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How about a different kind of AI culture war? I speak of course of non-consensual pornography generation. The most outrageous article I read about this recently was probably this AP article: Boys at her school shared AI-generated, nude images of her. After a fight, she was the one expelled. The girl in question is 13 and she started a fight on a school bus with one of the boys later charged with a crime for sharing the images.
It turns out that finding apps that advertise this kind of functionality is not hard. In fact, part of the reason I bring this up is it seems this capability is integrated into one of the largest AIs: Grok. There's been some controversy on X over the last couple days after Grok allegedly generated pornographic images of a couple minor girls. Additionally the bot's "media" tab was disabled, allegedly due to the discovery lots of people were using the bot to make pornographic edits of other people's pictures. Though the media tab is gone I did not find it very hard to get Grok to link me its own posts with these kinds of edits.
There is, I think understandably, a lot of controversy going around about this. It's not that it was previously impossible to make this kind of content but the fidelity and availability was much more limited and certainly required more technical skill. Being something you can do without even leaving your favorite social media app seems like something of a game changer.
Frankly I am unsure where to go with this as a policy matter. Should someone be liable for this? Criminal or civil? Who? Just the generating user? The tool that does the generating? As a general matter I have some intuitions about AI conduct being tortious but difficulty locating who should be liable.
From a legal standpoint, what is the theory for the 'harm' caused in this instance. And to whom?
Liability of any kind usually rests on the idea that someone's interests were injured and in need of redress.
We are able to statutorily 'create' interests (the Americans with Disabilities Act did this, for instance) but I think we'd smack into 1A issues trying to make it completely illegal to post manipulated images of people who... are already posting images of themselves online.
Most obvious angle is copyright/IP, but they're still sorting that out for AI works.
I'd kinda love for them to go at it from the obscenity angle. Because that would also suggest that the women posting thirst traps are doing something wrong too.
Where's the harm in teenage boys faking nudes of a 13 year old girl without her knowledge or consent, indeed very much against her consent?
Well gosh gee whiz, why on earth are women such picky, fussy, hypergamous trollops who don't want to marry just plain ordinary guys? No wonder we need to force these women into marrying normal men who think nudes of 13 year old girls are just fine! Why is anyone getting het-up about this? Men like nubile women, young means fertile, and if she's old enough to bleed she's old enough to breed, right?
The boys are just doing what boys do! Boys are gonna be interested in girls of their own age! Boys will be looking at porn, and porn is fine and normal and in fact is good for society since it reduces rape and sex offending crimes (citation needed, of course!)
I know, I know: Amadan is going to hammer me for using sarcasm. But how else am I to react to "how is the girl harmed by this?" unless I get really angry and abusive, in which case I'm still going to get the mod hammer.
What is the legal harm here, is the question that @faceh asked. Mind you I disagree with faceh, I think the harm here is pretty obvious even from a legal point of view since defamation per se usually covers allegations of sexual misconduct in as well (but as I said elsewhere I'm not a legal expert here and could be completely wrong). Please try to respond to the argument faceh is actually making instead of devolving into mocking and sarcasm.
Okay, so I burned down faceh's house and broke faceh's legs and stole all faceh's money in their bank account, but what is the legal harm here? Was any harm even done if there's no legal harm?
I mean, I can run you through the entire philosophical underpinnings of the Anglo Legal Tradition that explains the "harms" that, e.g. physically damaging a person's body, or removing funds they 'earned' without their permission, or demolishing objects that belong to them entail.
I did go to school for that after all.
But somehow I think you'd be nonplussed.
I'm not nonplussed. I can recognise "heh heh my chance to be an edgelord" when I see it.
Look, I'll make this clear, as that is the spirit of this whole forum:
I do not care about being an edgelord, I do not care if you are offended, or if you are flattered. I care about being correct.
Edgelords end up being correct in some cases because they can speak on matters that polite people will carefully ignore.
Being correct is not a necessary condition for being an edgelord, however.
If my being (mostly) correct makes you think I'm an edgelord, whatever. I hold a ton of other opinions that are 'edgy' to some crowds but very normal in others. I'm not trying to shock or offend anyone.
If anything, its "heh heh my chance to be a high decoupler." But even that isn't really accurate. Being a decoupler is also adaptive in the legal field, though.
If you want me to shut up about this topic; or ideally, you want me to come around to your side and agree that you're correct, there's plenty you can do.
I personally keep trying to find data that disagrees with me. The unfortunate truth is the more I look I keep stumbling across more data that suggests the other data is accurate and my position is correct.
Point out where my analysis is flawed. I'm taking good data and misinterpreting it, or missing a lot of context, or am engaging in clearly biased/motivated reasoning.
Point out where my premises are flawed.
Show me a superior theory that is still supported by good data.
If its NOT the case that women have gotten progressively less appealing to men, less mentally stable, more antisocial, more unpleasant and unhappy, and that this seems uncorrelated to male behavior...
Well, what is the competing interpretation?
Point out a solution that I'm missing, or explain how the problem isn't a problem, or the problem will go away on its own.
Point out actual counterexamples that show my position is not a sufficient explanation of the observed data/phenomenon.
Basically, I'm sitting here with data I think is mostly solid, all pointing in the same direction, with a general theory/interpretation of it that completely explains the data I'm seeing, and suggests particular solutions to the nature of the problem.
And EVERY TIME I ENGAGE WITH SOMEONE WHO THINKS I'M WRONG, they utterly fail to undermine or effectively attack any pillar on which I've formed this belief. Its all argument from some position of personal belief that doesn't appear to be informed by true facts in the world, and often is based on experience that is utterly outdated from a time before the problem manifested in earnest (read: older than 10 years, before dating apps arose).
I remain open to being persuaded. But I will simply no sell the social pressure and shaming attempts. I do not care if you think its 'cringe,' I do not hold your (or anyone elses') opinion of me in high enough regard for that to matter.
If you find this personally discomfiting I'm 'sorry' but this is one of the few places on the internet where social pressure is not a defining variable in how our discourse proceeds. I want you to come back with an earth-shattering insight that proves this part of my worldview incorrect. I will not respond to attempts to prove my worldview 'icky,' or 'unpopular' or 'impolite' or 'just c'mon dude really how can you say that?'
You're convinced you're right. I'm convinced I'm right. I don't think we can go much further on from here, apart from butting heads and drawing the ire of the mods.
Hot button topics are hot, and get people hot under the collar. And when I'm hot, I react with heat.
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Not to mansplain your own violent revenge fantasy back to you—but you do know that as a middle aged woman, an attempt at breaking @faceh's legs would almost certainly result in a reverse uno card getting quickly played against you? Or for that matter, such an attempt against any man in this thread who you wish to "[go] nuclear" on for being insufficiently reverential toward girls and women, but especially against one with an MMA background.
Granted, perhaps the hidden premise is that he's already cooked like Anakin by the housefire but with legs still intact before the knee-breaking. Either way, what a curious toughgal LARP.
Didn't we have a distinction between rhetorical leg-breaking and actual leg-breaking on here when it came to comments? Anyway, no of course I can't physically break his legs. But it's a hypothetical: we all recognise the harm done by physical violence, nobody would attempt to defend it by "but is it legal offence, is legal harm done?"
Same with shaming and humiliating a minor child by producing lewd and fake images of her. If you really need "but is it legal harm, otherwise it doesn't count", then I submit you are not part of civilised human society.
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Legally, you committed several clear and well established crimes (arson, battery, theft) that caused clear and well established harm, both in the legal and moral sense (loss of the house, medical bills for the legs, loss of the money in the account).
Faceh never argued that there was never any moral harm, and I doubt he believes that there wasn't any. But what was done in the article doesn't clearly and neatly fit under any existing legal framework like revenge porn laws and defamation laws. I (and others) think it likely falls under defamation, but other legal precedents like Fallwell v. Hustler make that unclear so we'd likely need some court cases or new statutes to establish a clear precedent.
So instead of being snarky and sarcastic to faceh, you could make an argument like "I think this behavior falls under [existing legal framework] because X" or "I don't think it fits under existing legal frameworks but legislatures could make it illegal without running afoul of [the first amendment/existing precedent/whatever] because X." It really isn't hard, you're just choosing to react with snark and sarcasm instead of an actual argument.
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