting you guys are just afraid of the feds finding your stashes.
EDIT: I basically get maybe three replies a week to things I post on here, except when I post something about being okay with generated CSAM or deepfake porn being illegal (in which case I get binders full of creeps in my inbox).
So artistic images of things that would be a crime in real life should be legal?
Sure, with some exceptions and reasonable definitions.
So, murder images should probably be banned right? One of those exceptions.
Never said, wrote, or even thought any such thing.
I know, it’s a question. What about… rape? Is that okay? What are your exceptions?
CSAM is the exception, Socrates. Also as far as definitions go, computer models aren’t artists.