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catfish rushdie's avatar

Legislators can pass all the laws they want, but enforcement is a world away from signing bills into law. Does no-one recall the Volstead act, or the 75+ years of reefer-madness cannabis prohibition? Rotsa ruck, y'all.

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Tj's avatar

What a fascinating topic. My question is: Are these laws enforceable? "The language of these laws varies widely, including phrases like "a composite fictitious person depicted in the nude," "digitally altered sexual image," and "artificially generated intimate parts." Seems incredibly broad. Would Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" be illegal? Only if done on the computer?

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Charlie Guo's avatar

I'm not a lawyer, but many bills also have language regarding impersonating or otherwise creating manipulated images/video of a specific individual without consent. So creating nude images *in general* is fine with AI, but not if you're targeting someone.

In practice (again, not a lawyer) I'm guessing a lot comes down to context and intent - are you sharing images and explicitly calling them "Taylor Swift nudes"?

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Tubthumping's avatar

Various deepfakes are used in Constitutionally protected satire. The AOC ones come to mind.

But platforms will ban them anyway, if this law is passed.

And that is what our leaders really want.

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JdL's avatar

The authors are dreaming. Legislators can, and do, pass law after law on every conceivable subject under the sun, but nothing is going to stop the production, and posting, of so-called "deepfakes". Creators will simply take more care to upload them using robust anonymizing tools. Occasionally, some schmuck will be caught and prosecuted, which will accomplish absolutely nothing other than taxpayers subsidizing another prison bed.

"laws that focus on actual harms rather than speculative ones"

What harms? Taylor Swift may not like it that someone posted pornographic images with her face, but it does not "harm" her in any way.

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