THE SENATE UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan bill to provide recourse to victims of porn deepfakes — or sexually-explicit, non-consensual images created with artificial intelligence.
The legislation, called the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act — passed in Congress’ upper chamber on Tuesday. The legislation has been led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House.
The legislation would amend the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow people to sue those who produce, distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography, if they “knew or recklessly disregarded” the fact that the victim did not consent to those images.
Things have already been moving towards nobody models. I think this will eventually have the consequence of nobodies becoming the new somebodies as this will result in a lot of very well developed nobodies and move the community into furthering their development instead of the deepfake stuff. You’ll eventually be watching Hollywood quality feature films full of nobodies. There is some malicious potential with deep fakes, but the vast majority are simply people learning the tools. This will alter that learning target and the memes.
You’ll eventually be watching Hollywood quality feature films full of nobodies.
With the content on modern streaming services, I’ve been doing this for a while already.
That’s where the money is, so yes that’s where the majority of work is. But I do think one of the drivers of this is to help protect more local instances; to create consequences for things like fake revenge porn or distributing deepfakes of classmates/teachers in your school, etc.
This might make the path to generating slightly harder, but it won’t do anything to stop an intelligent person. I haven’t seen a ton of info from people talking about this stuff, but exploring on my own, especially with Stable Diffusion 3, diffusion models are very different than LLM’s. The filtering for safety type alignment is happening external to the model using CLIP, and in the case of SD3, 2× CLIP models and a T5xxl LLM model. The alignment filters are done with these and some trickery. Screwing with these can enable all kinds of capabilities. It is just hard to understand the effect of some tricks, like SD3 swaps an entire layer in the T5 manually. When these mechanisms are defeated, models can generate freely, which essentially means everything is a deepfake. This is open source. So it can never be extinguished. There was a concerted effort to remove the rogue 4chanGPT. It does not have the ChatGPT derived alignment like all other models. The 4chanGPT is still readily available if you know where to look.
This bill just raises the barrier of entry and makes such content less familiar and more powerful in the end. In reality, we would be socially stigmatizing while accepting the new reality IMO. This is like an weapons arms race. You may not like that the enemy created cannons, but banning the casting of cannons within your realm will do nothing to help you in the end. Everyone in the realm may understandably hate cannons, but you really need everyone familiar with casting, making the and everyone in your realm to learn how to deal with them and what to expect. The last thing you need is a lot of ignorant people on a battlefield bunching up together because they do not understand their opponents.
These tools are also weapons. Everyone needs to understand what is truly possible, regardless of how unpleasant that may seem. They can not have a healthy skepticism without familiarity. If they do not have familiarity, they will bunch up on a battlefield facing cannons loaded with grapeshot.
So I haven’t dug deeply into the actual legislation, so someone correct me if I’m misinformed… but my understanding is that this isn’t necessarily trying to raise the bar for using the technology as much as much as trying to make clearer legal guidelines for victims to have legal recourse. If we were to relate it to other weapons, it’s like creating the law “it’s illegal to shoot someone with a gun”.
I have not dug deeply either, but have noticed that Civitai has shifted their wording and hosting in ways that indicated a change was coming. In practice, the changes will come from the model hosting sites for open source tools limiting their liability and not hosting content related to real humans.
My main concern is the stupid public reacting to some right wing fake and lacking appropriate skepticism. Like expecting detection tools to be magical and understanding the full spectrum of possibilities.
You’re missing the point. There may be lots of Nobody models out there that satisfy just about every possible aesthetic or body preference a person could have, and you can use them fairly guilt-free to make content that you want to see. I understand the appeal, and it is far preferable to using real people’s likenesses without their consent.
But that doesn’t scratch the itch people want to scratch. People grew up reading and watching Harry Potter and fantasized about fucking Hermione. They developed a crush on Emma Watson during their formative years, and it never went away completely. People want to see pervy pictures of her, specifically, and AI has given them broad access.
People have crushes, and their crushes have Instagram feeds. Crop out 60-100 good face shots and and a mid-grade gaming PC can churn out a LoRA or TI overnight. Then they’ll be generating the nudes they wish their crushes were texting them.
And some people are just fucked up. They hate women, and they want to exert power over them. Any woman with enough Instagram photos is a potential target, where deepfakes and nudifed photos are trivial to produce, and then attempt to use to humilate or blackmail a woman online.
People are already nudifying picture of kids, and then DMing those kids the photos, blackmailing them for actual nudes, and then escalating from their once they’ve trapped some vulnerable child in an abusive cycle.
There is little to nothing we can do to stop this technology from being available, but we absolutely need to lay the groundwork for holding people responsible, civilly and criminally, for abusing this technology to hurt people.
I don’t feel like arguing, but AI has not enabled people like this. It is simply shown a spotlight on the true spectrum of people.
Personally, I realized what fixation was and what it meant in regards to sexuality at around 12 years old. It is an adolescent behavior. There is nothing wrong with knowing examples of what you find attractive. It is better to understand them, and if the person is mature enough, to break down their fundamental psychology. If you look up scientific definitions of beauty, you will land in the realm of neoteny in humans. Youthful appeal is a current leading hypothesis about how homo sapiens evolved in the first place as part of the explanation for why sexual maturity happens so early compared to cognitive maturity, and why girls mature before boys. There is a lot more underpinning the appeal of what one sees when they are younger. I believe for the vast majority of humans, it is a protection for them to understand these elements of the true human psyche despite the present cultural taboos. If there is a safe outlet, and a person is made fully aware of what they do and do not find attractive, free from any external bias, that knowledge enables them to better understand dangerous situations where they need to be on guard.
My aunt was raped, as was someone I dated. Both were from drunken family in unexpected situations where they made terrible choices. I find it repulsive to think about hurting someone for the pointlessness of sex. It’s a 5 second drug hit in the brain; so the fuck what. There are way more effective drugs, and a fucking hand does a better job 9 times out of 10 if you’re really honest about it. I’m for the cultural shift of normalizing the fact that humans like youthful appeal, not because I want to have kiddie porn, but because I want people to thoroughly understand the taboo is more than just a rule, and if they find something attractive that is dangerous, they should be aware of everything involved. Don’t call them perverted or messed up. They are like someone with an addiction bad for their health like drinking, smoking, or harder drugs. They need to avoid circumstances where those drugs are present. Like if there are a bunch of kids at some house party, I don’t want someone feeling weird and crazy because they see some kid and think they are aesthetically pleasing. I want them to think that is perfectly normal human thought. What is not normal is fucking up that kid’s life by taking actions. They may not ever imagine doing something like that, but get them very drunk, and stumbling into an unexpected circumstance and really bad things happen in real life.
Like, in the bike shops I was a Buyer for, I was often asked why I carried so many low security locks for bikes. It’s simple; the goal is to keep honest people honest; to not give them an unexpected opportunity.
Nothing about this bill or AI is going to enable or change human behavior. The intelligence curve will always have more people at the bottom. They are going to fixate on stupid things. At least celebrities knew they were putting themselves in the public spotlight and at least they have the money to escape the reach of most if the crazies.
If anything, this could be the safe catalyst necessary for English culture to directly address and curb whole kiddie nonsense to a much better degree and resolution that actually impacts behaviors without ostracism and the adolescent mentality of blind repulsion.
I think everything happening as it is presently is the safest option and opportunity. If you take away the celebrity outlet, now the really fucked up psycho starts putting cameras in a temp rental, bathroom toilet, fitting room receptacle, or obsessing over their neighborhood kids. People will always find an outlet. We should be talking to them about their cognitive dissonance and underlying conflict so that they can be helped before they act on many of these behaviors, not because of the appeal of kids, but because of the unconscious counter motivations created by unresolved conflict that manifest as cognitive dissonance. If the person is not a condemned lost cause they are far more likely to learn or seek help.
So to me, this is a disproportionate reaction to something that ultimately has little to no impact. Nothing new has been instantiated; only a spotlight on what was already there. In this instance, we could have used it to grow and mature, but we largely fail to do so. We choose to continue our adolescent rampage and choose to continue with more people getting hurt as a result. Stupid people oversimplify and fail to question their biases in honest depth. I hate to see the effects and damages this blind spot causes to people I love.
Did she use the “it can happen to you” gambit? Because the strongest motivators for politicians are power, wealth, and self preservation.
The bill: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s3696/BILLS-118s3696es.xml
As always, I read the bill expecting to be deeply disappointed; but was pleasantly surprised with this one. It’s not going to solve the issue, but I don’t really know of anything they can do to solve it. My guess is this will mostly be effective at going after large scale abuses (such as websites dedicated to deepfake porn, or general purpose deepfake sites with no safeguards in place).
My first impressions on specific parts of the bill:
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The bill is written as an amendment to the 2022 appropriations act. This isn’t that strange, but I haven’t actually cross-references that, so might be misunderstanding some subtlety.
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The definition of digital forgery is broad in terms of the means. Basically anything done on a computer counts, not just AI. In contrast, it is narrow in the result, requiring that:
when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.
There is a lot of objectionable material that is not covered by this. Personally, I would like to see a broader test, but can’t think of any that I would be comfortable with
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The depiction also needs to be relevant to interstate or foreign commerce. There hands are tied by the constitution on this one. Unless Wickard v Fillburn us overturned though, me producing a deepfake for personal use reduces my interstate porn consumption, so it qualifies. By explicitly incorporating the constitutional test, the law will survive any change made to what qualifies as interstate commerce.
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The mens rea required is “person who knows or recklessly disregards that the identifiable individual has not consented to such disclosure” No complaints on this standard.
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This is grounds for civil suits only; nothing criminal. Makes sense, as criminal would normally be a state issue and, as mentioned earlier, this seems mostly targeted at large scale operations, which can be prevented with enough civil litigation.
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Max damage is:
- $150k
- Unless it can be linked to an actual or attempted sexual assult, stalking or harassment, in which case it increases to $250k
- Or you can sue for actual damages (including any profits made as a result of the deepfake)
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Plaintifs can use a pseudonym, and all personally identifiable information is to be redacted or filed under seal. Intimate images turned over in discovery remains in the custody of the court
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10 year statute of limitations. Starting at when the plaintif could reasonably have learned about the images, or turns 18.
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States remain free to create their own laws that are “at least as protective of the rights of a victim”.
My guess is the “at least as protective” portion is there because a state suite would prevent a federal suit under this law, as there is an explicit bar on duplicative recovery, but I have not dug into the referenced law to see what that covers.
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How close does the deep fake need to be to the original? What we saw with DALLE2 was that each person whose face was restricted made a hole in the latent space of all faces. After enough celebrities faces were restricted, there were so many latent space holes that the algorithm couldn’t make faces at all since every producable face was a certain “distance” away from a restriction.
Sure, you can make lora training on unconsenting people illegal and also make particular prompts illegal, but there is enough raw data and vague prompts to mold a generation into something that looks like it was done the illegal way without breaking either of those two restrictions.
the algorithm couldn’t make faces at all
And what would be lost? I might be missing something, but what is the benefit of being able to make fake people faces that outweighs the damage it can do to people’s lives and the chaos wrecked on society from deepfakes etc?
Just ban sexuality.
Maybe if society was more reasonable and responsible with attitudes towards sexuality then deepfakes and sexual crimes would naturaly not be significant issues.
if everyone had a box that gave them the sexual gratification they needed, then they could go about the rest of their day without injecting sexual wants into normal activities and relationships.
Adverts and marketing might have to use facts instead of sex to sell products.
Sure, you can make lora training on unconsenting people illegal
Nobody said this needs to be illegal. Scrape up my pictures and render me jumping the grand canyon on a motorcycle or something. I don’t care.
But spread around fake nudes and then I am happy we have a law I can use against you.
Can i copywrite or patent my face, then sue other humans tglhat look like me and either get royalties or make them stop using their face?
Or where is the limit on me and my rights to my face?
Removed by mod
I looked it up: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/3696/all-actions
It passed by unanimous voice vote. That is, the president of the Senate (pro tempore, usually Patty Murray) asked for all in favor, and at least one person said “yea” and when asked for all opposed, nobody said “nay”. There wasn’t a roll call vote, so we don’t know how many people (or who) actually voted for it.
Edit: it was probably on C-Span, so you can probably find a recording and get an idea of how many people were there, and how many yeas you hear, if you’re so inclined.
To improve rights to relief for individuals affected by non-consensual activities involving intimate digital forgeries, and for other purposes.
Congress finds that:
(1) Digital forgeries, often called deepfakes, are synthetic images and videos that look realistic. The technology to create digital forgeries is now ubiquitous and easy to use. Hundreds of apps are available that can quickly generate digital forgeries without the need for any technical expertise.
(2) Digital forgeries can be wholly fictitious but can also manipulate images of real people to depict sexually intimate conduct that did not occur. For example, some digital forgeries will paste the face of an individual onto the body of a real or fictitious individual who is nude or who is engaging in sexual activity. Another example is a photograph of an individual that is manipulated to digitally remove the clothing of the individual so that the person appears to be nude.
“(3) DIGITAL FORGERY.—
“(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘digital forgery’ means any intimate visual depiction of an identifiable individual created through the use of software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or any other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering an authentic visual depiction, that, when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.
Not convinced on this one
It seems like the bill is being pitched as protecting women who have fake nudes passed around their school but the text of the bill seems more aimed at the Taylor swift case.
1 The bill only applies where there is an “intent to distribute”
2 The bill talks about damages being calculated based on the profit of the defendant
The bill also states that you can’t label the image as AI generated or rely on the context of publication to avoid running afoul of this law. That seems at odds with the 1st amendment.
The bill only applies where there is an “intent to distribute”
That’s a predicate for any law bound to the Commerce Clause. You need to demonstrate the regulation is being applied to interstate traffic. Anything else would be limited to state/municipal regulations.
The bill talks about damages being calculated based on the profit of the defendant
That’s arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn’t going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.
The bill also states that you can’t label the image as AI generated or rely on the context of publication to avoid running afoul of this law.
A revenge-porn law that can be evaded by asserting “This isn’t Taylor Swift, its Tay Swiff and any resemblance of an existing celebrity is purely coincidental” would be toothless. We already apply these rules for traditional animated assets. You’d be liable for producing an animated short staring “Definitely Not Mickey Mouse” under the same reasoning.
This doesn’t prevent you from creating a unique art asset. And certainly there’s a superabundance of original pornographic art models and porn models generated with the consent of the living model. The hitch here is obvious, though. You’re presumed to own your own likeness.
My biggest complaint is that it only seems to apply to pornography. And I suspect we’ll see people challenge the application of the law by producing “parody” porn or “news commentary” porn. What the SCOTUS does with that remains to be seen.
That’s arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn’t going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.
No argument there but it reinforces my point that this law is written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.
You’d be liable for producing an animated short staring “Definitely Not Mickey Mouse” under the same reasoning.
Except that there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment. You can see the parody exception used in many episodes of south park for example and even specifically used to depict Mickey Mouse. Either this bill allows for those types of uses in which case it’s toothless anyway or it’s much more restrictive to speech than existing copyright law.
written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.
In a sane world, class action lawsuits would balance these scales.
there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment
Why would revenge porn constitute fair use? This seems more akin to slander.
You keep referring to this as revenge porn which to me is a case where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner. You could use AI to generate material to use as revenge porn, but I bet most AI nudes are not that.
Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos. Clearly that would be protected speech. If you generate the same image with generative AI though then suddenly it’s illegal even if you clearly label it as being a parody. That’s the concern. Moreover, the slander/libel angle doesn’t make sense if you include a warning that the image is generated, as you are not making a false statement.
To sum up why I think this bill is kinda weird and likely to be ineffective, it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy as long as I don’t present it as a real video. If I generate the same video but my neighbor’s dick is hanging out, straight to jail. It’s not consistent.
where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner
I would consider, as an example, a student who created a vulgar AI porn display of another student or teacher out of some sense of spite an example of “revenge porn”. Same with a coworker or boss trying to humiliate someone at the office.
Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos.
That’s another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.
it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy
If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.
That’s another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.
So you think it should be illegal?
If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.
You’re entirely ignoring my point, I’m not trying to pass the video off as real therefore it’s not slander.
So you think it should be illegal?
I think it’s an example of partisan language that ends up being blandly homophobic.
You’re entirely ignoring my point
Why would putting up a giant sign reading “My neighbor murders dogs for fun” be a tort but a mural to the same effect be protected?
All this law does is give victims the right to sue people who make involuntary porn of them, and clearly defines AI technology as something that you can sue over when it is used to simulate your likeness.
The 1st amendment doesn’t matter for a civil matter like this. Libel and Slander are protected forms of speech, but you are still liable for the damage done when you intentionally lie about people. Likewise, you have the right to make whatever kind of art you want, but if you make art depicting private citizens in a pornographic context without their consent, the person you are depicting now has the right to seek legal damages for your abuse.
I am a firm believer in the concept that “Your rights end where mine begin”. You have the right to make art of me if you please, and I have the right to seek damages from you if your art slanders, defames, or sexualizes me in a pornographic way without my consent. Those are things that do real world damage, so I see no issue with victims of these things being given a voice.
Oh boo hoo you can’t go in a movie theater and yell “fire” we are so oppressed
Question from an outsider:
Do all bills in the states have to have a fancy acronym?
It looks like the senate is the first step, is that right? Next is the house? It’s the opposite where I am.Bills in the US can originate from either the house or the Senate. If it passes one then it goes to the other. If it passes both then it goes to the President to be signed into law.
E: technically there is an exception that bills for raising revenue have to originate in the house but that the Senate can propose or concur with amendments. But for all intents and purposes the vast majority of bills can originate in either body.
Ben Shapiro In disarray
so no more taylor swift porno and everyone can go become miserable again
If the only thing holding back your misery was Taylor Swift deepfake porn, have you considered therapy?
Oh no, you can’t sexually exploit a 34 year old woman who has been outspoken about how traumatizing perverts like you are anymore without consequences.
Cry me a fucking river, future rapist.
