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Comment by rg111 | Hacker News Reader

A man was very recently arrested for decesoring pixeleted Japanese porn with Deep Learning ("AI").

Man Arrested for Uncensoring Japanese Porn With AI in First Deepfake Case - Vice (https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdq87/deepfakes-japan-arres...)

Note: This is not hentai, but real-life porn.

Whenever I see news like this- I feel like there are a lot of work that can be done in Porn with AI. There are several low-hanging fruits that can be very easily solved. I don't know why no one is working on them.

I guess it would be difficult for people to say that they do AI at PornHub, and it will be hard for people to find work afterwards. Not to mention the ethical implications even when the humans involved fully agree to everything.

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>Porn and AI

This comment reminds me of a disturbing one I read a few months back on an anonymous underwater basket weaving forum.

The poster was discussing those expensive “real doll” (?) sex robots that creep me out, anyways he went on to mention that he discovered the app “face app” could take these things from “uncanny valley” to essentially photorealistic. Makes sense given what the app is supposed to do, but the real mind fuck was he said it also works on under aged dolls… which again I was surprised to learn are apparently legal most places.

So AI/ML can take an inanimate object and then create highly illegal fool-most-humans level fake image from said inanimate object. Seems pretty scary to me, and we might not be far from an ML model that can essentially produce endless amounts of illegal content.

What are the implications of that? How do you even begin to police/filter that? Then I guess there’s the question of if we even should, since none of it’s real anyways.

Porn and AI is gonna get real messy.

Not sure if I want to get into this discussion... but is underage porn still illegal when it's not technically depicting a real person? And is it moral? I could see it going either way (no child got hurt in the process / but it may push someone with pedophile tendencies towards acting on them / but it could also provide a safe outlet for someone with those tendencies).

It's illegal in some places, like Ireland for example.

In the US in particular, it doesn't matter if the underaged subject exists or not, but I think you'll find the law much more loosely enforced in cases where the subject of the pictures doesn't exist.

> it doesn't matter if the underaged subject exists or not

Are you sure this is true? As weird as it is it seems pretty ridiculous to suggest that someone drawing a sketch could be guilty of the same thing as someone abusing a real child.

They're both illegal under the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996:

> The Child Pornography Prevention Act added two categories of speech to the definition of child pornography. The first prohibited "any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer or computer-generated image or picture" that "is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct." In Ashcroft case, the Court observed that this provision "captures a range of depictions, sometimes called 'virtual child pornography,' which include computer-generated images, as well as images produced by more traditional means."

> The second prohibited "any sexually explicit image that was advertised, promoted, presented, described, or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression it depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct."

(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Pornography_Prevention_A... )

"Computer-generated" images was a remarkably prescient thing to include in 1996, since it criminalizes deepfakes and GAN images.

I think the standard argument is that even though actual minors aren't harmed by the creation of such images, the images trigger pedophiles to become more depraved or something. There's probably an element of the old obscenity laws to it - real or not, child porn is obscene, and obscenity isn't covered by the first amendment without some artistic merit.

I'm not sure of case law around enforcement of this.

Interesting, that seems to strictly criminalize cartoons then. I wonder if that’s ever been enforced or challenged.

Not that anyone would ever put their name behind attacking this.

As the Wikipedia page states, it was struck down by the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition in 2002.

I think it is illegal in the USA. But explicitly is is not illegal in Japan.

Japan has a pretty bad reputation for making their child porn laws pretty narrowly defined in the international community.

For these reasons Japan has a very high level of child pornography activity, but I know very little beyond that or of details.

It's sort of an open debate on the extent of the legality in the US [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_fictional_porn...

I haven’t researched it heavily, but AFAIK the gov can’t really criminalize art/drawings etc.

If it doesn’t depict a real person, then what’s the crime exactly? It’s still disgusting, but that’s another topic.

Well sure they can, although it depends what government you're talking about. Porn laws in Japan are weird, and the government does require that distributed pornography (including drawings) be censored.

It's complicated, in that this depends on jurisdiction. In some places, the age of the character matters, not just the actor's age. Regardless of legality, I think this is very prominent in self censorship. A lot of filmmakers wouldn't depict a nude 15 year old sexually, regardless of the actor's actual age.

It probably depends on whether they can prove the individual was soliciting for the real stuff. Same legal reason for why you're still committing a crime when you fall for a sting operation with an actual adult.

> but is underage porn still illegal when it's not technically depicting a real person?

If we look at existing laws, it should be. Depicting an underage person even when the actor is an adult is illegal, I think, in every country. So adult actress portraying a minor is illegal. So why not pixels depicting young girls should be illegal?

The pixels are just the conduit, just as the the adult actress depicting a minor in a sexual act.

So it should be.

But whether it is moral- I don't know. I don't know enough psychology, public policy, etc. to express an informed opinion.

But my personal choice? Yes. It should be illegal. Hypothetically, if it ever comes to a vote, I would vote against child porn even when there is no real human involved.

That's why child porn in animations is banned as well.

> If we look at existing laws, it should be. Depicting an underage person even when the actor is an adult is illegal, I think, in every country. So adult actress portraying a minor is illegal. So why not pixels depicting young girls should be illegal?

Due to that pesky First Amendment, this is not illegal in the USA. The USA bans child pornography under the rubric that producing or even viewing it implicates the perpetrator in the abuse of a child. If no actual child abuse is taking place, they can't ban it.

Cartoon images and the like may be banned if they depict an actual minor.

It reminds me of the children's right campaign sweetie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetie_(internet_avatar)

https://vimeo.com/86895084

where an org lured predators by posing as an animated 10 years old.

Feminists are against it because they are afraid it could replace real women. I have to admit that considering the general shittyness of man it is not beyond the realm of possibility that one day we might prefer the companionship of robots. I read Asimov when I was a teen.

>Feminists are against it because they are afraid it could replace real women.

Do you really think that's why feminists are against it?

> Then I guess there’s the question of if we even should, since none of it’s real anyways.

The idea of "policing" something that isn't even real should be seen as just patently ridiculous to any thinking person.

What comes after that? People love to shit all over the "slippery slope" and call it a "fallacy" even though there's a clear historical record of how the smallest of openings for those in power eventually become handholds, then footholds, until finally, you're living under a tyrannical system.

I would argue that it's a reasonable limit on whichever freedom may be cited not to allow the creation and distribution of child pornography, even when it is fictitious.

That limit is probably where real harm was caused to a real child.

It's not implausible that deepfake child porn ultimately causes harm to children. Allowing people to repeatedly indulge in a weak fetish may reinforce it into a strong one, or blunt a disgust response which would prevent them from acting it out.

> those in power eventually become handholds, then footholds, until finally, you're living under a tyrannical system.

I immediately thought about the current US political landscape. I believe this is exactly what we’re seeing with respect to radicalization.

If you think the US is bad, you should see Europe. Covid has blown open the door for essentially war time powers. It’s crazy.

> we might not be far from an ML model that can essentially produce endless amounts of illegal content

Like this [0] one?

And give me enough money, I can get you one that's a lot better. But I don't want to work for a porn company because of not the perceived immorality of porn, but for the horrible things that come with Porn. And I am well past my teenage years to do this with my own time and money.

[0]: https://thisvaginadoesnotexist.com/about.html

> Porn and AI is gonna get real messy.

From a practical standpoint I think it is going to be an unmitigated nightmare: people creating AI revenge porn, fake porn of famous people, etc.

From a legal standpoint, I don't think AI changes that much. People still own their image and while I would support stronger penalties for creating fake media of people, the law protects third parties using your image without your permission. Revenge porn already carries specific penalties in many jurisdictions[1].

> I guess there’s the question of if we even should, since none of it’s real anyways.

I absolutely think you should have say over the release and distribution of porn that uses your image. Not because it's wrong to make porn, but because you are impacted by its existence.

[1] I am generally skeptical of the ability of the prison system to deal with these kinds of things, but if we are going to have one I am glad it's included in the list of crimes.

> From a practical standpoint I think it is going to be an unmitigated nightmare: people creating AI revenge porn, fake porn of famous people, etc.

I honestly don’t see these becoming larger problems — once it’s ubiquitous, then it’ll quickly become meaningless; by default, everyone will assume it’s generated, the equivalent of cutting out and pasting their face onto a nude image today, and it’ll have relatively little impact.

It’d probably still be rude and stupid, but I’m fairly positive it’ll be much less damaging than it is today.

Effectively: if everyone stars in a porno, no one does.

> if everyone stars in a porno, no one does.

I am sorry I missed this because I disagree, I think it's worth considering the legal status of lying. Generally, lying is protected speech (and everyone does lie sometimes), but that's not the case when you lie in certain circumstances. We've always recognized that some lies are worse than others and I expect that some fake porns will be worse than others too. I expect that making fake pornography will work the same way, probably following the already-established legal frameworks I suggested.

Despite the headline, inside the actual article they admit that it wasn't really for uncensoring that he got arrested, but for copyright violation (as well as basically displaying porn in a country where porn is illegal).

In one country, making reaction videos or analysing news with clips from proprietary news channel is very common.

Then came a guy, who used news clips to create Before/After clips of politicians of a certain party. In these clips, the same person would be saying completely opposite things- on camera, and publicly- some years apart. These videos went viral. The party was in power. They forced the news channels to claim copyright to YouTube, and as they were legitimate, YT did take down those videos.

So, yes, when they say that he was arrested for copyright claims- I don't trust that.

I believe the issue was not that he was de-censoring per se, it was that he was reselling copyrighted works. That is, he could have been arrested for the same crime even if he was reselling them with no changes.

>> a lot of work that can be done in Porn with AI.

I think that "can be" is probably and "is being."

Porn generally, has a historical tendency to be a pioneering adopter of media technology. A substantial chunk of early commercial photography was pornographic. Early films. Early ecommerce. Streaming video. Porn is currently the most developed/active niche in VR filmmaking. I would even consider renaissance portraiture a part of the pattern.

In any case, most of "deepfake" that exists currently besides demonstration is pornographic.

I also think the same.

Many things are possible with the AI technology that we have today, right at this very moment that can be used to do things are the most wild things. Some of it would be illegal, some of it would be unethical. Good things are possible, too.

There was a repo on GitHub that contained the JDK environment variables (IIRC) to identify and box Uighurs from CC camera footage. The news made the headlines.

The getting out part was not really intended, I guess. So, imagine- what other wild things are out there in non-public repos.

"AI" is a very bad name, and often seen as synonymous to AGI. And people are either afraid or excited about it. Because much of the public facing content is focused on beyond-human AI. I guess this is because it is easy to get fundings, and there are private propaganda Machines running?

But there are so much that can be done today. Right now. Good things, too. If there are people willing to do it, and people willing to fund it, things are getting done.

AI weaponry is among this. I believe many things are being done that are far away from the public information.

Let me give you an example.

If there is a drone, I guess, it is not hard for mechanical engineers to rig a machine gun to it. Or with $$$ of defence funding, maybe a drone designed to host a machine gun. Then all you need is basically a cheap webcam and a Raspberry Pi to detect any motion, store the coordinates and aim and trigger the gun. When you have an enemy line, you deploy it behind that, and get done with it.

I am sure multiple countries have this today. And this example is among the lowest-hanging fruits of AI weaponry.

ads and payment as well. One of the first uses of real-time online credit card transactions was payment for the Pamela Anderson / Tommy Lee sex tape.

The reason for this is we descend from an unbroken genetic line of creatures for which absolutely nothing else mattered what they did or did not do except that they could procreate healthy offspring. The drive for life to ensure it’s continual survival and evolution takes on all forms and it’s power permeates every other part of life. primatea in all of our wit and charm have become too smart to procreate in some cases by figuring out how to short circuit the drive to procreate through artificial stimulation. In some cases, intelligence can become an evolutionary disadvantage.

> I feel like there are a lot of work that can be done in Porn with AI.

Well, one of the de-facto test images for image processing belongs to a Playboy model [0], so it looks like a natural evolution in the field.

Actually it's amazing how image processing revolves around sexual imagery.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

Lenna is a great image, they shouldn't retire it. it's only her head and shoulders after all, and she looks great. They should get a good looking male photo too, to balance things up - use them both for testing.

Someone who works in this sort of industry told a friend of mine that they are hired by a company that is contracted to the adult company but the adult company and the contractor company are owned/controlled by the same individuals. This way no one has to list some porn company as their past employer. If this was not done very few people would ever work for an adult company since it would immediately turn man future employers off.

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