this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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Child Sexual Abuse Material is abhorrent because children were literally abused to create it.
AI generated content, though disgusting, is not even remotely on the same level.
The moral panic around AI that leads to implying that these things are the same thing is absurd.
Go after the people filming themselves literally gang raping toddlers, not the people typing forbidden words into an image generator.
Don't dilute the horror of the production CSAM by equating it to fake pictures.
Yes at a cursory glance that's true. AI generated images don't involve the abuse of children, that's great. The problem is what the follow-on effects of this is. What's to stop actual child abusers from just photoshopping a 6th finger onto their images and then claiming that it's AI generated?
AI image generation is getting absurdly good now, nearly indistinguishable from actual pictures. By the end of the year I suspect they will be truly indistinguishable. When that happens, how do you tell which images are AI generated and which are real? How do you know who is peddling real CP and who isn't if AI-generated CP is legal?
Aside from the other arguments people have presented, this wrecks one of the largest reasons that people produce CSAM. Pedophiles are insular data hoarders by necessity, because actually creating and procuring it is such a big risk. Every time they go online to find new content, they’re at risk of stumbling into a honeypot. And producing it requires IRL work, and a LOT of risk of being caught/turned in by the victim. They tend to form tight-knit rings, and one of the only reliable ways to get into a ring as an outsider is to provide your own CSAM to the others. CSAM is traded in these rings like baseball cards, where you need fresh content in order to receive fresh content.
The data hoarding side of things is where all of the “cops bust pedophile with 100TB of CSAM” headlines come from; In reality, it was probably like 1TB of videos, (which is a lot, but not unheard of) but was backed up multiple times in multiple places, because losing it would be catastrophic for the CSAM producer; They can’t simply go grab a new blue ray of it. And the cops counted the full size of each backup disk, not just the space that was used.
Intentionally marking your content as AI-generated would ruin the trading value, because nobody will see it as valuable/worth trading for if it’s fake. At best, you won’t get anything for it. At worst, you’d be labeled a cop trying to pass off AI content to gather evidence.
What's the follow on effect from making generated images illegal?
Do you want your freedom to be at stake where the question before the Jury is "How old is this image of a person (that doesn't exist?)". "Is this fake person TOO child-like?"
You won't be able to tell, we can assume that this is a given.
So the real question is:
Who are you trying to arrest and put in jail and how are you going to write that difference into law so that innocent people are not harmed by the justice system?
To me, the evil people are the ones harming actual children. Trying to blur the line between them and people who generate images is a morally confused position.
There's a clear distinction between the two groups and that distinction is that one group is harming people.
If pedophiles won't be able to tell what's real and what's AI generated why risk jail to create the real ones?
Although that's true, such material can easily be used to groom children which is where I think the real danger lies.
I really wish they had excluded children in the datasets.
You can't really put a stop to it anymore but I don't think it should be something that's normalized and accepted just because there isn't a direct victim anymore. We are also talking about distribution here and not something being done in private at home.
This literally makes no sense.
Kids will do things if they see other children doing it in pictures and videos. It's easier to normalize sexual behavior with cp then without.
This sounds like you're searching really hard for a reason to justify banning it. Pretty tenuous "what if" there.
Like, a dildo could hypothetically be used to sexualize a child. Should we ban dildos?
It's so vague it could apply to anything.
Banning the tech, banning generated cp on the internet or banning it at home?
I'm a big advocate of AI and don't personally want any kind of banning or censorship of the tools.
I don't think it should be published on any kind of image sharing sites. I don't hold people publishing it in high regard and I'm not against some kind of consequence. I generally view prison as unproductive though.
At home, I'm not sure. People imo can do what they want behind closed doors. I don't want any kind of surveillance but I don't know how I would react if it got brought up at a trial, as a kind of proof if the allegations have something to do with that theme (child molestation).
I also don't think we need much of a reason to ban it on the web.
It would probably make me distrust the prosecution, like if they're bringing this up they must not have much to go on. Like every time a black man is shot by police they bring up that he smoked weed.
I guess my main complaint is that it's insane to view it as equivalent to real CP, and it's harmful to waste any resources prosecuting it.
That's fair. We can also expect proper moderation from social media sites. I'm okay with a light touch but It shouldn't be floating around if you get what I mean.
Found the guy who watches said content. I hope you never plan on having kids.
Fuck off and die. Throwing accusations around like that, you should be ashamed of yourself.
On the one hand, DNS was being needlessly accusatory and the logic of 'you don't understand how predators work so you must be one' is silly. On the other hand, I get why they're being so caustic because YES CP is ABSOLUTELY used exactly how they describe. The idea is that by getting the child used to sexual activity, they'll get used to thinking about sexual activity and won't be as freaked by inappropriate propositions, perhaps even believing they're the initiator instead of being manipulated and taken advantage of, and then they won't report the predator to authorities. Not to mention some of the predators who actually feel child attraction (as opposed to the more than 50% who are just rapists of opportunity) use that manufactured consent to self-delude themselves into thinking 'well they're enjoying it and they said yes so I'm not REALLY doing anything wrong'.
Part 4 on this article interviewing someone who was trying to research pedos on the dark web, for one example: "In other words, there are child molestation crusaders out there, and Pam ran into a lot of this on the Deep Web. Below is one response to a 7axxn post from a guy, bemoaning his inability to be anything but a "leech" (a person who consumes the content but never submits any) because his family situation made it impossible to actively share child pornography. The other members suggested he could aid "the cause" by helping to "enlighten & educate" the children in his life on the "true philosophies of love"" https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1760-5-things-i-learned-infiltrating-deep-web-child-molesters.html
Lmao you said it makes no sense in regards to the material being used to groom children. I don't need to hold your hand in that thought process on why it can potentially groom or foster that behavior. Go eat curb