Technology

I'm afraid Europol is shooting themselves in the foot here.

What should be done is better ways to mark and identify AI-generated content, not a carpet ban and criminalization.

Let whoever happens to crave CSAM (remember: sexuality, however perverted or terrible it is, is not a choice) use the most harmless outlet - otherwise, they may just turn to the real materials, and as continuous investigations suggest, there's no shortage of supply or demand on that front. If everything is illegal, and some of that is needed anyway, it's easier to escalate, and that's dangerous.

As sickening as it may sound to us, these people often need something, or else things are quickly gonna go downhill. Give them their drawings.

I totally agree with these guys being arrested. I want to get that out of the way first.

But what crime did they commit? They didn't abuse children...they are AI generated and do not exist. What they did is obviously disgusting and makes me want to punch them in the face repeatedly until it's flat, but where's the line here? If they draw pictures of non-existent children is that also a crime?

Does that open artists to the interpretation of the law when it comes to art? Can they be put in prison because they did a professional painting of a child? Like what if they did a painting of their own child in the bath or something? Sure the contents questionable but it's not exactly predatory. And if you add safeguards for these people could then not the predators just claim artistic expression?

It just seems entirely unenforceable and an entire goddamn can of worms...

Not going to read the article, but I will say that I understand making hyper-realistic fictional CP illegal, because it would make limiting actual CP impossible.

As long as it’s clearly fictional though, let people get off to whatever imaginary stuff they want to. We might find it disgusting, but there are plenty of sexual genres that most people would find disgusting b yet shouldn’t be illegal.

Followed swiftly by operation jizzberworld

Even in cases when the content is fully artificial and there is no real victim depicted, such as Operation Cumberland, AI-generated CSAM still contributes to the objectification and sexualisation of children.

I get how fucking creepy and downright sickening this all feels, but I'm genuinely surprised that it's illegal or criminal if there's no actual children involved.

It mentions sexual extortion and that's definitely something that should be illegal, same for spreading AI generated explicit stuff about real people without their concent, involving children or adults, but idk about the case mentioned here.

On one hand I don't think this kind of thing can be consequence free (from a practical standpoint). On the other hand... how old were the subjects? You can't look at a person to determine their age and someone that looks like a child but is actually adult wouldn't be charged as a child pornographer. The whole reason age limits are set is to give reasonable assurance the subject is not being exploited or otherwise harmed by the act.

This is a massive grey area and I just hope sentences are proportional to the crime. I could live with this kind of thing being classified as a misdemeanor provided the creator didn't use underage subjects to train or influence the output.