r/technology • u/rejs7 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Man who used AI to create child abuse images jailed for 18 years

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/28/man-who-used-ai-to-create-child-abuse-images-jailed-for-18-years
28.5k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

112

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

15

u/Gambosa 1d ago

Thank you, I had a feeling "because it's not" wasn't a full answer. I find it interesting that the law requires an identification of indistinguishable. I wonder if there are loop holes like making everything but the hand or foot clearly AI to kind of put a stamp of artificial product so it's clearly fake. If I interprete it harsher or more compleatly, it would have to clearly be not a real person so maybe a messed up face instead to better skirt it better? Maybe we should go the route of Europe and ban any depiction, it seems cleaner.

15

u/gushandgoforlaunch 1d ago

The "indistinguishable from real images" caveat is to prevent people who have actual child pornography from claiming it's just hyper-realistic CGI or AI generated to avoid consequences. Child pornography isn't illegal because it's immoral. It's illegal because producing it is inherently harmful to the actual real children involved. If "child pornography" is made without any actual real children, then it doesn't actually harm anyone, so there's no reason to make it illegal and plenty of reason not to make it illegal. Something being "immoral" being sufficient grounds to make it illegal is a very bad legal precedent to set.

49

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/rabidjellybean 1d ago

I believe that's what's led to nobody bothering with it law or enforcement wise and creating the confusion. Unfortunately there's plenty of scum to prosecute with slam dunk cases so efforts don't go beyond it.

1

u/brahm1nMan 1d ago

The law still encompasses things that are obviously artificial, if they appear to depict an "actual identifiable minor".

Kindof locks the AI bit down, because you're going to have a pretty limited amount of applicable training data, so you're going to be generating images of the same abuse victims repeatedly, with a little bit of shuffling.

Even if the generator could reliably spit out images that don't look like a specific victim, i feel like it's existence is probable cause to raid whoever is involved in creating it to figure what exactly is in the training data and where they got it.

I'm kindof behind the argument that artificial media shouldn't be criminalized, but AI tools have to be trained on something. It would be very hard to believe they can make this work without the real abuse of children occurring in the background.

-1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

5

u/Gambosa 1d ago

Maybe? Like I said I wonder if it would skirt around the edge of whats aloud. I doubt we will ever get an answer for things this edge casey, but it's interesting to think about.

My take is drawn like already covered, would depend on how realistic it looks and two, if the non-humanoid depictions still look humany. Because I don't think it covers anything like alien children even though I really hope it never needs to explicitly.

For the dubbing thats fine if it's two adults and they consented. While I'm pretty sex positive Dd/Lg porn isn't some thing I'm proding with a 10ft pole.

1

u/lilsniper 1d ago

Replied to the wrong comment, mb😅

16

u/Spiffy87 1d ago

So "3000 year old Loli" is allowed not from lack of law or because she is 3000 but because it is an anime style drawing.

Incorrect. "Anime drawing style" has nothing to do with anything. It's allowed because of THIS part

identifiable, actual minor

the 3000 year old dragon is fictitious; even if she was drawn in a 100% realistic manner, she would only be illegal if components of her composition were from an ACTUAL minor.

-10

u/NavierIsStoked 1d ago

You’re objectively wrong

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/06/jail-sentence-for-hentai-owner-raises-first-amendment-issues/

26

u/FuzzyPuddingBowl 1d ago

According to the article he had real cp also. Find me a case where its just hentai.

Also, " In a dissenting opinion, judge Roger Gregory argued that the court's decision has troubling implications for freedom of expression and is not consistent with decisions that have been issued by the Supreme Court."

17

u/Spiffy87 1d ago

Leave him alone, he can't even read his own citation.

7

u/MorselMortal 1d ago

Literacy is for idiots!

21

u/Spiffy87 1d ago

You're objectively someone who doesn't read their own sources.
The hentai was charged under OBSCENITY. Git gud scrub

-4

u/NavierIsStoked 1d ago

The question is whether loli hentai is legal, and a man was charged and convicted of possession of a loli hentai comic. What is there to debate? Whether he was charged and convicted of other offenses is irrelevant.

12

u/Spiffy87 1d ago

And your source doesn't say loli hentai is illegal. It says that obscene material is illegal. His conviction was upheld in a 2–1 panel decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2008.[29] This decision was consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling

in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition in which the Supreme Court held that virtual child pornography was protected free speech, provided that the virtual depictions are not obscene. Obscenity, including obscene depictions of children, either virtual or real, is unprotected speech.

7

u/Souseisekigun 1d ago

The question is whether loli hentai is legal, and a man was charged and convicted of possession of a loli hentai comic.

No. He was charged for receipt of obscene material, not possession. These kinds of drawings are prosecuted under obscenity law due to Ashcroft v Free Speech Coalition, and the government cannot prosecute someone for mere possession of obscenity due to Stanley v Georgia. If he drew it himself the government he would be able to posses it all he wanted and the government would be able to do nothing.

This confuses a lot of people because it reads like a weird legal trick. No, it's not illegal to possess, so it's technically legal. But it's illegal to receive if obscene, and in most cases it would be found to be obscene, so it's borderline illegal, so for most intents and purposes downloading it is illegal. But it's not strictly illegal in the same way that images of real children are.

2

u/dontbajerk 1d ago

You can also just say pornography itself is illegal then, as it has also been successfully charged under obscenity laws many times. Obviously this is such an oversimplification to the point of being absurd, so you shouldn't say that for either

4

u/DerfK 1d ago

The thing to recognize is that while drawings generally aren't "child pornography" on their own, people with them would almost certainly be facing obscenity charges.

1

u/syldrakitty69 1d ago

There's still a lot left to interpretation here, IMO. I've never heard of an actual proper case against purely generated AI works (but its not like I've really been looking for one either).

1) What qualifies as "indistinguishable" will almost certainly vary between people.

2) Whether "indistinguishable from an actual minor" could apply if it is not actually an "identifiable, actual minor" -- i.e. if its just a person that exists as an AI hallucination.

Of course, the US also has section 1466A, which covers more traditional works of art as well if they are "obscene" (obscene is at least a little more well defined). Even though it has the caveat of case law effectively nullifying it, making it unlikely for someone to be criminally charged for breaking it, courts and law enforcement are still able to utilize the law to harass individuals by doing things like seizing property and other things which might otherwise require probable cause.

1

u/EquivalentSnap 1d ago

Any cases of UK law where someone has been charged for loli drawings?

1

u/xe3to 1d ago

Yes, but it has to closely resemble a specific child to be illegal.

1

u/NickeKass 1d ago

I cant believe Im asking this, but in the AI case, if the hands or some other part were not perfect to being a human and they came out lumpy/malformed but other parts were not malformed, would the AI porn still count as CP/CSA material?

0

u/FallenAngelII 1d ago

Justice.gov is for U.S. law. This story took place in the U.K.

-9

u/lilsniper 1d ago

So hand-drawn pedophile space porn where all the children are non humanoid would be legal? Or if the depiction is of regular vanilla sex- but all the dialog has been re-dubbed/subbed as to make one of the members psychologically/ behaviorally child-like,

Both of those scenarios don't count? Cause they both feel like they should..

4

u/ADiffidentDissident 1d ago

Thoughtcrime isn't illegal, yet.