Teen girls are being victimized by deepfake nudes. One family is pushing for more protections
Teen girls are being victimized by deepfake nudes. One family is pushing for more protections
A mother and daughter are advocating for better protections for victims after AI-generated nude images of the teen and others were circulating.
A mother and her 14-year-old daughter are advocating for better protections for victims after AI-generated nude images of the teen and other female classmates were circulated at a high school in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, officials are investigating an incident involving a teenage boy who allegedly used artificial intelligence to create and distribute similar images of other students – also teen girls - that attend a high school in suburban Seattle, Washington.
The disturbing cases have put a spotlight yet again on explicit AI-generated material that overwhelmingly harms women and children and is booming online at an unprecedented rate. According to an analysis by independent researcher Genevieve Oh that was shared with The Associated Press, more than 143,000 new deepfake videos were posted online this year, which surpasses every other year combined.
I don't know what a reasonable"protection" looks like here: the only thing foresee is 14 year old boys getting felonies, but no one being protected.
Right, there are plenty of reactive measures available but the only proactive measures are either restricting availability of the source photos used or restricting use of the deep fake tools used. Everything beyond that is trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
It's not possible to restrict deep fake technology at this point. It's out there. Accessible to everyone who wants it and has a computer at home.
Even if you don't want to consider it CSAM, it is, at the very least, sexual harassment. The kids making and circulating these pictures and videos should be facing consequences. And the fear of consequences does offer some degree of protection at least.
It looks like pretty severe sexual harassment at best. Unfortunately the people I think are most likely to do it are teenagers with poor self control who don't realize the severity.
I think if schools can implement appropriate restorative responses and education on the harm done that could be much more effective than decaigan punishments after the fact.
Methinks this problem is gonna get out of fucking hand. Welcome to the future, it sucks.
Meagrees :/
AI is out of the bag for all the good and bad it will do. Nothing will be safe on the internet, and hasn't been for a long time now. Either we will get government monitored AI results or use AI to combat misuse of AI. Either way isn't preventative. The next wild west frontier is upon us, and it's full of bandits in hiding.
Maybe it is just me, but its why I think this is a bigger issue than just Hollywood.
The rights to famous people's "images" are bought and sold all the time.
I would argue that the entire concept should be made illegal. Others can only use your image with your explicit permission and your image cannot be "owned" by anyone but yourself.
The fact that making a law like this isn't a priority means this will get worse because we already have a society and laws that don't respect our rights to control of our own image.
A law like this would also remove all the questions about youth and sex and instead make it a case of misuse of someone else's image. In this case it could even be considered defamation for altering the image to make it seem like it was real. They defamed her by making it seem like she took nude photos of herself to spread around.
There are genuine reasons not to give people sole authority over their image though. "Oh that's a picture of me genuinely doing something bad, you can't publish that!"
Like, we still need to be able to have a public conversation about (especially political) public figures and their actions as photographed
Yeah I'm not stipulating a law where you can't be held accountable for actions. Any actions you take as an individual are things you do that impact your image, of which you are in control. People using photographic evidence to prove you have done them is not a misuse of your image.
Making fake images whole cloth is.
The question of whether this technology will make such evidence untrustworthy is another conversation that sadly I don't have enough time for right this moment.
That sounds pretty dystopian to me. Wouldn't that make filming in public basically illegal?
In Germany it is illegal to make photos or videos of people who are identifieable (faces are seen or closeups) without asking for permission first. With exception of public events, as long as you do not focus on individuals. It doesn't feel dystopian at all, to be honest. I'd rather have it that way than ending up on someone's stupid vlog or whatever.
The tools used to make these images can largely be ignored, as can the vast majority of what AI creates of people. Fake nudes and photos have been possible for a long time now. The biggest way we deal with them is to go after large distributors of that content.
When it comes to younger people, the penalty should be pretty heavy for doing this. But it’s the same as distributing real images of people. Photos that you don’t own. I don’t see how this is any different or how we treat it any differently than that.
I agree with your defamation point. People in general and even young people should be able to go after bullies or these image distributors for damages.
I think this is a giant mess that is going to upturn a lot of what we think about society but the answer isn’t to ban the tools or to make it illegal to use the tools however you want. The solution is the same as the ones we’ve created, just with more sensitivity.
Many years ago I mentioned this on reddit. Complaining how photographers can just take pictures of you or your property and do what they want with it. Of course the group mind attacked me.
Problem just seems to get worse by the year.
That's because your proposal would make photography de facto illegal, because getting the rights to everyone and everything that appears in a photograph would be virtually impossible. Hell, most other kinds of visual art would be essentially illegal as well. There would be hardly anything but abstract art.
Honest opinion:
We should normalize nudity.
That's the only healthy relationship that we can have with our bodies in the long term.
There's a pretty big fucking difference between normalizing nudity and people putting the faces of 14 year olds in porn video through deepfakes.
This isn't even the problem going on, though? Sure, normalize nudity, whatever, that doesn't fix deep faked porn of literal children.
It's the idea that people may be less sexually depraved if we normalize people being naked. Duh. In my opinion the whole world just needs to normalize sexuality across the board. I think it would solve many of society's problems, frankly
Having spent many years in both the US and multiple European countries, I can confidently say that the US has the weirdest, most unnatural, and most unhealthy relationship with nudity.
For this to happen people would probably need to stop judging people on their bodies. I am pretty sure there is a connection there. With how extremely superficial media and many relationships are, and with how we value women in particular, this needs a lot of change in people and society.
I also think it would be a good thing, but we still have to do something about it until we reach that point.
Maybe I'm just naive of how many protections we're actually granted but shouldn't this already fall under CP/CSAM legislation in nearly every country?
It was done by another underage boy, how would the law act in this case?
Yes, underage people can be charged.
https://www.tribtoday.com/news/local-news/2019/01/teen-sexting-is-child-porn/
Edit: Of course this is actual pictures, not generated.
There might be an upside to all this, though maybe not for these girls: with enough of this people will eventually just stop believing any nude pictures "leaked" are real, which will be a great thing for people who had real nude pictures leaked - which, once on the Internet, are pretty hard to stop spreading - because other people will just presume they're deepfakes.
Mind you, it would be a lot better if people in general culturally evolved beyond being preachy monkeys who pass judgment on others because they've been photographed in their birthday-suit, but that's clearly asking too much so I guess simply people assuming all such things are deepfakes until proven otherwise is at least better than the status quo.
Photoshop is a 40yo tool and people still believe almost every picture.
Fair point.
Yes, but good Photoshop has a high skill ceiling. Generative AI does not.
In previous generations the kid making fake porn of their classmates was not a well liked kid. Is that reversed now? On the basis of quality of tech?
That kid that doodles is creepy. But deep fakes probably feel a lot closer to actual nudes.
So as a grown woman, I'm not getting why teenage girls should give any of this oxygen. Some idiot takes my head and pastes it on porn. So what? That's more embarrassing for HIM than for me. How pathetic that these incels are so unable to have a relationship with an actual girl. Whatever, dudes. Any boy who does this should be laughed off campus. Girls need to take their power and use it collectively to shame and humiliate these guys.
I do think anyone who spreads these images should be prosecuted as a child pornographer and listed as a sex offender. Make an example out of a few and the rest won't dare to share it outside their sick incels club.
That's fine and well. Except they are videos, and it is very difficult to prove they aren't you. And the internet is forever.
This isn't like high school when you went to high school.
Agreed on your last paragraph.
Then nude leak scandals will quickly become a thing of the past, because now every nude video/picture can be assumed to be AI generated and are always fake until proven otherwise.
That's the silver lining of this entire ordeal.
Again, this is a content distribution problem more than an AI problem, the liability should be on those who willingly host these deepfake content than on AI image generators.
So they do it and share it around to slut shame you
You try to find a job and they find porn of you
It’s a lot worse than you’re making it out to be when it’s not you that gets to make that decision
I don't think the problem is that the girls and ashamed of the fake porn. The problem is not even that other kids will believe it. The problem is that kids will use it to mock, bully and ostracise them. It's not being shared as 'OMG, you're so hot I made fake sex tape with you, marry me". It's being shared as "you're a slut that does porn, everyone thinks you're a bitch, go kill yourself'.
I see your point. In that way it's just like any other bullying, though more personal. Unfortunately, society hasn't done a good job of coming up with workable solutions for bullying. In this case, dragging the culprit behind the bleachers and letting the girls take turns kicking him in the nuts would be my go-to, but you can't do that sort of thing anymore.
What if the deep fake was so real it was hard to tell? Now if the deep fake was highly invasive and humiliating? Can you see the problem?
I think that the point this comment is trying to make is that because it has become so easy to make these images, their existence is not very meaningful. All deep fakes are very realistic. You can't tell fakes from originals.
Like as an adult, if I saw an "offensive" image of a co-worker, my first assumption would be that it's probably AI generated, my first thought would be "which asshole made this image" rather than "I can't believe my co-worker did [whatever thing]".
I wonder what the prevalence of this kind of behavior is like in countries that aren’t so weird about sex.
This has nothing to do with "being weird about sex" and everything to do with men treating women poorly.
You can expect this to be worse in nations where women don't have as many rights and/or where misogyny is accepted as part of life.
Sounds plausible, we just abolished Roe, so…. It’s not looking great for the future of this issue in the US.
Yeah shit sucks
Kids don't know or understand the damage this can cause someone.
They see it as a joke most of the time.
It needs to be made illegal and the kids properly educated about why.
It's easy as an adult to condemn these children but we have a lot more life experience.
So, you’re saying both:
- It’s childish behavior
- It should be made illegal
So… you think the solution to childish behavior is putting kids in jail?
*deep breath* lemme try to see a more logical interpretation….
Wait, you did mention education, ok I musta missed that on my first read.
So educate the kids, and if they don’t learn… jail
the kids properly educated about why.
- DARE is celebrating its 40th anniversary.
- It has officer-led classroom lessons that reach 2,500,000 K-12 students per year.
- "Enriching students across the US and 29+ countries around the world"
If your argument is "The educators just need to make sure the kids learn that this is not a joke", DARE has been educating students about the dangers of illegal drugs for 40 years.
Overdoses claimed more than 112,000 American lives from May 2022 to May 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 37 percent increase compared with the 12-month period ending in May 2020.
You might persuade some, but the problem will not go away.
I think at some point kids need to learn that there won't be someone stopping them from doing bad things.
They need to suffer the consequences of their actions through social rejection. If the microcosm is so shitty that it doesn't ostracize people who disseminate nudes, then the people in it deserve to suffer until they improve.
This should be one of the easiest ways to identify shitbags, but I understand a lot of social hierarchies put shitbags at or near the top.
What does this have to do with the other? Where I live nudity isn't all that uncommon (when compared to the US, for example). But sexually harassing someone with fake porn is whole different issue.
I see a lot of problems with people having trouble understanding consent and struggling to respect other people. Those boys are weird about sex. That's the weirdness we should address.
What's the fundamental difference between a deep fake and a good Photoshop and why do we need more laws to regulate that?
Lower skill ceiling. One option can be done by pretty much anyone at a high volume output, the other would require a lot training and are not available for your average basement dweller.
Good luck trying to regulate it though, Pandora's box is opened and you won't be able to stop the FOSS community from working on the tech.
Fear.
The problem is how to actually prevent this. What could one do? Make AI systems illegal? Make graphics tools illegal? Make the Internet illegal? Make computers illegal?
Make "producing real or simulated CSAM illegal?"
It is where I'm at. Draw Lisa Simpson nude and you get a visit from the law. Dunno what the punishment is though. A fine? Jail? Can't say.
Edit: Apparently I was wrong, it has to be a realistic drawing. See here: 2010/0064/COD doc.nr 10335/1/10 REV 1
Make anime illegal
President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October that, among other things, called for barring the use of generative AI to produce child sexual abuse material or non-consensual “intimate imagery of real individuals.” The order also directs the federal government to issue guidance to label and watermark AI-generated content to help differentiate between authentic and material made by software.
Step in the right direction, I guess.
How is the government going to be able to differentiate authentic images/videos from AI generated ones? Some of the AI images are getting super realistic, to the point where it's difficult for human eyes to tell the difference.
That's a cool quiz, and it's from 2022. I'm sure AI has improved since then. Would love to see an updated version.
I wouldn't call this a step in the tight direction. A call for a step yeah, but it's not actually a step until something is actually done
I studied Computer Science so I know that the only way to teach an AI agent to stop drawing naked girls is to... give it pictures of naked girls so it can learn what not to draw :(
hmmm - I wonder it makes sense to use generative AI to create negative training data for things like CP. That would essentially be a victimless way to train the AIs. Of course, that creates the conundrum of who actually verifies the AI-generated training data...
this doesn't work. AI still needs to know what is CP in order to create CP for negative use. So you need to first feed it with CP. Recent example of how OpenAI was labelling "bad text"
The premise was simple: feed an AI with labeled examples of violence, hate speech, and sexual abuse, and that tool could learn to detect those forms of toxicity in the wild. That detector would be built into ChatGPT to check whether it was echoing the toxicity of its training data, and filter it out before it ever reached the user. It could also help scrub toxic text from the training datasets of future AI models.
To get those labels, OpenAI sent tens of thousands of snippets of text to an outsourcing firm in Kenya, beginning in November 2021. Much of that text appeared to have been pulled from the darkest recesses of the internet. Some of it described situations in graphic detail like child sexual abuse, bestiality, murder, suicide, torture, self harm, and incest.
source: https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
reading this, I don't really know what is supposed to be protected here to be deemed possible of protections in the first place.
closest reasonable one is the girl's "identity", so it could be fraud. but it's not used to fool people. more likely, those getting the pics already consented this is ai generated.
so might be defamation?
the image generation tech is already easily accessible so the girl's picture being easily accessible might be the weakest link?
Not a lawyer, but I'll take a stab. Pretty sure it's illegal to create sexual images of children, photos or not. It's also illegal to use someone's likeness without permission, but admittedly this depends on the state in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
Thanks for the valuable contribution to this discussion! It does appear this is a question of identity and personality rights, regarding how one wants to be portrayed.
Reading that article though, it seems like that only applies to commercial purposes. If one is making deep fakes for their own non-commercial private use, it doesn't appear personality rights apply.
I'd say it's bullying and sexual harassment.
This is treading on some dangerous waters. Kids need to realize this is way too close to basically creating underage pornography/trafficking.
I would rather have them realize that other people are to be treated with respect.
Also, while we're at it, we should judge playing shooter games in a similar way than actual murder. /s
AI legal matters are going to be krazy
I think the best way to combat this is to ostracize anyone who participates in it.
Let it be a litmus test to see who is and is not worth hanging out with.
The problem with that plan is there are too many horrible people in the world. They'll just group up and keep going. Horrible people don't stop over mere inconvenience.
These deepfakes don't disappear. You can ostracize all you like, but that won't stop these from potentially haunting girls for the rest of their lives.
I don't know what the solution is, honestly.
Why should it haunt them? Even if the images were REAL, why should it haunt them? I'm so tired of the puritanical shame women are supposed to feel about their bodies. We all have the same basic equipment. If a guy makes a deep fake, it is HE who should feel shame and humiliation for being a sick pervert. Girls need to be taught this. Band together and laugh these idiots off campus. Name and shame online. Make sure HE will be the one haunted forever.
It's time for the butlerian jihad.
gee here is a novel idea, dont let children have access to social media. that would solve a lot of other problems also
While I agree with that in principle, we shouldn't start blocking people, even young people, access to a lot of information.
Twitter, while now a cesspool, still has a lot of academics on it that share new ideas and discoveries.
Reddit, while shit, also has the value of helping people find niche hobbies and communities.
YouTube, while turning into shit, allows people access to video tutorials and explanations, hell while I was in school half the time teachers assigned hw that we would need to watch a YouTube video.
While it's an idea to block the youth from accessing social media, the drawbacks I think are too much.
she should do a couple of him rawdogging it and pass it around
In the end you can't stop it anymore than you can stop teen boys from wanking. Eventually there will just be fake nudes of everyone so it will have no meaning. It sucks, but it is how it is. Maybe people should get out in front of it by generating there own deep fakes of themsleves, but embellish them some so they have an obvious fakeness and age them up to legal age or something.
Sounds like an easy fix, treat it as revenge porn and CEM and prosecute it exactly the same.
Little Timmy's gonna think twice about distributing stable diffusions of the cheerleaders after he sees mikey's life get ruined for that shit
Little Timmy's gonna think twice
I appreciate your optimism , but I don't share it.
Timmy is as likely to believe he is smarter than Mikey and that he won't get caught...
Unfortunately, 14 year olds don't have the level of mental development for future consequences to reliably dissuade them from current impulses. For that matter consider how many adults did crime despite knowing the consequences. This approach will only succeed in filling prison with more kids.
How about we don't destroy a kids life for something that isn't against the law yet. Why can't we write the laws first then go after them. Give the kid a chance.
Um, what about the lives of the victims??
Yeah they need to change the law to treat it the same as a real photo being distributed essentially. As the damage is very similar.
No jail, just forbid access to any computing device until age 18. That will scare them straight.