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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

For me, it’s not that Im tasteless, it’s that I don’t think consent is needed to make an image with my face put into a naked body. At least if it’s for personal use.

In the US at least, there are laws that prevent commercialization of my likeness, or harassment, or defamation. And those can be applied if someone sells images of me on a nude bode.

But for personal use, it seems as pointless to outlaw as someone imagining me naked. Is that “tasteless?” Perhaps. Of my child, that’s gross.

Im not sure how to stop this though as I think any control to try to outlaw perverts from staring at people, or drawing images of people, or using these apps without consent would cause more harm than the harm they seek to prevent.

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Insofar as we create laws to protect people from undue harm, it is a well known fact that victims of CSAM are victimized twice: first when the CSAM is produced and again when it’s viewed.

“Yeah everyone at school is looking at it, but don’t worry it’s only pixels that represent your naked body!”

The fact people can now produce CSAM that doesn’t inflict the first victimization does not eliminate the second, and the fact the current law wasn’t designed with this technology in mind doesn’t mean no harm is inflicted and we shouldn’t be responding to it.

Of course you’ll argue that someone could paint a nude child with a real person’s likeness and I’ll point out that an actual photograph of a nude child is also not “really them.” We gauge the badness of any location on this spectrum by the harm felt. A thing that ~never happens, ~never causes harm, and is very difficult to produce (high quality paintings of nude children) is strictly less bad than something that costs $0, 0 hours, 0 talent to produce at significantly higher quality (synthetic CSAM).

I don’t buy the “it’s easier to do now so the law must change” argument. You actually just admitted that there isn’t anything fundamentally different between a hand drawn depiction and an AI generated one. Both may be tasteless in most situations, but in neither case is there a victim.

> Insofar as we create laws to protect people from undue harm, it is a well known fact that victims of CSAM are victimized twice

I note you didn't say harmed twice.

> it’s that I don’t think consent is needed to make an image with my face put into a naked body

Can you explain more of your reasoning why you don't think consent is needed here?

I think the main thing here is that there is a very clear difference between mentally imagining someone nude and a fake version of their nude body being created. One is in the mind only and another actually exists.

Not only exists, but also possibly difficult to distinguish from a non fake.

> I think the main thing here is that there is a very clear difference between mentally imagining someone nude and a fake version of their nude body being created. One is in the mind only and another actually exists.

I think things through to what it will be like when we have digital consciousness. I think that imagining someone naked if our brain is simulated and running digitally so the memory can be saved and retrieved is the same as sketching a nude or writing in someone’s diary. It’s private thoughts and it’s best to not dig into others’ private thoughts.

I think the problem to focus on is when images are sold or traded or distributed.

I think things in my mind exist as much as a private sketch. It’s just that the sketch can be found by others but the thought cannot.

Even shourd you disagree, it's useful to respect other's wants not to have their faces on those bodies.

How do you know if people don’t want their faces on bodies? Should everyone ask everyone’s consent? Should I register my consent to be nudified like registering for an organ donor?

There’s a debate in cosplay over whether consent is needed to take someone’s photo. Many people like to require consent. I think it’s polite to ask, but don’t feel bad if someone takes a picture without asking.

And certainly not if someone takes a picture without me even knowing they did. This seems like something that it’s better for me not to worry about and focus on other things.

The energy to pass a law or make sure all photos have consent would be such a pain to implement.

These images aren't personal use, though. They are being shared around. How does that not constitute harassment or defamation?

Also, child porn laws apply to people who acquire the material for personal use. You can go to prison for possession, not just for selling. It would take only a small update to the law to have this apply to AI-generated imagery of real children as well. Even that may not be necessary, as it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate AI-generated photos from real photos.

> These images aren't personal use, though. They are being shared around. How does that not constitute harassment or defamation?

This is the key part: nobody would be upset if these were only for the personal use of the creator - teenagers have been fantasizing about their peers as long as they’ve existed - but the article mentions multiple cases of girls being confronted with non-consensual imagery and at least one of those was an attempt to extort real pictures. Whatever nuanced discussion there is about creating these images doesn’t apply to them being used as weapons.

I’m saying that they are harassment. So prosecute that.

I think in the US any images of children are illegal, even if they are computer generated. So it’s currently illegal to possess.

> I think in the US any images of children are illegal

Citation needed, but unlikely.

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