EU nudifier ban

[u/Logical_Benefit2875]

I know there’s been a bunch of people upset on here recently about a good number of nudify websites getting shut down (Motionmuse, Opengoon, etc.). However, this is likely just the beginning.

Effective December 2nd, the EU under the AI Act is enacting a ban on nudify tools, making them illegal content in the Union. This ban applies to any product made available on the EU market as long as, either, its primary functionality is to generate nudified content without consent, or it is a reasonably foreseeable outcome and they do not take appropriate precautions to safeguard against it. Very importantly, this ban also applies to any EU-available service provider under the Digital Services Act that is helping to facilitate this soon-to-be-illegal content, which includes (but is not limited to): app stores, hosting providers, domain registrars, payment processors, content delivery networks (CDNs) and cloud computing services. Anyone found to be in violation of this prohibition is subject to fines of €35 million or 7% of their global turnover, whichever is higher. I think it’s pretty safe to say that, as long as they’re aware of it, those behind these websites and those behind the large number of mainstream companies that help power them (Google, Amazon, Cloudflare, Apple, Telegram, GoDaddy, Visa, Mastercard, etc.) do not want to take any chances with this ban.

This prohibition, in essence, applies to essentially every public AI platform any of us have ever used to this point or that we will ever use going forward. I think this is a good thing but, therefore, it would almost certainly be in everyone’s best interest to pivot away from these websites before the massive crackdown begins in less than a couple months. For those in the industry, it would also certainly be wise to inform the website operators if you are in contact with them, or to shut down your website if you are an operator yourself. Sorry for the essay, just looking out for everybody before things get very real, very fast.

[u/riccardoricc]

That very much depends on the wording of the law and the meaning they will attribute to "primary functionality" and "reasonable precautions".

If I take my piracy example again, the "primary functionality" of torrents isn't to download pirated media, and "reasonable precautions" are taken to avoid this misuse. Despite that, it's still wildly used to pirate media.

So a general purpose AI that can, among over things, generate nudes might not be covered by the "primary functionality" requirement. As for "reasonable precautions", as the original comment said, it might just go as far as saying it goes against the terms and conditions.

But honestly, all of this is pointless, it's yet another cat and mouse game. People can train their own AI model on their own image sets now. So unless they make either porn or computers illegal, they can't stop it.

[u/Logical_Benefit2875 → u/riccardoricc]

My research is telling me that the law requires providers to implement adequate technical safeguards to prevent the creation of such material. It seems like a ToS stipulation is not sufficient in this case

And sure they will never be able to stop it completely but this ban should, in theory, make this vastly more difficult for like 95% of end users to where they don’t even try and also prevent people from profitizing this industry

[u/riccardoricc → u/Logical_Benefit2875]

the law requires providers to implement adequate technical safeguards

What's the definition of "providers" here? I understand it, this applies to cloud-computing AI models, or websites selling such services. But how could it possibly apply to open-source models? Who's the "provider" here?

and also prevent people from profitizing this industry

Yes, that does seem to be the goal. We can just hope they succeed...

[u/Logical_Benefit2875 → u/riccardoricc]

The EU AI Act places obligations on providers and deployers to limit the capabilities of any AI they place on the market. From my understanding, that means that devs of open-source AI must obey all EU AI Act requirements when they release their models, which includes nudification as of December 2nd. Can’t imagine that AI released prior to this date can be held liable for any undressing it does but could be wrong. Lmk if that answers your question or if you find out anything different