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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is reasonable, iff it only applies to fake media that is indistinguishable from the real thing. Like, if you show a jury two videos and they can't tell which one is real and which one is fake. I can accept that there is an implied claim of realism by creating realistic media, and that would be a lie, very similar to libel.

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I think it entirely depends on what the media is doing.

I don't care if a hyper realistic political figure impersonator gets up and does a comedy sketch. What I care about is if said impersonator got up and said "I, bob dole, use depends and think that everyone should use it".

That is, deception used for comedic effect should be protected. Deception used to hawk goods should not be ok.

> Deception used to hawk goods should not be ok.

Honestly, focusing on AI seems silly since the internet, at this point, is completely neck-deep in deceptive scams being pushed by reputable, mainstream, important orgs.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. take in literal billions of revenue to show people scam ads. The scammers are directly paying them money - presumably these are not anonymous orgs, but people with credit card numbers and ID. And the big internet giants just gladly act as for-profit middle-men for ripping off confused elderly people, because reviewing the ads posted to their platform isn't practical.

Something has completely failed in enforcement.

It's a start. It's too much to wish to undo the Internet becoming a giant scamming platform without something shifting. But AI faking is a new class of danger of its own since Gen AI eliminates tons of markers of authenticity that used to be reliable.

It’s not too much of a wish to break up these massive fraudulent companies that serve no one except scammers and ad agencies pushing products that are broken by design.

They should be broken up and shut down no matter what will be “shifting” as a result (whatever that is supposed to mean)

The brightest minds of our generation are working on making us click more ads — its dangerous and an unimaginable waste.

This would already be illegal under false advertising laws. There may be other use cases that are similarly objectionable but that are not covered by these laws (because they don't involve advertising, for example).

Bob dole advertised viagra for them, I honestly doubt it would take more than a few $$s to get him to advertise depends, AI not needed.

Its the internet. You can just decieve people anonymously even if its illegal.

Right, but can McDonald's run a commercial with AI linus torvalds endorsing their product?

I think that fakes happening on the internet isn't super interesting. Those are typically smaller scams anyways. I worry way more about much larger companies doing "Here's what so and so would say about this circumstance with our ai generation" or whatever.

Large companies have much larger reach than bitcoin scammers.

If the conditions of tge laws sre made such that there is no overreach into individial freedoms i agree with you. But that is a big ask.

I understand and appreciate your point, but I would like to point out there is a large segment of society that, if shown an article from The Onion, wouldn't realize it is satire.

I think it's okay for The Onion to make satirical news reports, but maybe not okay to make a realistic deep-fake of someone. An actor could dress and act like that person though.

Would this be allowed:

https://www.theonion.com/frail-emaciated-mlb-players-still-a...

In case you aren't a baseball fan, that's a photoshopped image of baseball player Cory Seager.

I was maybe on Buttons side but your checkmate won me over.

What about a comedian who does voice impressions that are good enough to be indistinguishable from the politician to the average person?

If the comedian starts using that ability to make people think the politician said something they didn't say, then the comedian is guilty of fraud.

Also, "humans can do it" is not a reason to allow AI to do the same thing. GenAI systems can do things at high speed 24 hours a day forever and the fraud potential is much much much higher.

> then the comedian is guilty of fraud

Fraud

wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain

What's the personal gain here?

Thought experiment: If I steal someone else's credit card to buy things (example from FindLaw [1]) that I won't use just to harm my victim, would I be committing fraud? Or would only the non-fraud charges apply?

[1] https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/fraud.html

Don't trust findlaw.com or a dictionary definition. It doesn't matter if you personally gain. Here is the actual text of the US federal fraud statute [1]

"....obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises....."

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1341

Thats not fraud thats just lying. lying is legal.

And those peoples' votes matter no less than yours.

Misinformation is very dangerous in a democracy, especially when it is easier to sow than real information.

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