General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFormer Biden official Nina Jankowicz: I Shouldn't Have to Accept Being in Deepfake Porn (Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/deepfake-porn-ai-misinformation/674475/Archive page at https://archive.ph/OjlIW
Last year, I resigned as head of the Department of Homeland Securitys Disinformation Governance Board, a policy-coordination body that the Biden administration let founder amid criticism mostly from the right. In subsequent months, at least three artificially generated videos that appear to show me engaging in sex acts were uploaded to websites specializing in deepfake porn. The images dont look much like me; the generative-AI models that spat them out seem to have been trained on my official U.S. government portrait, taken when I was six months pregnant. Whoever created the videos likely used a free face swap tool, essentially pasting my photo onto an existing porn video. In some moments, the original performers mouth is visible while the deepfake Frankenstein moves and my face flickers. But these videos arent meant to be convincingall of the websites and the individual videos they host are clearly labeled as fakes. Although they may provide cheap thrills for the viewer, their deeper purpose is to humiliate, shame, and objectify women, especially women who have the temerity to speak out. I am somewhat inured to this abuse, after researching and writing about it for years. But for other women, especially those in more conservative or patriarchal environments, appearing in a deepfake-porn video could be profoundly stigmatizing, even career- or life-threatening.
As if to underscore video makers compulsion to punish women who speak out, one of the videos to which Google alerted me depicts me with Hillary Clinton and Greta Thunberg. Because of their global celebrity, deepfakes of the former presidential candidate and the climate-change activist are far more numerous and more graphic than those of me. Users can also easily find deepfake-porn videos of the singer Taylor Swift, the actress Emma Watson, and the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly; Democratic officials such as Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the Republicans Nikki Haley and Elise Stefanik; and countless other prominent women. By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.
Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former presidentand three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women. The reasons for this disproportion are interconnected, and are both technical and motivational: The people making these videos are presumably heterosexual men who value their own gratification more than they value womens personhood. And because AI systems are trained on an internet that abounds with images of womens bodies, much of the nonconsensual porn that those systems generate is more believable than, say, computer-generated clips of cute animals playing would be.
-snip-
More at the link.
She concludes by saying that with AI "more powerful by the month, adapting the law to an emergent category of misogynistic abuse is all the more essential to protect womens privacy and safety. As policy makers worry whether AI will destroy the world, I beg them: Lets first stop the men who are using it to discredit and humiliate women."
GPV
(72,396 posts)Takket
(21,832 posts)Last edited Sun Jun 25, 2023, 10:51 PM - Edit history (1)
She co-sponsored a bill that would have accelerated technology to detect and "call out" deep fake videos. The consequences of them are pretty dire. Besides deepfake porn a well times deepfake of, say, Joe Biden taking cash from a Chinese official could swing an election.
https://haleystevensforcongress.com/michigan-advance-stevens-introduces-bipartisan-bill-to-combat-deepfakes/
Stevens bill was passed by the House but appears to have died in Senate committee.
I think every deepfake video should have to carry a flag/disclaimer at the beginning and end that it is not real. People should also have some sort of control over their own images. It is obviously a gray area. A video created for satire (like using someone's likeness for a political cartoon), as long as it is clear it is not real should be allowed, but videos targeting a persons personal character for humiliation and outright defamation, like using them in porn, should not be allowed, and hosting platforms should be required to take them down.
Problem is how do you find them? These affected women shouldn't have to scour porn sites all day looking for their likeness so they can demand they be taken down.........
highplainsdem
(49,270 posts)SouthernDem4ever
(6,618 posts)I don't care if it's porn or any other situation. It's not a matter of free speech, it's libelous speech. This doesn't apply to public situations depicting what really happened or satire with look-alikes, just nefarious actors who will use a likeness to purposely slander.
IbogaProject
(2,901 posts)While I'm a super liberal progressive, I've been anti pornography for awhile now. I'm all for first amendment self expression. What I think should be banned is any "Assignment of Copyright", this would short circuit the predatory porn that prey's upon young often poor women who are still in their teens. Among the icky series, are Casting Couch, First Time Video, Bang Bus and many more. I only became aware when a woman became Miss Delaware, and some predatory Porn company promptly started monetizing off it. She had been fresh out of foster care and did a clip to make some money to try and get a start.
This should be easy for the courts to decide. First our trademark and copyright office can decide that the copyright on your nude likeness is automatic and must remain owned by the individual. Then basically move that any assignments are null and void and anyone selling or broadcasting them is liable for infringement. Also any payments made for those ill gotten "rights" should be deemed unrecoverable. I'm ok with an artist or actor retaining ownership, which should include an ability to rescind distribution, that could get tricky as money is invested in this filth.
Orrex
(63,375 posts)It's one of those know-it-when-you-see-it things, and I frankly don't trust our current crop of legislators or judges to deal with the matter competently.
IbogaProject
(2,901 posts)I suggest an end run around this by saying the copyright to your nude likeness can't be signed away under any contract b.s. And obscenity shouldn't be a legitimate form of parody.
Orrex
(63,375 posts)If the intent is to harm or defame, then that's indefensible and should subject the responsible parties to the full penalty of law.
However, the "nude likeness" rule would likely be struck down on first amendment grounds, because such images will be claimed to be artistic expression. Even if it stands, the people creating the images could easily "censor" the images in such a way as to insist that the images *aren't* nude (e.g, by conforming to YouTube's monetization standards).
As for the defamation, the image creators would seek to avoid charges by attaching a disclaimer a la "This image is manufactured and does not represent the real Orrex, who has not consented to the use of their image."
Again, I'm not defending the practice, but we need to be realistic about what defenses they will use. And we must also be cautious; many laws envisioned to guard against fake nudes can easily be used to protect against real but unflattering photos, or even conventional artistic renderings like editorial cartoons.
Silent3
(15,546 posts)...foisted off as if it's real, or is some nebulous space in between.
If this kind of fake is now easy to do, it's power to cause much harm to anyone will quickly vanish. The general assumption about any seemingly revealing explicit video will soon be that it's a fake. That doesn't mean the target of such videos won't possibly feel humiliated or exploited by such fakes, but the power to cause reputational damage will be slight.
iluvtennis
(19,979 posts)Warpy
(111,641 posts)They thunder about abortion then groove on shit like this in their off time.
Don't bother to deny it. Religious patriarchs always have a predator-prey relationship with women, at best.
Laws won't do it, it will just move offshore if it's not there already.
I hope Melania has talked to Barron about this shit. You know he's found it by now.
oldsoftie
(12,769 posts)Many years ago, even before trump, I was telling my friends that deepfakes were going to be a big problem in politics. You could make a video of a candidate saying ANYTHING and it would spread like wildfire even if it was proven fake.
Now we've got that AND this kind of shit
highplainsdem
(49,270 posts)MontanaMama
(23,409 posts)Last edited Sun Jun 25, 2023, 04:04 PM - Edit history (1)
after a classmate distributed his likeness in a pornographic social media post. It was snap chat so it was gone quickly but the damage was done. He didnt think he could talk to his parents about it and guns were readily available in his house and now hes dead.
highplainsdem
(49,270 posts)Orrex
(63,375 posts)It's a big problem that will only get bigger, and our current laws seem ill-constructed to handle it, just as our legislators and judges are poorly qualified to address it.
bronxiteforever
(9,287 posts)wrote:
For a start it doesnt much matter what line you take as a woman, if you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It is not what you say that prompts it, its simply the fact that youre saying it
. When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.
― Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto
JudyM
(29,362 posts)So sadly so.
NowISeetheLight
(3,943 posts)Stuff like this needs to be an automatic felony with a minimum 15 year sentence if theyre caught.
Scrivener7
(51,173 posts)AI is the devil.
JanMichael
(24,920 posts)The foul little piece of s*** needs to pay.
And I say assault instead of battery because battery requires touching but assault does not.
2naSalit
(87,406 posts)Before all this high tech, they used to just call your boss and spread rumors about you.