THE SENATE UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan bill to provide recourse to victims of porn deepfakes — or sexually-explicit, non-consensual images created with artificial intelligence.

The legislation, called the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act — passed in Congress’ upper chamber on Tuesday.  The legislation has been led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House.

The legislation would amend the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow people to sue those who produce, distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography, if they “knew or recklessly disregarded” the fact that the victim did not consent to those images.

  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    Unanimously

    While I think ‘deepfake porn is bad’ is pretty uncontroversial, I’m surprised not one senator decided to vote nay just to spite AOC.

    • mecfs@lemmy.world
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      Because the headline is misleading. The bill was written by a bipartisan group of democrats and republicans, including AOC.

      It’s weird to call it AOC’s bill in this context.

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        It would not be nearly the first time that Republicans shot down their own bill for no reason other than some Democrats said it was a good bill.

          • grozzle@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            i’m guessing because she’s the only senator with a notable quantity of deepfake porn made of her.

              • redhorsejacket@lemmy.world
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                Bills start in the House before they are passed to the Senate. My guess would be that she championed it through the House, and then passed it off to the Senators mentioned to continue shepherding the legislation to the President’s desk.

                • mecfs@lemmy.world
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                  It can go both ways. Some start in the house, some the senate. They need to be approved by both, but the process isn’t unidirectional.

            • Zozano@lemy.lol
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              Not the only one with a “notable quantity”, but certainly the only one with content which could be regarded as “contextually appropriate”.

              If your sexual proclivity errs on the side of old and/or stupid politicians, then I apologise for calling your preferences “contextually inappropriate”

              It’s like watching the Teletubbies during an orgy; sure, someone might be into it, but I’m quite sure most people would say the Teletubbies is not something they want to watch while turning your favourite primary school teacher pink.

            • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
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              3 months ago

              I dunno, i’ve seen lots of Kamala deepfakes flooding the internet since her run was announced.

              VP is functionally essentially a senator with extra privilages

              • maccentric@sh.itjust.works
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                3 months ago

                VP is functionally essentially a senator with extra privilages

                But seemingly less power and influence somehow

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            For republicans, aoc is the face of the liberal woke boogeyman. It doesn’t matter what she says or does, it’s automatically terrible. All news media gives her way more attention than is warranted bc they like to capitalize on hype.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      I’m guessing “defending nonconsensual porn” seemed like something you wouldn’t want on your record and in attack ads even for the troglodytes.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
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      I’m surprised from the other side, there’s always people defending deepfake porn on Lemmy

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    Things have already been moving towards nobody models. I think this will eventually have the consequence of nobodies becoming the new somebodies as this will result in a lot of very well developed nobodies and move the community into furthering their development instead of the deepfake stuff. You’ll eventually be watching Hollywood quality feature films full of nobodies. There is some malicious potential with deep fakes, but the vast majority are simply people learning the tools. This will alter that learning target and the memes.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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      You’ll eventually be watching Hollywood quality feature films full of nobodies.

      With the content on modern streaming services, I’ve been doing this for a while already.

    • Cosmos7349@lemmy.world
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      That’s where the money is, so yes that’s where the majority of work is. But I do think one of the drivers of this is to help protect more local instances; to create consequences for things like fake revenge porn or distributing deepfakes of classmates/teachers in your school, etc.

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        This might make the path to generating slightly harder, but it won’t do anything to stop an intelligent person. I haven’t seen a ton of info from people talking about this stuff, but exploring on my own, especially with Stable Diffusion 3, diffusion models are very different than LLM’s. The filtering for safety type alignment is happening external to the model using CLIP, and in the case of SD3, 2× CLIP models and a T5xxl LLM model. The alignment filters are done with these and some trickery. Screwing with these can enable all kinds of capabilities. It is just hard to understand the effect of some tricks, like SD3 swaps an entire layer in the T5 manually. When these mechanisms are defeated, models can generate freely, which essentially means everything is a deepfake. This is open source. So it can never be extinguished. There was a concerted effort to remove the rogue 4chanGPT. It does not have the ChatGPT derived alignment like all other models. The 4chanGPT is still readily available if you know where to look.

        This bill just raises the barrier of entry and makes such content less familiar and more powerful in the end. In reality, we would be socially stigmatizing while accepting the new reality IMO. This is like an weapons arms race. You may not like that the enemy created cannons, but banning the casting of cannons within your realm will do nothing to help you in the end. Everyone in the realm may understandably hate cannons, but you really need everyone familiar with casting, making the and everyone in your realm to learn how to deal with them and what to expect. The last thing you need is a lot of ignorant people on a battlefield bunching up together because they do not understand their opponents.

        These tools are also weapons. Everyone needs to understand what is truly possible, regardless of how unpleasant that may seem. They can not have a healthy skepticism without familiarity. If they do not have familiarity, they will bunch up on a battlefield facing cannons loaded with grapeshot.

        • Cosmos7349@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          So I haven’t dug deeply into the actual legislation, so someone correct me if I’m misinformed… but my understanding is that this isn’t necessarily trying to raise the bar for using the technology as much as much as trying to make clearer legal guidelines for victims to have legal recourse. If we were to relate it to other weapons, it’s like creating the law “it’s illegal to shoot someone with a gun”.

          • j4k3@lemmy.world
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            I have not dug deeply either, but have noticed that Civitai has shifted their wording and hosting in ways that indicated a change was coming. In practice, the changes will come from the model hosting sites for open source tools limiting their liability and not hosting content related to real humans.

            My main concern is the stupid public reacting to some right wing fake and lacking appropriate skepticism. Like expecting detection tools to be magical and understanding the full spectrum of possibilities.

    • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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      Of course, eventually somebody will look exactly like the nobody, so the owners of the nobody will sue that somebody to block them from pretending to be that nobody in videos.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      I see it eventually happening in porn, but it isn’t happening in major motion pictures any time too soon. People won’t follow and actively go see a cgi actor in a movie like they would a real one. Hollywood pays big money for A list stars because those people get asses in seats. That, along with tech not being there quite yet, and Hollywood locked under sag contract to only do certain things with AI all adds up to nobody’s being a ways off.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        I also remember years ago reading scare headlines about how the CG in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was so realistic that it would be the end of Hollywood actors, they would all be CG.

        So I’ll take that claim with a huge grain of salt.

        • felbane@lemmy.world
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          To be fair, The Spirits Within was pretty amazing especially considering when it was made. I briefly had the same thought while I was still in awe of the realism, so I can definitely understand why people would believe those headlines.

          I can imagine a scenario where a real voice actor is paired with a particular model and used in multiple films/roles. That’s not that dissimilar to Mickey Mouse or any other famous animated character.

          The idea that AICG actors will completely replace live actors is clearly ridiculous, but the future definitely has room for fully visually- and vocally-AICG personalities as film “stars” alongside real people.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            What I am saying is that I think we are a much longer way away from believable photrealistic CG actors than you think. As far as I know, microexpressions have not even been considered, let alone figured out. Microexpressions are really important.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microexpression

            That’s why I think the uncanny valley problem is a lot harder to overcome than people believe.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      You’re missing the point. There may be lots of Nobody models out there that satisfy just about every possible aesthetic or body preference a person could have, and you can use them fairly guilt-free to make content that you want to see. I understand the appeal, and it is far preferable to using real people’s likenesses without their consent.

      But that doesn’t scratch the itch people want to scratch. People grew up reading and watching Harry Potter and fantasized about fucking Hermione. They developed a crush on Emma Watson during their formative years, and it never went away completely. People want to see pervy pictures of her, specifically, and AI has given them broad access.

      People have crushes, and their crushes have Instagram feeds. Crop out 60-100 good face shots and and a mid-grade gaming PC can churn out a LoRA or TI overnight. Then they’ll be generating the nudes they wish their crushes were texting them.

      And some people are just fucked up. They hate women, and they want to exert power over them. Any woman with enough Instagram photos is a potential target, where deepfakes and nudifed photos are trivial to produce, and then attempt to use to humilate or blackmail a woman online.

      People are already nudifying picture of kids, and then DMing those kids the photos, blackmailing them for actual nudes, and then escalating from their once they’ve trapped some vulnerable child in an abusive cycle.

      There is little to nothing we can do to stop this technology from being available, but we absolutely need to lay the groundwork for holding people responsible, civilly and criminally, for abusing this technology to hurt people.

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        I don’t feel like arguing, but AI has not enabled people like this. It is simply shown a spotlight on the true spectrum of people.

        Personally, I realized what fixation was and what it meant in regards to sexuality at around 12 years old. It is an adolescent behavior. There is nothing wrong with knowing examples of what you find attractive. It is better to understand them, and if the person is mature enough, to break down their fundamental psychology. If you look up scientific definitions of beauty, you will land in the realm of neoteny in humans. Youthful appeal is a current leading hypothesis about how homo sapiens evolved in the first place as part of the explanation for why sexual maturity happens so early compared to cognitive maturity, and why girls mature before boys. There is a lot more underpinning the appeal of what one sees when they are younger. I believe for the vast majority of humans, it is a protection for them to understand these elements of the true human psyche despite the present cultural taboos. If there is a safe outlet, and a person is made fully aware of what they do and do not find attractive, free from any external bias, that knowledge enables them to better understand dangerous situations where they need to be on guard.

        My aunt was raped, as was someone I dated. Both were from drunken family in unexpected situations where they made terrible choices. I find it repulsive to think about hurting someone for the pointlessness of sex. It’s a 5 second drug hit in the brain; so the fuck what. There are way more effective drugs, and a fucking hand does a better job 9 times out of 10 if you’re really honest about it. I’m for the cultural shift of normalizing the fact that humans like youthful appeal, not because I want to have kiddie porn, but because I want people to thoroughly understand the taboo is more than just a rule, and if they find something attractive that is dangerous, they should be aware of everything involved. Don’t call them perverted or messed up. They are like someone with an addiction bad for their health like drinking, smoking, or harder drugs. They need to avoid circumstances where those drugs are present. Like if there are a bunch of kids at some house party, I don’t want someone feeling weird and crazy because they see some kid and think they are aesthetically pleasing. I want them to think that is perfectly normal human thought. What is not normal is fucking up that kid’s life by taking actions. They may not ever imagine doing something like that, but get them very drunk, and stumbling into an unexpected circumstance and really bad things happen in real life.

        Like, in the bike shops I was a Buyer for, I was often asked why I carried so many low security locks for bikes. It’s simple; the goal is to keep honest people honest; to not give them an unexpected opportunity.

        Nothing about this bill or AI is going to enable or change human behavior. The intelligence curve will always have more people at the bottom. They are going to fixate on stupid things. At least celebrities knew they were putting themselves in the public spotlight and at least they have the money to escape the reach of most if the crazies.

        If anything, this could be the safe catalyst necessary for English culture to directly address and curb whole kiddie nonsense to a much better degree and resolution that actually impacts behaviors without ostracism and the adolescent mentality of blind repulsion.

        I think everything happening as it is presently is the safest option and opportunity. If you take away the celebrity outlet, now the really fucked up psycho starts putting cameras in a temp rental, bathroom toilet, fitting room receptacle, or obsessing over their neighborhood kids. People will always find an outlet. We should be talking to them about their cognitive dissonance and underlying conflict so that they can be helped before they act on many of these behaviors, not because of the appeal of kids, but because of the unconscious counter motivations created by unresolved conflict that manifest as cognitive dissonance. If the person is not a condemned lost cause they are far more likely to learn or seek help.

        So to me, this is a disproportionate reaction to something that ultimately has little to no impact. Nothing new has been instantiated; only a spotlight on what was already there. In this instance, we could have used it to grow and mature, but we largely fail to do so. We choose to continue our adolescent rampage and choose to continue with more people getting hurt as a result. Stupid people oversimplify and fail to question their biases in honest depth. I hate to see the effects and damages this blind spot causes to people I love.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Did she use the “it can happen to you” gambit? Because the strongest motivators for politicians are power, wealth, and self preservation.

  • XNX@slrpnk.net
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    Paywall, does it have any shady stuff slipped in like KOSA, SOPA, and the other “protect the children” laws usually have?

  • homura1650@lemm.ee
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    The bill: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s3696/BILLS-118s3696es.xml

    As always, I read the bill expecting to be deeply disappointed; but was pleasantly surprised with this one. It’s not going to solve the issue, but I don’t really know of anything they can do to solve it. My guess is this will mostly be effective at going after large scale abuses (such as websites dedicated to deepfake porn, or general purpose deepfake sites with no safeguards in place).

    My first impressions on specific parts of the bill:

    1. The bill is written as an amendment to the 2022 appropriations act. This isn’t that strange, but I haven’t actually cross-references that, so might be misunderstanding some subtlety.

    2. The definition of digital forgery is broad in terms of the means. Basically anything done on a computer counts, not just AI. In contrast, it is narrow in the result, requiring that:

    when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.

    There is a lot of objectionable material that is not covered by this. Personally, I would like to see a broader test, but can’t think of any that I would be comfortable with

    1. The depiction also needs to be relevant to interstate or foreign commerce. There hands are tied by the constitution on this one. Unless Wickard v Fillburn us overturned though, me producing a deepfake for personal use reduces my interstate porn consumption, so it qualifies. By explicitly incorporating the constitutional test, the law will survive any change made to what qualifies as interstate commerce.

    2. The mens rea required is “person who knows or recklessly disregards that the identifiable individual has not consented to such disclosure” No complaints on this standard.

    3. This is grounds for civil suits only; nothing criminal. Makes sense, as criminal would normally be a state issue and, as mentioned earlier, this seems mostly targeted at large scale operations, which can be prevented with enough civil litigation.

    4. Max damage is:

      • $150k
      • Unless it can be linked to an actual or attempted sexual assult, stalking or harassment, in which case it increases to $250k
      • Or you can sue for actual damages (including any profits made as a result of the deepfake)
    5. Plaintifs can use a pseudonym, and all personally identifiable information is to be redacted or filed under seal. Intimate images turned over in discovery remains in the custody of the court

    6. 10 year statute of limitations. Starting at when the plaintif could reasonably have learned about the images, or turns 18.

    7. States remain free to create their own laws that are “at least as protective of the rights of a victim”.

    My guess is the “at least as protective” portion is there because a state suite would prevent a federal suit under this law, as there is an explicit bar on duplicative recovery, but I have not dug into the referenced law to see what that covers.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    How close does the deep fake need to be to the original? What we saw with DALLE2 was that each person whose face was restricted made a hole in the latent space of all faces. After enough celebrities faces were restricted, there were so many latent space holes that the algorithm couldn’t make faces at all since every producable face was a certain “distance” away from a restriction.

    Sure, you can make lora training on unconsenting people illegal and also make particular prompts illegal, but there is enough raw data and vague prompts to mold a generation into something that looks like it was done the illegal way without breaking either of those two restrictions.

    • gnutrino@programming.dev
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      The text of the bill specifies

      when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.

      So it’s not trying to chase specific implementations but using a “reasonable person” test (which I would argue is a good thing)

        • gnutrino@programming.dev
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          Doubt it, a reasonable person will generally be able to tell if you’re obviously taking the piss with the law. Feel free to try it and let us know how you get on though.

          • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world
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            But that is not what the bill says, the reasonable person is not evaluating my intent, it’s evaluating if the video is “indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual” which in this case it would be very distinguishable since the individual does not have said face tattoo.

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              Defamation is not parody. Fake porn of someone is absolutely defamation.

              I can’t legally make a “parody” of you but you’re a pedophile.

              Edit: Since there seems to be some confusion, I am not calling them a pedophile, I’m saying I can’t make some sort of fake of them as a pedophile and call it a parody.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  I’m literally doing the opposite of calling you a pedophile. I’m saying it would be illegal to call you a pedophile and claim it’s a parody. That’s not an excuse for defamation.

                  And I said that because I am assuming you are not a pedophile.

                  I’m not sure why you didn’t get that.

        • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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          I don’t think that’s what it means.

          A depiction which is authentic might refer to provenance.

          If someone authorises me to make a pornographic depiction of them, surely that’s not illegal. It’s authentic.

          So it’s not a question of whether the depiction appears to be AI generated, it’s really about whether a reasonable person would conclude that the image is a depiction of a specific person.

          That means tattoos, extra limbs, third books, et cetera won’t side step this law.

      • teft@lemmy.world
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        So the old libel trick where you give the character a small dick should work?

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        There are billions of people. Find the right one, and a “reasonable person” could not tell the difference.

        Image a law that said you cannot name your baby a name if someone else’s name starts with the same letter. After 26 names, all future names would be illegal. The law essentially would make naming babies illegal.

        The “alphabet” in this case is the distict visual depiction of all people. As long as the visual innumeration of “reasonable people” is small enough, it essentially makes any generation illegal. Conversely, if “reasonable people” granulated fine enough, it makes avoiding prosecution trivial by adding minor conflicting details.

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          “The right one” according to whom? There are two sides to a court case. The opposition can find all kinds of ways to show that person is not reasonable since they can’t recognize a very good simulation of someone’s face, just like they can show someone who is shortsighted didn’t see the car crash like they said they did.

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      the algorithm couldn’t make faces at all

      And what would be lost? I might be missing something, but what is the benefit of being able to make fake people faces that outweighs the damage it can do to people’s lives and the chaos wrecked on society from deepfakes etc?

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        I guess it could theoretically drive down the cost of amateur and low budget film and animation work.

        • kronisk @lemmy.world
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          Making it harder for animators and illustrators to make a living outweighs the reality that every woman on earth now has to fear someone making revenge porn with their likeness?

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            Just saying what would be lost, not that it outweighs it. It’s not like there aren’t other methods to still keep that and ban things like sexuality.

      • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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        Just ban sexuality.

        Maybe if society was more reasonable and responsible with attitudes towards sexuality then deepfakes and sexual crimes would naturaly not be significant issues.

        if everyone had a box that gave them the sexual gratification they needed, then they could go about the rest of their day without injecting sexual wants into normal activities and relationships.

        Adverts and marketing might have to use facts instead of sex to sell products.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      Sure, you can make lora training on unconsenting people illegal

      Nobody said this needs to be illegal. Scrape up my pictures and render me jumping the grand canyon on a motorcycle or something. I don’t care.

      But spread around fake nudes and then I am happy we have a law I can use against you.

    • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
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      Can i copywrite or patent my face, then sue other humans tglhat look like me and either get royalties or make them stop using their face?

      Or where is the limit on me and my rights to my face?

  • finley@lemm.ee
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    Ok, fist of all, politicians need to stop it with these acronyms for every law they want to pass. It’s getting ridiculous. Just give the damned law a regular-ass name. It doesn’t have to be all special and catchy-sounding damn.

    Second, I’m really surprised to hear of anything passing the senate unanimously, other than a bill expressing the love of silly acronyms. And weak campaign finance laws.

    Anyway, I’m glad that at least something is being done to address this, but I just know someone in the House is gonna fuck this up.

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography

    Does this make deepfake pornography more restricted than real sexual images either created or publicly released without consent?

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      I think so. In a way, it makes sense – a lot of people are of the (shitty) opinion that if you take lewd pictures of yourself, it’s your fault if they’re disseminated. With lewd deepfakes, there’s less opportunity for victim blaming, and therefore wider support.

      • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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        Maybe, but my understanding is that it’s legal to have photos of someone actually being the victim of a sex crime, not just photos of consensual acts.

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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    To improve rights to relief for individuals affected by non-consensual activities involving intimate digital forgeries, and for other purposes.

    Congress finds that:

    (1) Digital forgeries, often called deepfakes, are synthetic images and videos that look realistic. The technology to create digital forgeries is now ubiquitous and easy to use. Hundreds of apps are available that can quickly generate digital forgeries without the need for any technical expertise.

    (2) Digital forgeries can be wholly fictitious but can also manipulate images of real people to depict sexually intimate conduct that did not occur. For example, some digital forgeries will paste the face of an individual onto the body of a real or fictitious individual who is nude or who is engaging in sexual activity. Another example is a photograph of an individual that is manipulated to digitally remove the clothing of the individual so that the person appears to be nude.

    “(3) DIGITAL FORGERY.—

    “(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘digital forgery’ means any intimate visual depiction of an identifiable individual created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering an authentic visual depiction, that, when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.

    Source

  • Asifall@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Not convinced on this one

    It seems like the bill is being pitched as protecting women who have fake nudes passed around their school but the text of the bill seems more aimed at the Taylor swift case.

    1 The bill only applies where there is an “intent to distribute”

    2 The bill talks about damages being calculated based on the profit of the defendant

    The bill also states that you can’t label the image as AI generated or rely on the context of publication to avoid running afoul of this law. That seems at odds with the 1st amendment.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The bill only applies where there is an “intent to distribute”

      That’s a predicate for any law bound to the Commerce Clause. You need to demonstrate the regulation is being applied to interstate traffic. Anything else would be limited to state/municipal regulations.

      The bill talks about damages being calculated based on the profit of the defendant

      That’s arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn’t going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.

      The bill also states that you can’t label the image as AI generated or rely on the context of publication to avoid running afoul of this law.

      A revenge-porn law that can be evaded by asserting “This isn’t Taylor Swift, its Tay Swiff and any resemblance of an existing celebrity is purely coincidental” would be toothless. We already apply these rules for traditional animated assets. You’d be liable for producing an animated short staring “Definitely Not Mickey Mouse” under the same reasoning.

      This doesn’t prevent you from creating a unique art asset. And certainly there’s a superabundance of original pornographic art models and porn models generated with the consent of the living model. The hitch here is obvious, though. You’re presumed to own your own likeness.

      My biggest complaint is that it only seems to apply to pornography. And I suspect we’ll see people challenge the application of the law by producing “parody” porn or “news commentary” porn. What the SCOTUS does with that remains to be seen.

      • Asifall@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        That’s arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn’t going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.

        No argument there but it reinforces my point that this law is written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.

        You’d be liable for producing an animated short staring “Definitely Not Mickey Mouse” under the same reasoning.

        Except that there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment. You can see the parody exception used in many episodes of south park for example and even specifically used to depict Mickey Mouse. Either this bill allows for those types of uses in which case it’s toothless anyway or it’s much more restrictive to speech than existing copyright law.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.

          In a sane world, class action lawsuits would balance these scales.

          there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment

          Why would revenge porn constitute fair use? This seems more akin to slander.

          • Asifall@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            You keep referring to this as revenge porn which to me is a case where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner. You could use AI to generate material to use as revenge porn, but I bet most AI nudes are not that.

            Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos. Clearly that would be protected speech. If you generate the same image with generative AI though then suddenly it’s illegal even if you clearly label it as being a parody. That’s the concern. Moreover, the slander/libel angle doesn’t make sense if you include a warning that the image is generated, as you are not making a false statement.

            To sum up why I think this bill is kinda weird and likely to be ineffective, it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy as long as I don’t present it as a real video. If I generate the same video but my neighbor’s dick is hanging out, straight to jail. It’s not consistent.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner

              I would consider, as an example, a student who created a vulgar AI porn display of another student or teacher out of some sense of spite an example of “revenge porn”. Same with a coworker or boss trying to humiliate someone at the office.

              Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos.

              That’s another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.

              it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy

              If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.

              • Asifall@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                That’s another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.

                So you think it should be illegal?

                If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.

                You’re entirely ignoring my point, I’m not trying to pass the video off as real therefore it’s not slander.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  So you think it should be illegal?

                  I think it’s an example of partisan language that ends up being blandly homophobic.

                  You’re entirely ignoring my point

                  Why would putting up a giant sign reading “My neighbor murders dogs for fun” be a tort but a mural to the same effect be protected?

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      All this law does is give victims the right to sue people who make involuntary porn of them, and clearly defines AI technology as something that you can sue over when it is used to simulate your likeness.

      The 1st amendment doesn’t matter for a civil matter like this. Libel and Slander are protected forms of speech, but you are still liable for the damage done when you intentionally lie about people. Likewise, you have the right to make whatever kind of art you want, but if you make art depicting private citizens in a pornographic context without their consent, the person you are depicting now has the right to seek legal damages for your abuse.

      I am a firm believer in the concept that “Your rights end where mine begin”. You have the right to make art of me if you please, and I have the right to seek damages from you if your art slanders, defames, or sexualizes me in a pornographic way without my consent. Those are things that do real world damage, so I see no issue with victims of these things being given a voice.

    • 4lan@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Oh boo hoo you can’t go in a movie theater and yell “fire” we are so oppressed

  • youngalfred@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Question from an outsider:
    Do all bills in the states have to have a fancy acronym?
    It looks like the senate is the first step, is that right? Next is the house? It’s the opposite where I am.

    • Irremarkable@fedia.io
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      Not all bills do, but the majority of big ones you hear about do. It’s simply a marketing thing

      And correct, it’ll move to the House, where if it passes it will move to the president’s desk. Considering it was unanimous in the Senate, I can’t see it having any issues in the House.

        • Irremarkable@fedia.io
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          It happens, although they’re relatively rare. Since 2000 there have been a total of 46 vetoes, with each president since Bush vetoing 10-12 bills.

          For context, FDR had the most vetoes of any president, totaling 635 over his 12 years in office.

    • Senokir@lemmy.world
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      Bills in the US can originate from either the house or the Senate. If it passes one then it goes to the other. If it passes both then it goes to the President to be signed into law.

      E: technically there is an exception that bills for raising revenue have to originate in the house but that the Senate can propose or concur with amendments. But for all intents and purposes the vast majority of bills can originate in either body.

  • MagicShel@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Is this just “AI porn bill” because that’s the most common way of doing it these days? I should expect the product is what’s being sanctioned and not the method.

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Not just AI…

      …any intimate visual depiction of an identifiable individual created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means….

      This probably also covers using MS Paint.

        • niucllos@lemm.ee
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          As long as it can’t be mistaken for the actual person it moves the stigma from them doing weird things to the artist doing weird things

      • youngalfred@lemm.ee
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        From the text of the bill:

        The term ‘digital forgery’ means any intimate visual depiction of an identifiable individual created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering an authentic visual depiction, that, when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.

        • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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          Thanks. So photorealistic paintings are still legal, although I suppose they’re not a big problem in practice. It’s still weird that the method of creation matters, although “any other technological means” is pretty broad. Are paintbrushes a technology? Does using a digital camera to photograph a painting count as creating a visual depiction?

          I’m vaguely worried about the first-amendment implications.

          • youngalfred@lemm.ee
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            I think it comes down to the last part - indistinguishable by a reasonable person as an authentic visual depiction. That’ll be up to courts to decide, but I think a painting would be pretty obviously not an authentic visual depiction.

      • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        This bill targets digital (computer made or altered) forgeries. Not hand-drawn sketches.

  • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    Sen. Dick Durbin

    OK, that’s it. The final proof I needed that we live in a simulation and whoever runs it is just fucking with us.