You can make it illegal or try to detect and restrict sharing it in popular apps because it hurts feelings, just like you can outlaw pictures of religious imagery because they hurt feelings, but neither can ever be effectively enforced in an internet that allows open source applications and anonymity. See: piracy.

Giving up the right to online anonymity is a non starter as it would make it impossible for journalists and dissidents to communicate freely which is a requirement for democracy to function.

This statement is hilarious because we cannot even do the former for schoolchildren, let alone the latter. Between casual bullying resulting in fatalities due to the utter disinterest of the administration at play, to school shootings where police cower outside while someone murders children en masse.

Apparently being a child now is just grounds to have people make pornography of you, bully you relentlessly, with the distinct possibility you might die in a hail of gunfire one day for literally no reason.

No wonder the birth rate has cratered.

> You can make it illegal or try to detect and restrict sharing it in popular apps because it hurts feelings

CAN and SHOULD. INCREDIBLY illegal. Like registering the creator as a sex offender illegal, because that's what this is. It's a sex crime.

> but neither can ever be effectively enforced in an internet that allows open source applications and anonymity. See: piracy.

So we just give up?

That said, in a global internet any technology that can be created, will be crated, and made free and open for anyone to use. We can never escape this fact, and can only educate people on how to protect themselves as individuals as much as possible.

Google, Facebook, and modern surveillance capitalism app culture is -optional-. Smartphones have turned into a net negative that make most people miserable for instance. I for one do not have a smartphone, and am happier for it.

Maybe, but that's not an excuse to do it, like: "I do it because anyway someone else will". Silicon Valley is throwing a lot of money into stuff that "someone else" would do, and it is not clear to me that this someone else would always have that kind of resources.

I think it should be legal to burn flags. I would also never do it or advise anyone to do it.

Sometimes a free country requires allowing assholes to exist, and educating each other on how to ignore them.

I'm glad you asked!

Step 1: Anyone who uses any media, be it watercolors or generative AI, to create pornographic content of a minor should go to a LOT of prison and be registered as a sex offender.

Step 2: Educate children on these tools, what they may be used for, what they may not be used for, and illustrate vividly the extreme consequences thereof.

Step 3: When it inevitably happens anyway, enforce those consequences. The offender needs to go away for a long time, and be subject to rehabilitation programs to re-enter society. They should be treated as any other sex offender would, because that's what they are. Their age does not change their crime.

Step 3.5: Support the victim. Make it abundantly clear that anyone possessing this material any further will be subject to less severe certainly, but still severe consequences. It is to be deleted, to the maximum extent possible, from the maximum number of places possible.

Step 4: Any platform that permits this content to be distributed upon it should also be subjected to extremely steep fines and if the issue persists, seizure by the appropriate authorities. And frankly this should be expanded to all CAM, regardless of origin. Don't wanna regulate it, or feel you can't enforce this? Then shut down. Nobody asked you to to build a website and if you can't keep CP off your website, then your website doesn't need to exist, full stop.

Step 5: At this exact moment, begin changing how these generative tools are constructed. Make sure they only use training materials that are properly licensed and given over by their subjects and creators. If a given AI contains the ability to generate pornographic material, then it's distribution should also, in turn, be regulated as pornography already is. Yes, that will be probably be just as ineffective as it is for regular pornography. No, that is not an excuse to not do it. A tool that can make pornography on demand is indistinguishable from pornography.

And yes I am certain all of this will stifle innovation in the AI space. I don't care. Frankly if this kills it off entirely I think that's an unmitigated win.

Do you really suggest we abolish the right to privacy and anonymous speech in order to support the type of universal censorship you propose?

No, we can't stop people sharing it over encrypted channels. What we can do is mandate that these AI include identification data in their generated images, which is tied to a singular person. And from there, we can identify and prosecute the creator, and through court orders to whatever platform holder is at play, get a list of everyone who downloaded it and shared it.

We do this shit constantly for major rights holders. We know how. We just choose not to because too many people think it's "just boys being boys" and enable a culture that thinks sex offenses aren't worth our time.

You talk of punishment in the context of physical harm (fist vs. face), while deepfakes concern mental distress at worst. 2nd order effects like reputation damage, lost income etc can be adressed by lawyers.

Yes mental distress can be severe to some people. Or (for example) cause a group of people to harass someone.

But a) such harassment is a separate act from posting a deepfake. And

b) If deepfake postings happen often enough, it kinda takes the sting out. Few people today would be deeply disturbed if someone posts their head shopped onto a pornstar's body. That's easy enough that anyone can do it, it's been done many times, so the newsworthiness / shock value is gone.

If you know the victim in person, you'd probably be able to tell whether some video is fake or not. Or ask that person. If victim is a random stranger & deepfake disappears into the 'internet background noise', who cares.

Either way, when creating a deepfake is easy enough, it simultaneously grants a victim plausible deniability.

So ehm... "horrifying" is too strong a word imho. Try "annoying", "bad taste" or "disrespectful". Punishment (if any) should fit that.

THAT is horrifying. It's horrifying both by the base actions at play and, far moreso IMO, that because someone in the tech space thought it was monetizable enough to warrant investment, it will happen. It did happen. That genie is now out if it's box and when confronted with the ethical dilemmas it seems most people in the engineering space are content to shrug their shoulders and go "shit happens."

That's horrifying. It's horrifying that all a technology has to do is demonstrate it's ability to make money, no matter how socially or culturally corrosive it might be, no matter how much harm it might do to individuals or even entire professions, no matter how unethical and just straight up creepy it is, doesn't matter. If it will make someone rich, it will be done, and it will be done with the best hardware and expertise money can buy, and that social order will be corroded, that culture will be corroded, those individuals will be harmed, that profession will be obliterated, and those checks will be cashed.

THAT'S horrifying.

The #2 cause of death for people in the US aged 10-14 is suicide. Suicide is #3 for ages 15-24.

> b) If deepfake postings happen often enough, it kinda takes the sting out.

Ask any child subject to chronic bullying whether the repeated abuse "takes the sting out".

At some point soon every teen will know how to generate pictures of anything they can imagine. Teach impacted teen girls how to make deepfakes too and that it is not real. The world is not ready for this, but it is happening and can not be stopped so education is all we have left.

It is only shocking right now because it is new and seems like magic.

We should be educating teens on body positivity, and that anyone that shares a deepfake of them is announcing of how big of a child they are, and why they should not be taken seriously. It will just become an eye roll once everyone can do it and understands how easy it is. Background noise.