The debate on Deep fake porn misses the point
How Deep Are Fakes? What can they tell us about life, death and death, and what can they teach us about society? A.I. chatGPT and the “Sweet Anita”
There have been efforts from lawmakers to crack down on the creation of nonconsensual imagery, whether it is AI-generated or not. There are laws being brought in to stop the use of deepfakes in election campaigns and in pornography.
The scenarios are not difficult to imagine; a faked video showing a politician in a compromising position; faked audio of a world leader discussing sensitive information.
The threat doesn’t seem too distant. The success of the A.I. chatbot, chatGPT, is a reminder of how much technology can be.
“From the very beginning, the person who created deepfakes was using it to make pornography of women without their consent,” Samantha Cole, a reporter with Vice’s Motherboard, who has been tracking deepfakes since their inception, told CNN.
After learning last week that her face had been inserted into pornographic videos without her consent, “SweetAnita” told CNN that it was “surreal to watch yourself do something you’ve never done.”
It is similar to seeing something shocking happening to yourself. She said that it was like if you watched a video of yourself being killed or jumping off a cliff.
Why are we still so deeply ill-posed? Hany Farid, a Silicon Valley forensics expert, and the implications for the use of artificial intelligence
Indeed, the very term “deepfake” is derived from the username of an anonymous Reddit contributor who began posting manipulated videos of female celebrities in pornographic scenes in 2017.
But concerns over the use of nonconsensual pornographic images isn’t exclusive to this community, and threatens to become more commonplace as artificial intelligence technology develops at breakneck speed and the ease of creating deepfake videos continues to improve.
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and digital forensics expert, said that he is baffled by how awful people are to each other on the Internet.
Why is it that this technology, this medium, allows and brings out some of the worst in humans, if we are going to use it? And if we’re going to have these technologies ingrained in our lives the way they seem to be, I think we’re going to have to start to think about how we can be better human beings with these types of devices,” he said.
“It’s all rape culture,” Cole said, “I don’t know what the actual solution is other than getting to that fundamental problem of disrespect and non-consent and being okay with violating women’s consent.”
There is skepticism. The development of artificial intelligence is faster than the original technology revolution, and we haven’t solved the problems of the technology sector from 10, 20 years ago.
Mark Zuckwitz was fond of saying “move fast and break things” when he founded the company. As the power, and indeed the danger, of his platform came into focus he later changed the motto to, “Move fast with stable infrastructure.”
Silicon Valley was not prepared for the onslaught of hate that has existed on its platforms. The same tools it had built to bring people together have also been weaponized to divide.
And while there has been a good deal of discussion about “ethical AI,” as Google and Microsoft look set for an AI arms race, there’s concern things could be moving too rapidly.
“The people who are developing these technologies – the academics, the people in the research labs at Google and Facebook – you have to start asking yourself, ‘why are you developing this technology?,’” Farid suggested.
If the benefits outweigh the harms, should you bomb the internet and let’s see what happens next?
What Do Twitch Streamers Really Know About Body Sexualization? A Reflection on Blaire, Ewing, and her boyfriend Ewing
Female Twitch streamers face intense scrutiny more often than their male counterparts. They’re harassed, threatened, stalked, and constantly sexualized against their will. It is a miserable, yet widely understood, component of their work. Some people have argued that the women have a right to be upset over fake images, even though most of the chatter about streamer deepfakes has been about whether they have the right to do so. Fans have also honed in on the responses of Ewing, as well as Blaire’s boyfriend, a fellow streamer who was friends with Ewing.
Blaire, whose last name is not public due to her privacy reasons, got calls from some of the other women posted on the site after she learned of the deepfakes. Finally, she saw screenshots. She said it was a slap in the face. “Even though ‘it’s not my body,’ it might as well be. It was the same as seeing a body that isn’t yours being represented as yours. The photos were upsetting for what they were, and she has struggled with body dysmorphia for a long time. She threw up her lunch for the first time in a long while. “Seeing these photos spread and seeing people just sexualizing you against your will without your consent, it feels very dirty. You feel very used.”
