A bipartisan group of US senators introduced a bill Tuesday that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by artificial intelligence. The measure comes in direct response to the proliferation of pornographic AI-made images of Taylor Swift on X, formerly Twitter, in recent days.
The measure would allow victims depicted in nude or sexually explicit “digital forgeries” to seek a civil penalty against “individuals who produced or possessed the forgery with intent to distribute it” or anyone who received the material knowing it was not made with consent. Dick Durbin, the US Senate majority whip, and senators Lindsey Graham, Amy Klobuchar and Josh Hawley are behind the bill, known as the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2024, or the “Defiance Act.”
I agree the issue is one of puritan attitudes toward sex and nudity. If no one gave a fuck about nude images, they wouldn’t be humiliating, and if they weren’t humiliating then the victim wouldn’t really even be a victim.
However we live in the world we live in and people do find it embarrassing and humiliating to have nude images of themselves made public, even fakes, and I don’t think it’s right to tell them they can’t feel that way.
They shouldn’t ever have been made to feel their bodies are something to be embarrassed about, but they have been and it can’t be undone with wishful thinking. Societal change must come first. But that complication aside, I agree with you completely.
Even without being puritan, there are just different levels of intimacy we are willing to share with different social circles - which might be different for everyone. It’s fundamental to our happiness (in my opinion) to be able to decide for ourselves what we share with whom.
In this case I don’t feel fake images are intimate at all, but I don’t disagree with your point.
You might not, but others do. People have rather different thresholds when it comes to what they consider intimate. I recommend to just listen to interviews with victims and it becomes clear that to them the whole thins is very intimate and disturbing.
And I said their feelings are valid and should be respected regardless of how I might feel about them. I’m not sure if you are looking for something more from me here. Despite my personal feelings that nudity shouldn’t be a source of shame, the fact is that allowing nudity to be used to hurt folks on the premise that nudity is shameful is something I utterly oppose. Like, I don’t think you should be ashamed if someone has a picture of you naked, but the real enemy is the person saying, “haha! I have pictures of you naked!!!” Whether the pictures are AI, or photoshopped, or painted on a canvas, or even real photographs.
I see, it’s seems that I misunderstood you. Now that I get your point, I would rather agree.
In your defense, ending my earlier post with “I agree with you completely” is probably incongruous with my actual feelings given the post I was replying to. I have to heavily edit my posts to keep from rambling and sometimes the thread gets lost in my head by the time I actually hit the post button.