miskFBI Arrests Man For Generating AI Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
DeceptichumWhat an oddly written article.
Additional evidence from the laptop indicates that he used extremely specific and explicit prompts to create these images. He likewise used specific ‘negative’ prompts—that is, prompts that direct the GenAI model on what not to include in generated content—to avoid creating images that depict adults.”
They make it sound like the prompts are important and/or more important than the 13,000 images…
ricecakeIn many ways they are. The image generated from a prompt isn’t unique, and is actually semi random. It’s not entirely in the users control. The person could argue “I described what I like but I wasn’t asking it for children, and I didn’t think they were fake images of children” and based purely on the image it could be difficult to argue that the image is not only “child-like” but actually depicts a child.
The prompt, however, very directly shows what the user was asking for in unambiguous terms, and the negative prompt removes any doubt that they thought they were getting depictions of adults.
PirateJesusAnd also it’s an AI.
13k images before AI involved a human with Photoshop or a child doing fucked up shit.
13k images after AI is just forgetting to turn off the CSAM auto-generate button.
Having an AI generate 13.000 images does not even take 24 hours (depending on hardware and settings ofc).
Fuckin good job
macnielMhm I have mixed feelings about this. I know that this entire thing is fucked up but isn’t it better to have generated stuff than having actual stuff that involved actual children?
RetoffelnosterYou know whats better? Having none of this shit
Yeah as I also said.
MxM111Better for whom and why?
Better only means less worse in this case, I guess
It feeds and evolves a disorder which in turn increases risks of real life abuse.
But if AI generated content is to be considered illegal, so should all fictional content.
SigHunterIt feeds and satisfies a disorder which in turn decreases risk of real life abuse
That’s not how these addictive disorders works… they’re never satisfied and always need more.
Two things:
Does watching normal porn make heterosexual men more likely to rape women? If not then why would it be different in this case?
That’s a bit of a difference in comparison.
A better comparison would be “does watching common heterosexual porn make common heterosexual men more interested in performing common heterosexual sexual acts?” or "does viewing pornography long term satiate a mans sex drive?” or “does consumption of nonconsensual pornography correlate to an increase in nonconsensual sex acts?”
Comparing “viewing child sexual content might lead it engaging in sexual acts with children” to “viewing sexual activity with women might lead to rape” is disingenuous and apples to oranges.
wchh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/…/tre.791
a review of 19 studies published between 2013 and 2018 found an association between online porn use and earlier sexual debut, engaging with occasional and/or multiple partners, emulating risky sexual behaviours, assimilating distorted gender roles, dysfunctional body perception, aggression, anxiety, depression, and compulsive porn use.24 Another study has shown that compulsive use of sexually explicit internet material by adolescent boys is more likely in those with lower self-esteem, depressive feeling and excessive sexual interest.1
some porn use in adult men may have a positive impact by increasing libido and desire for a real-life partner, relieving sexual boredom, and improving sexual satisfaction by providing inspiration for real sex.7
As for child porn, it’s not a given that there’s no relationship between consumption and abusing children. There are studies that indicate both outcomes, and are made much more complicated by one of both activities being extremely illegal and socially stigmatized making accurate tracking difficult.
It’s difficult to justify the notion that “most pedophiles never offend” when it can be difficult to identify both pedophiles and abuse.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21088873/ for example. It looks at people arrested for possession of child pornography. Within six years, 6% were charged with a child contact crime. Likewise, you can find research with a differing conclusion
Point being, you can’t just hand wave the potential for a link away on the grounds that porn doesn’t cause rape amongst typical heterosexual men. There’s too many factors making the statistics difficult to gather.
pavnilschandaA problem that I see getting brought up is that generated AI images makes it harder to notice photos of actual victims, making it harder to locate and save them
Well that, and the idea of cathartic relief is increasingly being dispelled. Behaviour once thought to act as a pressure relief for harmful impulsive behaviour is more than likely just a pattern of escalation.
Source? From what I’ve heard, recent studies are showing the opposite.
Catharsis theory predicts that venting anger should get rid of it and should therefore reduce subsequent aggression. The present findings, as well as previous findings, directly contradict catharsis theory (e.g., Bushman et al., 1999; Geen & Quanty, 1977). For reduc- ing anger and aggression, the worst possible advice to give people is to tell them to imagine their provocateur’s face on a pillow or punching bag as they wallop it, yet this is precisely what many pop psychologists advise people to do. If followed, such advice will only make people angrier and more aggressive.
But there’s a lot more studies who have essentially said the same thing. The cathartic hypothesis is mainly a byproduct of the Freudian era of psychology, where hypothesis mainly just sounded good to someone on too much cocaine.
Do you have a source of studies showing the opposite?
Yes, but I’m too lazy to sauce everything again. If it’s not in my saved comments someone else will have to.
your source is exclusively about aggressive behavior…
it uses the term “arousal”, which is not referring to sexual arousal, but rather a state of heightened agitation.
provide an actual source in support of your claim, or stop spreading misinformation.
Lol, my source is about the cathartic hypothesis. So your theory is that it doesn’t work with anger, but does work for sexual deviancy?
Do you have a source that supports that?
you made the claim that the cathartic hypothesis is poorly supported by evidence, which you source supports, but is not relevant ot the topic at hand.
your other claim is that sexual release follows the same patterns as aggression. that’s a pretty big claim! i’d like to see a source that supports that claim.
otherwise you’ve just provided a source that provides sound evidence, but is also entirely off-topic…
but is not relevant to the topic at hand.
The belief that indulging in AI created child porn relieves the sexual deviant behaviour of being attracted to actual minors utilizes the cathartic theory. The cathartic theory is typically understood to relate to an array of emotions, not just anger. "Further, the catharsis hypothesis maintains that aggressive or sexual urges are relieved by “releasing” aggressive or sexual energy, usually through action or fantasy. "
follows the same patterns as aggression. that’s a pretty big claim! i’d like to see a source that supports that claim.
That’s not a claim I make, it’s a claim that cathartic theory states. As I said the cathartic hypothesis is a byproduct of Freudian psychology, which has largely been debunked.
Your issue is with the theory in and of itself, which my claim is already stating to be problematic.
but is also entirely off-topic…
No, you are just conflating colloquial understanding of catharsis with the psychological theory.
and your source measured the effects of one single area that cathartic theory is supposed to apply to, not all of them.
your source does in no way support the claim that the observed effects apply to anything other than aggressive behavior.
i understand that the theory supposedly applies to other areas as well, but as you so helpfully pointed out: the theory doesn’t seem to hold up.
so either A: the theory is wrong, and so the association between aggression and sexuality needs to be called into question also;
or B: the theory isn’t wrong after all.
you are now claiming that the theory is wrong, but at the same time, the theory is totally correct! (when it’s convenient to you, that is)
so which is it now? is the theory correct? then your source must be wrong.
or is the theory wrong? then the claim of a link between sexuality and aggression is also without support.
you can’t have it both ways, but you’re sure trying to.
understand that the theory supposedly applies to other areas as well, but as you so helpfully pointed out: the theory doesn’t seem to hold up.
My original claim was that cathartic theory in and of itself is not founded on evidence based research.
but at the same time, the theory is totally correct! (when it’s convenient to you, that is)
When did I claim it was ever correct?
I think you are misconstruing my original claim with the claims made by the cathartic theory itself.
I don’t claim that cathartic theory is beneficial in any way, you are the one claiming that Cathartic theory is correct for sexual aggression, but not for violence.
Do you have a source that claims cathartic theory is beneficial for satiation deviant sexual impulses?
then the claim of a link between sexuality and aggression is also without support, until you provide a source for that claim.
You are wanting me to provide an evidence based claim between the two when I’ve already said the overarching theory is not based on evidence?
The primary principle to establish is the theory of cathartic relief, not wether it works for one emotion or the other. You have not provided any evidence to support that claim, I have provided evidence that disputes it.
Let’s see here, listen to my therapist who has decades of real experience or a study from over 20 years ago?
Sorry bud, I know who I’m going with on this and it ain’t your academic.
Let’s see here, listen to my therapist who has decades of real experience or a study from over 20 years ago?
Your therapist is still utilizing Freudian psychoanalysis?
Well, if age is a factor in your opinion about the validity of the care you receive, I have some bad news for you…
You’re still using 5,000 year old Armenian shoes?
Of course not. Stop being reductive.
Lol, you were the one who first dismissed evidence because it was 20 years old…
The point is you can reduce anything to its origin. That does not mean it’s still the same thing.
The point is you can reduce anything to its origin.
Okay, but how does the modern version of cathartic theory differ from what freud postulated?
I agree you can’t reduce things based on its original alone , which is why I included a scientific source as evidence…
I don’t know, that’s why I have a therapist, I’m not educated in psychology. But I do recognize a logical fallacy when I see one.
But I do recognize a logical fallacy when I see one.
I doubt that, so far your argument has been based on the anecdotal fallacy mixed with a bit of the appeal to authority fallacy.
Lmao. Says the guy who tried to use a study on aggression to address sexual urges.
Reading comprehension is still hard for you? My argument was about Cathartic theory, which includes several emotions including sexual urges… It is a theory from freud, of course it covers sexual urges.
You and the other guy just have no idea what you’re talking about. How about providing any kind of source instead of talking out of your ass?
NatakuNoxAnd doesn’t the AI learn from real images?
True, but by their very nature their generations tend to create anonymous identities, and the sheer amount of them would make it harder for investigators to detect pictures of real, human victims (which can also include indicators of crime location.
It does learn from real images, but it doesn’t need real images of what it’s generating to produce related content.
As in, a network trained with no exposure to children is unlikely to be able to easily produce quality depictions of children. Without training on nudity, it’s unlikely to produce good results there as well.
However, if it knows both concepts it can combine them readily enough, similar to how you know the concept of “bicycle” and that of “Neptune” and can readily enough imagine “Neptune riding an old fashioned bicycle around the sun while flaunting it’s tophat”.
Under the hood, this type of AI is effectively a very sophisticated “error correction” system. It changes pixels in the image to try to “fix it” to matching the prompt, usually starting from a smear of random colors (static noise).
That’s how it’s able to combine different concepts from a wide range of images to create things it’s never seen.
Basically if I want to create … (I’ll use a different example for obvious reasons, but I’m sure you could apply it to the topic)
… “an image of a miniature denium airjet with Taylor Swift’s face on the side of it”, the AI generators can despite no such thing existing in the training data. It may take multiple attempts and effort with the text prompt to get exactly what you’re looking for, but you could eventually get a convincing image.
AI takes loads of preexisting data on airplanes, T.Swift, and denium to combine it all into something new.
CatoblepasDid we memory hole the whole ‘known CSAM in training data’ thing that happened a while back? When you’re vacuuming up the internet you’re going to wind up with the nasty stuff, too. Even if it’s not a pixel by pixel match of the photo it was trained on, there’s a non-zero chance that what it’s generating is based off actual CSAM. Which is really just laundering CSAM.
I didn’t know that, my bad.
Fair but depressing, it seems like it barely registered in the news cycle.
Ragdoll XIIRC it was something like a fraction of a fraction of 1% that was CSAM, with the researchers identifying the images through their hashes but they weren’t actually available in the dataset because they had already been removed from the internet.
Still, you could make AI CSAM even if you were 100% sure that none of the training images included it since that’s what these models are made for - being able to combine concepts without needing to have seen them before. If you hold the AI’s hand enough with prompt engineering, textual inversion and img2img you can get it to generate pretty much anything. That’s the power and danger of these things.
What % do you think was used to generate the CSAM, though? Like, if 1% of the images were cups it’s probably drawing on some of that to generate images of cups.
And yes, you could technically do this with no CSAM training material, but we don’t know if that’s what the AI is doing because the image sources used to train it were mass scraped from the internet. They’re using massive amounts of data without filtering it and are unable to say with certainty whether or not there is CSAM in the training material.
retrospectologyThe arrest is only a positive. Allowing pedophiles to create AI CP is not a victimless crime. As others point out it muddies the water for CP of real children, but it also potentially would allow pedophiles easier ways to network in the open (if the images are legal they can easily be platformed and advertised), and networking between abusers absolutely emboldens them and results in more abuse.
As a society we should never allow the normalization of sexualizing children.
nexguyInteresting. What do you think about drawn images? Is there a limit to how will the artist can be at drawing/painting? Stick figures vs life like paintings. Interesting line to consider.
If it was photoreal and difficult to distinguish from real photos? Yes, it’s exactly the same.
And even if it’s not photo real, communities that form around drawn child porn are toxic and dangerous as well. Sexualizing children is something I am 100% against.
It feels like driving these people into the dark corners of the internet is worse than allowing them to collect in clearweb spaces where drawn csam is allowed.
I’m in favor of specific legislation criminalizing drawn CSAM. It’s definitely less severe than photographic CSAM, and it’s definitely harmful.
Actually, that’s not quite as clear.
The conventional wisdom used to be, (normal) porn makes people more likely to commit sexual abuse (in general). Then scientists decided to look into that. Slowly, over time, they’ve become more and more convinced that (regular) porn availability in fact reduces sexual assault.
I don’t see an obvious reason why it should be different in case of CP.
It should be different because people can not have it. It is disgusting, makes them feel icky and thats just why it has to be bad. Conventional wisdom sometimes really is just convential idiocracy.
I wonder if religiosity is correlated.
networking between abusers absolutely emboldens them and results in more abuse.
Is this proven or a common sense claim you’re making?
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a mixture of the two. It’s kind of like if you surround yourself with criminals regularly, you’re more likely to become on yourself. Not to say it’s a 100% given, just more probable.
So... its just a claim they're making and you're hoping it has actual backing.
I’m not hoping anything, haha wtf? The comment above me asked if it was a proven statement or common sense and I said I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s both. I felt confident that if I googled it, there would more than likely be studies backing up a common sense statement like that, as I’ve read in the past how sending innocent people or people who committed minor misdemeanors to prison has influenced them negatively to commit crimes they might not have otherwise.
And look at that, there are academic articles that do back it up:
waldenu.edu/…/what-influences-criminal-behavior
Negative Social Environment
Who we’re around can influence who we are. Just being in a high-crime neighborhood can increase our chances of turning to crime ourselves.4 But being in the presence of criminals is not the only way our environment can affect our behaviors. Research reveals that simply living in poverty increases our likelihood of being incarcerated. When we’re having trouble making ends meet, we’re under intense stress and more likely to resort to crime.
www.law.ac.uk/resources/…/is-prison-effective/
Time in prison can actually make someone more likely to commit crime — by further exposing them to all sorts of criminal elements.
Etc, etc.
But you didn't say you had proof with your comment, you said it was probable. Basically saying its common sense that its proven.
Why are you getting aggressive about actually having to provide proof about something when saying its obvious?
Also, that seems to imply that locking up people for AI offenses would then encourage truly reprehensible behavior by linking them with those who already engage in it.
Almost like lumping people together as one big group, instead of having levels of grey area, means people are more likely to just go all in instead of sticking to something more morally defensible.