Danish Supreme Court Finds That AI CSAM Is CSAM(domstol.fe1.tangora.com) |
Danish Supreme Court Finds That AI CSAM Is CSAM(domstol.fe1.tangora.com) |
I would counter with this: If it is technically impossible to tell the difference between AI generated images, and real ones, how could anyone ever be prosecuted for having presumptive real ones in their possession ever again? Everyone tried would simply say "AI" and that'd be that, unless there was a victim to testify, or it was a case on generation of it etc.
So AI images of this nature do have victims, just slightly less directly.
Another adjacent question: How would you feel if it was an AI generated image of a specific child. What is the precise threshold of victimhood that is necessary?
AI is not something new in this space, it just means that a lot more grotesque fictional CSAM can be produced. It has been possible to create realistic-looking-but-fictional CSAM since Photoshop came out (and then some).
CSAM laws exist to punish abusers, and seek justice for the abused. Not one or the other, but both. The law cannot function without the victims, else you're just attacking people for what amounts to thought crimes.
I find CSAM and pedophiles disgusting, and I imagine 100% of HN users agree with me on this, but this just opens the door for world governments to a) claim LLM output is real and factual (!), but b) minimizes the danger to victims and equates victimhood to being a fictional character.
I'm not Danish and I'm hoping this is just some Dane-specific weird quirk of their law, but from what I can see, this is a politically-biased ruling to "think of the children".
Yeah those guys are so not free because they ban CP, a thing you think should be allowed as long as it's not real. Do you see how easy it is to make a bad argument?
In my mind, this is pretty substantial technology news, at least in Denmark, since it rejects the notion that AI generated pictures are substantially different from other pictures, and therefore has to abide by the same laws.
I will be interested in seeing if anybody charges the big AI providers for producing these photos.
So I think one has to find other logic to contain this crap.
For instance, what if we're NOT talking about CSAM, are generated images ALSO considered equivalent to photos of real things in other domains? Or is CSAM a special carve out and based on what principles? Legal frameworks are stronger when they limit arbitrary rules.
(to be clear, there might be a good logic argument, e.g. it isn't about protecting children, it is about protecting adults - so it doesn't matter how the image came into being).
So, then: What specific and immediate — not potential, but actual — harms does this CSAM-context decision impose on non-CSAM contexts?
At a glance, I don’t see any such harms imposed. One could perhaps argue that AI must take more care now, and that this is a harm; plausible enough, but is that an undue harm? Not likely: the cultural and legal hostility to crossing from non-CSAM contexts into CSAM-context has no reason to yield to the AI operations difficulties imposed by restricting generation of CSAM-context materials.
The answer to if it generalizes is, as with all new law, that we just don't know. In this case, the procedural for the passing of the last amendment to the relevant section includes the specific point that fictive CSAM should be included. It seems doubtful that other such procedurals would contain the same language. That doesn't rule out that this case is used as a basis for claiming that AI generated images should be treated similarly to real photographs when the two are indistinguishable.