In 2023, more deepfake abuse videos were shared than in every other year in history combined, according to an analysis by independent researcher Genevieve Oh. What used to take skillful, tech-savvy experts hours to Photoshop can now be whipped up at a moment’s notice with the help of an app. Some deepfake websites even offer tutorials on how to create AI pornography.
What happens if we don’t get this under control? It will further blur the lines between what’s real and what’s not — as politics become more and more polarized. What will happen when voters can’t separate truth from lies? And what are the stakes? As we get closer to the presidential election, democracy itself could be at risk. And, as Ocasio-Cortez points out in our conversation, it’s about much more than imaginary images.
“It’s so important to me that people understand that this is not just a form of interpersonal violence, it’s not just about the harm that’s done to the victim,” she says about nonconsensual deepfake porn. She puts down her spoon and leans forward. “Because this technology threatens to do it at scale — this is about class subjugation. It’s a subjugation of entire people. And then when you do intersect that with abortion, when you do intersect that with debates over bodily autonomy, when you are able to actively subjugate all women in society on a scale of millions, at once digitally, it’s a direct connection [with] taking their rights away.”
It’s too late at this point IMO, you can make AI generated porn on your PC… How exactly are they going to stop it?
“The legislation amends the Violence Against Women Act so that people can sue those who produce, distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography, if they “knew or recklessly disregarded” that the victim did not consent to those images.”–The article.
I read the article… amending a law doesn’t make the problem go away.
Maybe if more attention was given to the politicians talking about this half a decade ago (instead of focusing on AOC, which honestly realized this issue way too late), something more meaningful could have been done.
That wasn’t the point of the article though. It isn’t either/or.
The law creates a new kind of intellectual property, so one would expect the enforcement problems to be similar to copyright. However, there are some big differences.
One is that the minimum damages are 150k USD + attorney’s fees/costs. That’s going to unleash quite some entrepreneurial zeal.
To be on the hook, “possession with intent to distribute” is enough if one “recklessly disregards” that a depicted individual did not consent. EG if you come across nudes of some celebrities on your lemmy instance, you better delete them immediately. Assuming that the celebrity consented to the images being shared sounds like “reckless disregard” to me. If it’s just someone, then it’s no problem.
This definitely will make some people quite a lot of money.
By making gay AI generated porn of republicans so they call it the devil and start a witch hunt.
If that started happening I wonder how fast the laws would change.