It is absolutely a liberating force.
It's uniquely liberating right now since over half of all free/open sourced AI models have an NSFW or unaligned focus (nearly the majority in the diffusion model world).
Without the power of Waifus/booru websites ran by hentai aficionados, a solid amount of the generative AI revolution in the context of text to image models simply would not have happened.
Would there be porn rations?
The problem is the government telling people what to do, period.
A: What is sin?
B: Anything that destroys and leads to misery.
A: Do X or Y actually destroy or lead to misery, or is it moral panic, pseudoscience, misery more caused by socially enforced guilt caused by the belief that X or Y is bad, some combination of the above?
[B and A engage in an interminable discussion, and eventually B's Heritage Foundation links are exhausted]
A: it doesn't seem clear that any of these things "destroy" anything, or inherently cause misery.
B: Well X or Y must be bad, because they're sin, so they seem gross and bad to me. There must be hidden detriments that scientists are unwilling to admit, or just haven't gotten around to proving yet. Just wait, when you grow up you'll think just like me.
A: maybe.