US court rules AI child abuse content is protected under First Amendment

[Morphine Prince 109,819]

A federal appeals court has ruled that privately owning AI-generated images of child sexual abuse, made without real child involvement, is protected under the First Amendment if the images stay in your own home. The Seventh Circuit affirmed a lower court's decision to dismiss a possession charge against Steven Anderegg, who used the AI image generator Stable Diffusion to create hundreds of photorealistic images depicting minors in sexual situations.

Anderegg was caught when he sent an image to a minor over Instagram. Meta flagged that Instagram message to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which led investigators to a search warrant and hundreds of AI-generated images on Anderegg's devices. He was charged with four offenses: producing, distributing, and possessing the images, plus transferring one to a minor. The appeals court ruling addresses only the possession charge.

The court's reasoning rests on two prior Supreme Court cases. In Stanley v. Georgia(1969), the court ruled that the government can't prosecute someone for privately owning obscene material inside their own home. And in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002), the court decided images that only resemble child sexual abuse material are protected speech, because the usual reasons for banning such material – that it fuels demand for real abuse, grooms children, or normalizes the behavior – don't apply when no real child exists. "The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech," the court wrote, quoting Free Speech Coalition. "Protected speech does not become unprotected merely because it resembles the latter."

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/judges-rule-ai-child-abuse-161951440.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFADVEazo0TXf3WQzrMqe1w-L6Yh9r263p9vrU5SF8HGC7pDrz5JRKINjpBbrRv5h3GVmFgOEPPsfJ4Wb1M8P1YmX3OqadMWG4boayLmiq86oSPQu0PjzNzd1VjqbMsVRJmAbYI6e-gegDQ1iN1OC4gJZ7XlTGbklY9m1Spew9QL

Edited yesterday at 03:45 AM by Morphine Prince

[EART HL I NG 1,503]

Disgusting.

[Ivy 13,782]

So disgusting. And if it's AI resembling one specific real child? GenAI is such a mess

[VTV 14,075]

[MarvinGa 1,100]

Pedos protecting pedos 

[weed 79,195]

Everything is so crazy now

[SleepingSun 1,496]

The United States of Pedos

[SavetheEarthNow 207]

There is definitely something going on between big tech and government in North America. Denmark has it right where they passed a law allowing citizens to copyright their face, voice and body to prevent AI create fake videos and images of them. AI is definitely a front for something we're not being told about. There is clearly something we're not being told about why suddenly everywhere across the US and now in Canada local governments are approving AI data centres. Why the sudden need for these huge alleged data centres to be built absolutely everywhere? We've had all this online data, such as images and other things saved directly to the cloud and to servers but now suddenly, that isn't enough, and they want to say we need all these data centres? We're not being told the truth. 

[CautiousLurker 19,877]

Fun fact (and by fun I do mean bleak as f*ck and another example showing the sheer depth of indifference humans have towards suffering of others) - data sets genAI were trained on were not meant to be private initially, since they were set up as non-profits (so that the companies training genAI could sidestep copyright infringement). One of the reasons they were made private anyway was in part because of the controversy that broke out once people found illegal material in those data sets including chil p*rn.

When people became outraged, genAI companies responded to that with 'sorry we can't really moderate those cuz there's just too much stuff oops so sorry uwu', and when that didn't fly, they made those data sets inaccessable (since they own the ''''''''''non-profit'''''''' companies that scrape that data).

AI generated CSAM might not resemble real life victims necessarily but there is every chance it's based on real CSAM, and there are elements of those images in generated stuff - even by their own disgustingly apathetic logic this should be illegal, but the court is made up of conservative men who probably actively use this '''''''feature''''''' so of course they see no problem with it.

Y'all don't hate genAi companies enough.

[CautiousLurker 19,877]

I just realised this will probably make it easier to store and distribute real CSAM because the person could use 'I thought this was AI' as an excuse, and even tag real CSAM as AI.

[Meruk Holland 2,400]

15 minutes ago, CautiousLurker said:

Fun fact (and by fun I do mean bleak as f*ck and another example showing the sheer depth of indifference humans have towards suffering of others) - data sets genAI were trained on were not meant to be private initially, since they were set up as non-profits (so that the companies training genAI could sidestep copyright infringement). One of the reasons they were made private anyway was in part because of the controversy that broke out once people found illegal material in those data sets including chil p*rn.

When people became outraged, genAI companies responded to that with 'sorry we can't really moderate those cuz there's just too much stuff oops so sorry uwu', and when that didn't fly, they made those data sets inaccessable (since they own the ''''''''''non-profit'''''''' companies that scrape that data).

AI generated CSAM might not resemble real life victims necessarily but there is every chance it's based on real CSAM, and there are elements of those images in generated stuff - even by their own disgustingly apathetic logic this should be illegal, but the court is made up of conservative men who probably actively use this '''''''feature''''''' so of course they see no problem with it.

Y'all don't hate genAi companies enough.

I don't know how feasible it actually is or how the laws interact, but it would seem to me that a good counter to this ruling would be setting up a legal framework wherein any time CSAM is disputed or confirmed as being AI generated - like when a certain spokesperson from Subway's computer is analyzed - the courts can issue subpoenas to the developers of the generative models involved to put the burden of moderating even private datasets back in the AI companies. I think it'd technically be up to prosecutor's tech teams to scour through the data, but it'd be in the AI companies' interest to not have that be found in their datasets. 

[nATAH 57,635]

all you pro gen AI weirdos are complacent in this

[CautiousLurker 19,877]

8 minutes ago, Meruk Holland said:

I don't know how feasible it actually is or how the laws interact, but it would seem to me that a good counter to this ruling would be setting up a legal framework wherein any time CSAM is disputed or confirmed as being AI generated - like when a certain spokesperson from Subway's computer is analyzed - the courts can issue subpoenas to the developers of the generative models involved to put the burden of moderating even private datasets back in the AI companies. I think it'd technically be up to prosecutor's tech teams to scour through the data, but it'd be in the AI companies' interest to not have that be found in their datasets. 

I mean, that sounds like it would be better than nothing, but I have no hope anything of the sort will be done (even though every major genAi company is currently being sued for copyright infringement) - current (and probably future) administration is sadly highly incentivised to let these companies run rampant, if anything, simply due to the fact that genAi companies are happy to throw obscene sums of money at anyone and everyone with any clout who is willing to endorse them. That, and also just the sad fact that despite high scorn, the crime of child s*xual abuse is treated surprisingly leniently, especially if you're an ''''''''upstanding'''''''' white guy with no prior offences. Again, this sh*t is bleak af.

[PartySick 173,769]

1 hour ago, SavetheEarthNow said:

There is definitely something going on between big tech and government in North America. Denmark has it right where they passed a law allowing citizens to copyright their face, voice and body to prevent AI create fake videos and images of them. AI is definitely a front for something we're not being told about. There is clearly something we're not being told about why suddenly everywhere across the US and now in Canada local governments are approving AI data centres. Why the sudden need for these huge alleged data centres to be built absolutely everywhere? We've had all this online data, such as images and other things saved directly to the cloud and to servers but now suddenly, that isn't enough, and they want to say we need all these data centres? We're not being told the truth. 

It's surveillance, plain and simple.

The more data they collect, the more data they can sell.

[PartySick 173,769]

And this is f*cking disgusting.

Beyond the literal kids themselves being taken advantage of, which is still a problem here because those "fake kids" are likely modeled after real ones because genAI can't make something out of nothing, the reason CSAM is illegal is because feeding pedophilia as a fetish makes pedos more likely to act out and harm kids.