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Comment by pelorat | Hacker News Reader

Jokes on xAI. Europe doesn't have a Section 230 and the responsibility fall squarely on the platform and its owners. In Europe, AI generated or photoshopped CSAM is treated the same as actual abuse-backed CSAM if the depiction is realistic. Possession and distribution are both serious crimes.

The person(s) ultimately in charge of removing (or preventing the implementation of) Grok guardrails might find themselves being criminally indicted in multiple European countries once investigations have concluded.

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I'm not sure Grok output is even covered by Section 230. Grok isn't a separate person posting content to a platform, it's an algorithm running on X's servers publishing on X's website. X can't reasonably say "oh, that image was uploaded by a user, they're liable, not us" when the post was performed by Grok.

Suppose, if instead of an LLM, Grok was an X employee specifically employed to photoshop and post these photos as a service on request. Section 230 would obviously not immunize X for this!

The definition of CSAM is broad enough to cover it:

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-06/child_sexual_abuse_materi...

Generating a non-real child could be argued that it might not count. However thats not a given.

> The term “child pornography” is currently used in federal statutes and > is defined as any visual depiction of > sexually explicit conduct involving a > person less than 18 years old.

Is broad enough to cover anything obviously young.

but when it comes to "nude-ifing" a real image of a know minor, I strognly doubt you can use the defence its not a real child.

Therefore your knowingly generating and distributing CSAM, which is out of scope for section 230

> a person

What's "person" here? Usually, in law, "person" has a very specific meaning.

A natural person. That's what CSAM covers. There have been prosecutions under federal CSAM laws otherwise, but there have also been successful constitutional challenges that, briefly, classify fabricated content as obscenity. The implication there is that private possession of obscene materials is lawful.

Right which is my point. A genai character could probably negate it being CSAM, depending on how the case is argued.

But

the law applies if its a depiction of a person who is real, So a sexualised hand draw drawing of a recognisable person, (who is a minor) is CSAM.

Which means if someone says to grok "hey make a sexy picture of this[post of a minor]" and it generates a depiction of that minor, its CSAM.

Agreed. That seems to be the way that kind of thing would play out. One observation: I've read opinions (one or two) that have qualified "depiction" using a term like "indistinguishable" or similar. (I'm having trouble finding one on the fly, but I think it was out of Wisconsin.) I think they're looking for a way to characterize it regardless of the medium and with the intent to lead an observer to believe that the depiction is of the actual person. I don't think it's enough to create a caricature or cartoon bearing the likeness of a real person, e.g., the trope of portraying a political figure as a naked baby.

Yeah can't wait for Europe to send a strongly worded letter and a token fine.

> Europe doesn't have a Section 230 and the responsibility fall squarely on the platform and its owners.

They have something like Section 230 in the E-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC, Articles 12-15, updated in the Digital Service Act. The particular protections for hosts are different but it is the same general idea.

Is Europe actually going to do anything? They currently appear to be puckering their assholes and cowering in the face of Trump, and his admin are already yelling about how the EU is "illegally" regulating American companies.

They might just let this slide to not rock the boat, either out of fear and they will do nothing, or to buy time if they are actually divesting from the alliance with and economic dependence on the US

There's so many of these nonsense views of the EU here. Not being vocal about a mental case president doesn't mean politicians are "puckering their assholes". The EU is not affraid to moderate and fine tech companies. These things take time.

Under previous US admins and the relationship the EU had, yeah.

The asshole puckering is from how Trump has completely flipped the table, everything is hyper transactional now, and as we’ve seen military action against leaders personally is also on the table.

I’m saying I could see the EU let this slide now because it’s not worth it politically to regulate US companies for shit like this anymore. Whether that would be out of fear or out of trying to buy time to reorganize would probably end up in future getting the same kind of historical analysis that Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement to Germany gets nowadays

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