Isn’t it a good thing for pedophiles to have an outlet for their desires that doesn’t involve harming children? Am I not seeing an obvious downside?

It’s a fair question. But the answer is concretely “no.” It’s indulging, even encouraging, the behavior/illness. And what happens when they start making requests of real underage people? They didn’t actually take the images. It’s still fake. But if it looks like a person in real life, what difference does the distinction make?

This literally happened in Spain recently btw.

And what happens when they start making requests of real underage people?

That’s the whole point of my argument. They don’t need to make request for real people if they can get fake ones of equal quality. Your argument reads like “We can’t let people have meat. What if they start eating live cows?”

That is not what I’m saying. But your argument is implying that if somehow we allow them to use AI generated child porn that it will somehow stop them from seeking the real stuff out. There is literally no evidence that suggests that in the slightest. It is enabling and assuming that it will somehow work itself out without any evidence that it will. For all we know, it will make things worse.

your argument is implying that if somehow we allow them to use AI generated child porn that it will somehow stop them from seeking the real stuff out or is somehow “better.”There is literally no evidence that suggests that in the slightest.

Of course. How would you procure such evidence? Give a group of pedophiles access to AI generated content and check if they molest children significantly less than a control group?

Pedophilia is an illness. […] You really need to […] take a macro view of what you are arguing in favor of.

I’m not defending pedophilia. Given that access to pedophilia treatment and prevention of sexual abuse is often lacking, I was starting a discussion of whether AI-generated content might be part of the prevention of sexual abuse of minors. After all, there are similar programs for drug abusers. Take methadone substitution as an example. Or establishments that are called “Drückerstube” in German (a very lacking translation would be “injection rooms”) – clean rooms where drug addicts have access to clean utensils for consuming drugs.

Methadone is distributed because weening off hard drugs can literally kill you.

[…Methadone] relieves cravings and removes withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal management using methadone can be accomplished […] or simply maintained for the rest of the patient’s life.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methadone (emphasis mine)

You also ignored my other example.