My questionable and inflammatory political opinion: I think making AI-generated pornography from your own baby pictures or the baby pictures of somebody else who enthusiastically consented to doing so in person or in another way where it was verifiably them (because of deepfakes and shit) is one of the more ethical applications of AI. I don't like AI but if generating AI slop of yourself keeps you from having actual CSAM on your computer and furthering the abuse and trauma of an existing victim... That's a net positive in my view. Already predicting a lot of backlash for this, but whatever.
Stop. Everyone hold on a minute. This is clearly one of those questions where people’s revulsion gives us an answer faster than our reasoning does, and I do always say that that's a bad sign. I pride myself on being open-minded and thinking things through logically, not just based on emotional gut reactions.
So what I need to do is take my time, meditate, clear my mind, and approach this from a sort of clear, rationalist, philosophical perspective.
Yes, there is a real ethical distinction there. If no actual child is being abused, no existing abuse material is being recirculated, and the images are generated from one’s own baby pictures, then that is plainly not the same category as real CSAM. I mean that is true.
Most importantly, it does avoid the central horrors of CSAM: the fact that a real child was sexually exploited, and that the resulting material continues that violation every time it is possessed and shared.
So I do think you're identifying a genuine philosophical point, and I do not think it should just be sort of brushed off due to our instinctual disgust.
In fact, I'll preemptively say that some of the most obvious potential arguments against this material don't really hold water to me:
People might say that a baby can't consent to having porn made of them, even if that is going to happen in the distant future, and even if the person doing so is their future adult self. I don't buy this claim because it starts getting into territory that's weirdly like... metaphysical, I guess? Like, this claim seems to view the infant and the adult as two separate people, one of whom is being wronged by the other across time. But that's just not true. The way human rights are conceptualized is entirely based on the idea that people have an unbroken continuity of their personhood over time (even if it's rarely spelled out because it seems so obvious).
One seemingly strong argument people might make is a sort of social argument: if we were to fully allow synthetic sexual imagery of children’s bodies, even under narrowly defined consensual circumstances, it may start to "normalize" such depictions in ways that subtly and nefariously shifts societal and cultural values over time. But that whole concept really does go against my entire perspective on Free Expression. I think I've been pretty explicit here that I only think media should be outlawed if it causes tangible, direct harm to a specific person. Because once you establish that you can ban something because it might subtly push culture in a bad direction over time, you've set this precedent that WILL be used for other things. It's something that you really can't start making exceptions for.
HOWEVER before I throw my unconditional support behind this concept (and get absolutely cancelled into fucking oblivion in the process lol), I should say that there might still be some other less obvious ethical questions this raises, mainly when it comes to someone consenting to a third party using their photos, and/or when money gets involved:
Not to state the obvious here, but there are already issues regarding the exploitation and coercion of vulnerable individuals in the world of pornography. Is it possible that we might see poor people being offered serious money to allow deepfakes to be made using their childhood photos and video, even if they feel uncomfortable with it?
I'm actually super unclear whether a third-party would be obtaining the rights to the individual's likeness, or just getting the right to use the childhood photos. That might not seem important, but there's a serious difference there that many people might not realize: the person who owns the rights to a photo is almost always the person who actually took the photo. So if this is just about the right to use photos of someone, that raises some red flags. Could a parent sell the rights to use photos they took of their own child in this manner (after the child turns 18)? What about a professional photography studio (yes, they still own the rights to the photo), if the child had previously been working as a model or something? I actually don't know how it would work.
Allowing this could end up potentially causing some evidentiary and enforcement problems. Because in theory, yes we could construct a tiny, carefully walled-off category of "fully consensual, non-abusive synthetic material." But in practice, people lie, verification is messy, provenance is weak, etc. Now, it would be trivially easy to prove that it's you in an AI photo you made of yourself. But I suspect that opening it up to third-parties who have obtained consent from others to use their childhood photos would make things vastly more complicated.
So the strongest argument here can be made regarding someone using their own childhood photos for sexual AI-generated images. I'm actually finding it surprisingly hard to find logical arguments for any direct harm happening there.
But the idea of somebody else consenting to allow a third party to use their childhood photos in this manner raises a lot more questions. Now yes, that is ethically distinct from CSAM - that's absolutely true. But its not like that automatically means ethically good. I'm not saying my answer is definitive on this, but it's just not yet clear to me if there's a way to safely allow this.
Holy shit this is long lol.
But you know what? This topic is complex enough that it requires a long answer.
Now I just sit back and wait for the 10 upvotes to come rolling in lol 😎
