> If you're wondering how it's so fast and cheap and they can generate variants so easily
I assume its cheap because they are burning money to build a business, its not fast at all, and the quality... sucks.
> And if you're wondering how it can look so good
I’m not.
I'm wondering why they’re trying to get people to use something worse than using a decent photorealistic SD1.5-based checkpoint with some basic prompt templating.
Not saying GANs can't be awesome, just that this site isn't what I’d use to make that case.
Looking at the poses, it feels optimized for generating porn, but one example someone showed had a child's face (good god please don't let your "AI" system generate child anything if you want to sell it for porn purposes), and another user noted that their attempt error'd out because it "detected nudity", even though other users get given a nude model by default.
I had one generate a fully nude, spread eagle male model w/ a very vivid vagina when I typed in "on couch". Tried it again w/ other randomly generated male and female models with nowhere near the same results w/ any of the other tries...
Whatever you do don't take all those long prompts that include (((aesthetic))) and such and put them in the negative prompt with "human" in the positive prompt.
So I was relatively unimpressed with the first few images, they looked incredibly unrealistic. But then after reading this message i decided to add "topless" to the notes just to see how crazy the result was.
I was actually impressed, it returned an image that actually looks lifelike once I gave it an adult request. Which reinforces the idea that this was optimized for porn.
The justice department defines it as anything depicting a real identifiable minor. Fictive persons are notably exempt from this definition (regardless of realism of the depiction). Canada is different in that regard.
To expand on what I take as your implied argument-
Some (small) percentage of people are pedophiles, meaning they're attracted to children. Presumably they can't help that, just as others can't change their sexual preferences. Clearly acting on this urge with an actual child is wrong. That's true whether it's directly assaulting a child, or consuming child porn, as that market encourages others to exploit children to generate it. However, if it is possible to produce CP without involving actual children, it could provide an outlet for those desires that would reduce demand for actual CP, and thereby reduce incidents of children being abused to produce it.
One could argue that such an outlet could even reduce incidents of direct sexual assault of children by pedophiles, but there is also a counter-argument that it would instead serve to "whet the appetite" and encourage such behaviour. And of course there are other counter-arguments; it could make actual CP more difficult to detect, for one. Finally there is the argument from the perspective of fundamental morality, that depicting children in a sexual manner is wrong in and of itself, and therefore the various potential effects are irrelevant. (Much like it's wrong to murder an innocent, even if you could harvest their organs and save five others as a result.)
>Finally there is the argument from the perspective of fundamental morality, that depicting children in a sexual manner is wrong in and of itself, and therefore the various potential effects are irrelevant. (Much like it's wrong to murder an innocent, even if you could harvest their organs and save five others as a result.)
I don't think those two scenarios are usefully similar. Murder is wrong because of its effects. This would be more like if you could murder someone without _anyone_ dying.
In the 80s you were "murdering" a handful of pixels. It's really not comparable. Neither In the 90s or 00s even though ever more pixels were involved.
I have to say though that this argument starts making a lot more sense with current VR tech. Sometimes it's really disgustingly realistic.
While I'm still not in favor of banning violent games, I do think a valid argument is emerging. I've never truly had a feel of fright playing on a 2d screen but since VR the spiders headcrabs of Half Life Alyx really make me panic sometimes.
On the csam side I'm just not sure if this would diminish or increase their interest. I would leave that up to someone who studied for this kind of insight.
That's a good summary, thanks. I think AI-generated will lead to actual child porn not making financial sense (hopefully, anyway). I also don't think that the "whetting the appetite" argument is true, from other areas I've seen (eg playing violent games doesn't lead you to becoming a murderer), but I have no data on that.
It's interesting to notice when utilitarian arguments are accepted and when they're rejected. The argument offered in favor of abortion without limits tends to be that women will get abortions regardless, they will just be dangerous. Presumably the greater good is served by allowing abortions despite the moral issues surrounding killing fetuses/unborn children. I have no trouble imagining many people supporting such a utilitarian argument for abortion but not for generated CP. Though I have a hard time making the distinction intelligible.
1. You are potentially giving a shield of deniability to people who create or distribute real CSAM because now they could claim that the images are just AI generated and therefore "harmless"
2. Efforts to stamp out real child abuse may be undermined by a flood of AI-generated false positive imagery
3. When people see something over and over again they start to think that it's normal. AI generation of this kind of material (something which can be done at a huge scale) risks normalizing the sexual abuse of children.
I'm sure there are many other arguments beyond these.
I see #3 as potentially valid, but also as applying equally to murder, drugs, and car speeding, which are prevalent in movies, animation, and video games. Heck, tv shows catering to kids have variations on all 3.
Don't get me wrong. I have a built in revulsion toward CP. But I wonder how much is that built in revulsion helping vs hindering rational discussion - just like it took me like 15 years of reading and pondering to remove the indoctrinated deference I had toward religion, and I hope I can have a more stable, less knee jerk discussion about religion. I think CP is wrong, but I also Think murder and torture are wrong. The latter two are amply represented in entertainment media. What is the Venn diagram, what is the delta that makes cp different?
ok, you've convinced me about it. before, I didn't have any opinions regarding llm and cp. I didn't even think people could generate cp with llm. thanks mate.
> What exactly is the argument against AI-generated child porn?
Currently? The fact that all the models need training data and the law will see that as victimizing the people who were used in the data set be they adults of children.
Overall? The fact that it's disgusting and pedophiles deserve things which I can say IRL and everyone agrees with, but on HN will get me banned.
Many countries ban underage anime porn too. Children and their likeness are off limits.
It's natural (normal) to think child point is disgusting.
But its not hard to find many other sexual acts that at least some people, if not most people, find disgusting. So I'm not sure disgust is a useful criteria here.
Most of what makes pedophilia so disgusting is the fact that a child is involved. Remove the child from the equation and it's more in line with other sex preferences.
People can't really control their preferences. We've grown to understand that there are healthy, and unhealthy ways to satiate those preferences. Most of those revolve around the consent of those involved (taking as fact that children cannot consent.)
One could argue that AI allows for a healthy outlet for a pedophile.
You mention children being off limits. In other societies homosexuality is still criminal. Even where it is legal many consider it "off limits" or "disgusting". Laws, and emotions, in this space are not always logical.
There will be second-order arguments (think - the gays are trying to turn my child gay) but most of them fundamentally misunderstand how human sexuality works.
> You mention children being off limits. In other societies homosexuality is still criminal. Even where it is legal many consider it "off limits" or "disgusting". Laws, and emotions, in this space are not always logical.
In fact in a lot of those countries where fully consensual homosexuality is highly illegal, marrying (with all its implications) what we would consider a child is legal and "normal" and so is forced/arranged marriage (again with all that implies). I'm really lucky to have grown up here.
Certainly yes, different cultures have different norms.
As a complete aside, forced marriages are not the same as arranged marriages. In many cultures arranged marriages (which seem completely bonkers to someone grown up in a western mindset) are both common, work well, and often good.
Clearly neither arranged marriages, nor "choice marriages", are guaranteed. The divorce rate in the west bears this out. Both work well, both work badly.
Again arranged is not the same as forced - clearly forced marriages are not something I consider a good thing.
I agree with you that porn is disgusting, and that the people who view it are immoral. However, there are a lot of arguments to be made against capital punishment, murder, and other forms of vigilante violence. No nation with capital punishment is a stranger to wrongful execution.
Encouraging state violence based on the fact that something is "disgusting" is not a good idea. Law needs to be grounded in concrete harm. The lines currently seem ill-defined, and existing laws in this area have been used against children (see State of Washington v. E.G., where an autistic child was charged and convicted with distribution of child pornography for taking a selfie and sending it to an adult).
> What exactly is the argument against AI-generated child porn?
As something you generate in a photorealistic image generator you are building a business around?
The fact that it is a serious crime in many jurisdictions and, even where it isn’t, photorealistic child porn images that get noticed anywhere or going to result in uncomfortable conversations for everyone involved in the process of establishing that they aren’t evidence of a crime.
Under English law creating a rough hand-drawn child porn sketch for your own amusement is a serious crime. I don't understand the rationale for this, but people should be aware that if they use a porn generator and it spits out an image that looks like CP then they will have committed an offence in England.
> What if it turned out it were the only effective way to prevent people engaging in real paedophilia?
Paedophilia is not synonym for child sex abuse, and to the extent that conjecture hasn't been ruled out by study already, that's at most an argument that its an appropriate function for tightly-controlled research-supporting tools, not a general public business.
No real disagreement there. Ultimately my biggest concern is that real children are not exploited and damaged by experiences they're clearly not ready for - if using AI-generated pornography turned out to be a particularly effective way to achieve that (with no obvious negative side-effects, and to be clear I doubt that's particularly likely to be the case), then I would think we shouldn't dismiss it out of hand as something that must be banned just because it intuitively seems so awful.
You’re suggesting that perhaps allowing people to explore an urge that should be fought and suppressed might dissuade them from pushing that urge further resulting in real-world action? Fascinating, do tell me more.
Blatant disregard for children aside, the larger issue here is the presupposition that we should someone permit all urges. Not every thought that passes through your brain should be “explored”; some thing are just bad and should be fought.
Not suggesting either, just putting forward a hypothetical possibility. The idea of using AI to generate kiddy porn is off-putting to me in the extreme, and I can think of plenty of reasons why it's almost certainly a bad idea to permit it, but I'd be wary of relying primarily on my instinctual aversion to it to be so certain it should be banned outright.
While I agree it’s probably a good idea to avoid instinctual aversion in many things, I believe some things in life are too sacred to rely on “data”. Some things we just know to be true, and have to trust that whatever story data might tell isn’t a story we’re interested in.
Keep in mind that science can tell any story you want it to tell as long as you interpret the data in the way you need. That’s why some things, such as our children, cannot be left to slippery slopes such as this.
We’ve already got more than enough data proving that pornography is absolutely destructive and a net negative on all of humanity. I don’t think we need additional data to prove that bringing kids into the mix would somehow make it better.
I assume its cheap because they are burning money to build a business, its not fast at all, and the quality... sucks.
> And if you're wondering how it can look so good
I’m not.
I'm wondering why they’re trying to get people to use something worse than using a decent photorealistic SD1.5-based checkpoint with some basic prompt templating.
Not saying GANs can't be awesome, just that this site isn't what I’d use to make that case.