A side effect of making AI child porn legal is that it makes it harder to prove that actual child pornography is real. Drawings are obvious but AI isn’t.
And watermarking is insufficient because it’s fairly easy to add or remove the watermark, providing plausible deniability.
But say I have this girl and she's 14. And I have a fully clothed picture of her, but I tell AI to remove the clothes. Now it's an AI generated photo of a real person. Who happens to be naked. And a child.
It's not real. I didn't hurt the child. Child may not have even known I have such a picture. All they know is they shared a happy photo of themselves on social media.
To me, that's child porn. I have child porn. But because it's AI it isn't?
It is illegal. But not because it is AI. Deepfakes have existed for quite some time now, and they're illegal in general because you are using someones likeness without their permission. I don't know wether this specific example would be treated as CP or not, but it specifically being AI has nothing to do with it (you could also just photoshop it and it would be the same issue).
The reason AI GENERATED content (not AI altered pictures of real people!) is legal is because there is no real child that has been violated, it's just a piece of fiction.
No that is still illegal. Deepfakes are specifically referenced and still considered harmful to the victims. In fact even if its fully fictitious AI generated content not depicting anyone real if it passes as "obscene" under the Miller test then State and Federal bodies will still consider that illegal, if I understand correctly. However, I think theres exception for people possesing this kind of grey area legality thing privately only who dont distribute. Like if you copy pasted a picture of a minors head to adults bodies to create your own content and never shared it with anybody I think you would be able to appeal and win that case, but not if youd distributed it online or in person.
Basically there are some grey areas but they are working at both the Federal and State level to close as many loopholes as they can while still protecting the 1st amendment.
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u/SexyMonad 2d ago
A side effect of making AI child porn legal is that it makes it harder to prove that actual child pornography is real. Drawings are obvious but AI isn’t.
And watermarking is insufficient because it’s fairly easy to add or remove the watermark, providing plausible deniability.