The proposal seems to conflict with a Supreme Court ruling against laws that criminalize mere possession of obscene material.
Back in 2016, a study found that it was increasingly difficult for subjects to distinguish between actual photographs of people and computer-generated simulations of them. The researchers suggested that development would complicate prosecution of child pornography cases. That concern has been magnified by rapid improvements in artificial intelligence, prompting a California bill that would, among other things, make it a felony to possess virtual child pornography when it qualifies as “obscene.” This provision seems constitutionally problematic in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding that the First Amendment bars legislators from criminalizing the mere possession of obscene material.
Assembly Bill 1831, introduced by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D–Palo Alto) on January 12, aims to expand the state’s definition of child pornography to include “representations of real or fictitious persons generated through use of artificially intelligent software or computer-generated means, who are, or who a reasonable person would regard as being, real persons under 18 years of age, engaging in or simulating sexual conduct.” Since that new definition would pose obvious First Amendment problems as applied to constitutionally protected images, the bill specifies that such representations must meet the state’s definition of obscenity: material that “to the average person, applying contemporary statewide standards, appeals to the prurient interest”; “depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way”; and “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“This provision seems constitutionally problematic in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding that the First Amendment bars legislators from criminalizing the mere possession of obscene material.”
I’m confused. Why then is CP possession in the federal and states criminal coding?
Well…being as the “war on drugs” didn’t pan out, I guess we’re going to have a “war on porn” now…though, I suspect the end result will be pretty much the same after a (long) while.
I didn’t know it was possible to “victimize” literal pixels generated by a computer program, but that’s where we’re at. The future is here…and it’s looking pretty stupid and pointless.
Apparently, there isn’t enough actual crime, or any other serious problems anymore, so may as well start inventing stuff to convict people of, especially more “sex offenses”, because that’s all anyone seems to care about these days…
I brought this up here almost 1 yr ago and commenters responded with , “This won’t happen”. Well, it’s about to. Personally, I agree with it…..kinda. I see where this could easily be confused with actual CP. I read that many times a person’s real features are used to some extent. If a person is going to search this type of image, I worry about their ability to limit their search to AI.
I got an idea. Let’s flood the author’s google review page with our thoughts on the matter. Heck leave a review. I’m so sick of only hearing one side of the story. If you type into google “assembly member Berman” his google review page will show up. He’s currently at 2.6 stars.
Many states are considering the ban despite the Supreme Court ruling. Wisconsin also is jumping on board after some political leaders proposed it this month. When the first person gets convicted and placed into therapy, therapists have to come up with a new argument besides the one that says viewing cp creates victims & hurts children. Okay, but sexual abuse of a real child isn’t involved in constructing simulated images. But… but…images are still taken from real children. Yeah, but there’s no sex involved, lady! Anyways, lawmakers might save SOT people the embarassment by excluding virtual cp offenders from their treatment groups. They might not even have to register… NOT!
What’s actually happening is, When the FBI Arrest somebody for CP they take the images or the footage and analyze it, trying to locate the victim. The problem they’ve been running into is there is no victims, these are AI generated images of children being abused, and the crazy part is the person on trial or the person being convicted, doesn’t know there AI generated and of course, the district attorney isn’t gonna tell them there AI generated images.
Imagine how many people are in prison and on the registry for AI generated images.
Another example of… Disposable Society. We live in a society were other people may be useful, but nobody is actually valuable. Everybody is disposable, some more than others. How…Right now, somewhere in the world, there is a person setting up a camera…
This is what I mean, because that is happening right now. However, we’ll let it keep going, so long as it’s only happening to other people. We’ll let thousands of kids get chewed up by this every year while we work to get rid of this forever.
We’ll sacrifice as many kids of today as needed, all for the benefit of the kids of tomorrow. Yes, the horrors the kids of today will suffer, while we work on this magically golden tomorrow, are a small price to pay. A small price, so long as it’s always paid by someone else.
Unlike drugs, which are inherently destructive, CP can be legalized using CGI. Stop using real kids for this, by driving to CGI ones. Legalize, and encourage by making it profitable. Real kids are out, CGI ones are in.
No? OK! Oh, by the way….The camera is all set up, ready to go… but who’s going to be the star? Perhaps you can provide one?
Somebody is going to be in front of that camera… today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next…. on and on and on…until there is no more need to. This is the price that must be paid to pursue the goal…so pay up!
This is what I mean by, Disposable society. The kids that get shoved in front of those cameras are the disposable ones we will sacrifice in pursuit of the delusional fantasy of a CP free world. The CP free world that will be created right after we get done creating the:
Drug
Slavery
Murder
Theft
Etc
Etc
Etc ad infinitum
Free world. Still working on those…
These laws do nothing to protect kids, or eliminate CP. They exist to pander to people’s moral outrage at the existence of CP. We’ll sacrifice children to pander to this outrage this way, just like we have with drugs, and domestic violence… Never even try to come up with solutions that could work, just keep pandering to the outrage with things that don’t.
Only works in a society that is willing to sacrifice people in pursuit of impossible goals. A society where anyone and everyone is a disposable commodity to be used in the pursuits.
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002) already potentially addresses this issue.
Police investigate virtual sex assault on girl’s avatar
What if her avatar was assaulted by an AI-generated bot?
Very perplexing. 🤔
This article reminds me of a court case where a guy was convicted of having CP because of some pictures he drew. The DA said the girls in his drawings “appeared” to be minors. How does one assign an age to a girl in a drawing? Exactly how is that determined?
If one can be convicted merely on the perceived age without actual proof of age, how can that be justified? Take for example Shauna Rae, the 23 year old TV personality who has the body of an 8 year old. Just because she appears to be younger than she actually is does not make it a crime for her boyfriend to have relations with her. I’ve also mentioned before that when I was 22, I had an 18 year old girlfriend who did not look a day over 14. Is it a crime that we had sex on many occasions because she “appears” to be younger than 18?
I’m not in favor of AI generated “art” that portrays animations as being under age and I will never look at it, but I really think this is borderline violation of free speech.
The entire argument for banning cp in the first place was that there are victims in the creation of such material. There is no victim in artificial cp. I think an argument could be made that artificial cp is a safe, victimless alternative for those with such proclivities to indulge in, in lieu of acting out in a way that harms someone or is otherwise illegal.
I’m curious why no one has proposed a penalty to be imposed on the AI that generates such images.