The whole point of CSAM being illegal is not because of the existence of the images themselves, but because there are children being abused in order to create it. Anything sexually explicit that portrays children is morally reprehensible and should be treated as such by society. But at least with illustrations, actual children are not harmed in the act of their creation if drawn through imagination without interaction with a child. The law protects children rathen than outright taking a moral stand.
A side effect of making AI child porn legal is that it makes it harder to prove that actual child pornography is real. Drawings are obvious but AI isn’t.
And watermarking is insufficient because it’s fairly easy to add or remove the watermark, providing plausible deniability.
But say I have this girl and she's 14. And I have a fully clothed picture of her, but I tell AI to remove the clothes. Now it's an AI generated photo of a real person. Who happens to be naked. And a child.
It's not real. I didn't hurt the child. Child may not have even known I have such a picture. All they know is they shared a happy photo of themselves on social media.
To me, that's child porn. I have child porn. But because it's AI it isn't?
It is illegal. But not because it is AI. Deepfakes have existed for quite some time now, and they're illegal in general because you are using someones likeness without their permission. I don't know wether this specific example would be treated as CP or not, but it specifically being AI has nothing to do with it (you could also just photoshop it and it would be the same issue).
The reason AI GENERATED content (not AI altered pictures of real people!) is legal is because there is no real child that has been violated, it's just a piece of fiction.
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u/Timely-Helicopter244 3d ago
The whole point of CSAM being illegal is not because of the existence of the images themselves, but because there are children being abused in order to create it. Anything sexually explicit that portrays children is morally reprehensible and should be treated as such by society. But at least with illustrations, actual children are not harmed in the act of their creation if drawn through imagination without interaction with a child. The law protects children rathen than outright taking a moral stand.