[ben_w]

> Not possible.

To which governments, courts, and populations likely respond "We don't care if you can't go to market. We don't want models that do this. Solve it or don't offer your services here."

Also… I think they probably could solve this. AI image analysis is a thing. AI that estimate age from an image has been a thing for ages. It's not like the idea of throwing the entire internet worth of images at a training sessions just to make a single "allowed/forbidden" filter is even ridiculous compared to the scale of all the other things going on right now.

[krapp]

>To which governments, courts, and populations likely respond "We don't care if you can't go to market. We don't want models that do this. Solve it or don't offer your services here."

No, they likely won't. AI has become far too big to fail at this point. So much money has been invested in it that speculation on AI alone is holding back a global economic collapse. Governments and companies have invested in AI so deeply that all failure modes have become existential.

If models can't be contained, controlled or properly regulated then they simply won't be contained, controlled or properly regulated.

We'll attempt it, of course, but the limits of what the law deems acceptable will be entirely defined by what is necessary for AI to succeed, because at this point it must. There's no turning back.

[ben_w]

> No, they likely won't. AI has become far too big to fail at this point. So much money has been invested in it that speculation on AI alone is holding back a global economic collapse. Governments and companies have invested in AI so deeply that all failure modes have become existential.

Not in Europe it hasn't, and definitely not for specifically image generation, where it seems to be filling the same role as clipart, stock photos, and style transfer that can be done in other ways.

Image editing is the latest hotness in GenAI image models, but knowledge of this doesn't seem to have percolated very far around the economy, only with weird toys like this one currently causing drama.

> If models can't be contained, controlled or properly regulated then they simply won't be contained, controlled or properly regulated.

I wish I could've shown this kind of message to people 3.5 years ago, or even 2 years ago, saying that AI will never take over because we can always just switch it off.

Mind you, for 2 years ago I did, and they still didn't like it.

[pureagave]

I'm sorry to tell you this, but the EU has already been lost.

[wolvoleo]

Because we're not on the forefront of AI development? It also means we have less to lose when the bubble blows. I'm quite happy with the policies here. And we will become more independent from US tech. It'll just take time.

[GolfPopper]

>No, they likely won't. AI has become far too big to fail at this point.

Things that cannot happen will not happen. "AI" (aka LLMs dressed up as AGI by giga-scalr scammers) is never going to work as hyped. What I expect to see in the collision is an attempt to leverage corporate fear and greed into wealth-extractive social control. Hopefully it burns to the ground.

[nozzlegear]

> AI has become far too big to fail at this point.

This might be true for the glorified search engine type of AI that everyone is familiar with, but not for image generation. It's a novelty at best, something people try a couple times and then forget about.

[krapp]

Every industry that uses images and art in any way - entertainment, publishing, science, advertising, you name it - is already investing in image and video generation. If any business in these fields isn't already exclusively using LLMs to generate their content, I promise you they're working on it as aggressively as they can afford to.

Grok is a novelty, but that's Grok.

[nozzlegear]

Meh, I don't buy it. People dislike AI generated images and art more than they dislike AI generated, well, anything. AI images adorning an article, blog post, announcement or product listing is the hallmark of a cheap, bottom of the barrel product these days, if not an outright scam.

[SpicyLemonZest]

People dislike AI generated art in the same way that they dislike cheap injection molded plastic. When they inspect it in detail, they wish it were something more expensive and artisan, but most of the time they barely notice it and just see that the world is a bit more colorful than a blank page or unfinished metal panel would be.

For context, the top 5 HN links as of this comment contain one attributed (https://xeiaso.net/notes/2026/year-linux-desktop/, characters page discloses Stable Diffusion usage) and one likely (https://www.madebywindmill.com/tempi/blog/hbfs-bpm/, high-context unattributed image with no Tineye results) AI generated image.

[xena]

Fwiw, replacing that is in my TODO list, but my TODO list is long.

[krapp]

Businesses don't care, it's more important to the bottom line to use AI than not.

And they know that eventually people will just learn to accept it.

[ben_w]

I am uncertain about this.

Yes, GenAI content is cheap.

But a business whose output is identical to everyone else's, because everyone is using the same models to solve the same problems, has no USP and no signal to customers to say why they're different.

The meme a while back about OpenAI having no moat? That's just as true for businesses depending on any public AI tool. If you can't find something that AI fails at, and also show this off to potential customers, then your business is just a lottery ticket with extra steps.

[chrisjj]

> We don't want models that do this.

But plenty enough people do want them. Grok is meeting demand.

[ben_w]

"We the people" in agregate.

"Many individuals" != democratic majority.

To argue otherwise is to claim that the ~1% of the population who are into this are going to sway the governments or the people they represent.

[chrisjj]

If we're talking about undressing, there is no aggregate. Some people want something; others want them not to have it. Simple.

What the former want is not illegal. So the fact they are a minority is irrelevent. Minorites have rights too.

If we're talking about genuine CSAM, that very different and not even limited to undressing.

[ben_w]

> If we're talking about genuine CSAM, that very different and not even limited to undressing.

Why would you think I was talking about anything else?

Also, "subset" != "very different"

> What the former want is not illegal. So the fact they are a minority is irrelevent. Minorites have rights too.

This is newsworthy because non-consensual undressing of images of a minor, even by an AI, already passes the requisite threshold in law and by broad social agreement.

This is not a protected minority.

[chrisjj]

> Why would you think I was talking about anything else?

Because this thread shows CSAM confused with other, e.g. simple child pornography.

And even the source of the quote isn't helping. Clicking its https://www.iwf.org.uk/ "Find out why we use the term ‘child sexual abuse’ instead of ‘child pornography’." gives 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.

Fortunately a good explanation of the difference can be found here: https://www.thorn.org/blog/ai-generated-child-sexual-abuse-t...

> This is newsworthy because non-consensual undressing of images of a minor, even by an AI

That's not the usage in question. The usage is "generate realistic pictures of undressed minors". Undressing images of real people is prohibited.

[ls612]

These models generate probably a billion images a day. If getting it wrong for even one of those images is enough to get the entire model banned then it probably isn't possible and this de facto outlaws all image models. That may precisely be the point of this tbh.

[lokar]

If they can't prevent child porn, then it should be banned.

[ls612]

Should photoshop be outlawed? What about MS Paint? Both of them I’m pretty sure are capable of creating this stuff.

Also, lets test your commitment to consistency on this matter. In most jurisdictions possession and creation of CSAM is a strict liability crime, so do you support prosecuting whatever journalist demonstrated this capability to the maximum extent of the law? Or are you only in favor of protecting children when it happens to advance other priorities of yours?

[lokar]

Photoshop is fine, running a business where you produce CSAM for people with photoshop is not. And this has been very clear for a while now.

I did not see the details of what happened, but if someone did in fact take a photo of a real child they had no connection to and caused the images to be created, then yes, they should be investigated, and if the prosecutor thinks they can get a conviction they should be charged.

That is just what the law says today (AIUI), and is consistent with how it has been applied.

[zajio1am]

> Photoshop is fine, running a business where you produce CSAM for people with photoshop is not. And this has been very clear for a while now.

What if Photoshop is provided as a web service? This is analogous to running image generation as a service. In both cases provider takes input from the user (in one case textual description, on the other case sequence of mouse events) and generates and image with an automated process, without specific human intentional input from the provider.

Note that in this case using them for producing CSAM was against terms of service, so the business was tricked to produce CSAM.

And there are other automated services that could be used for CSAM generation, for example automated photo booths. Should their operator be held liable if someone use them to produce CSAM?

[ben_w]

If you really care, ask a lawyer, not a tech forum.

I anticipate there will already be case law/prescident showing the shape of what is allowed/forbidden, and most of us won't know the legal jargon necessary to understand the answer.

Or answers, plural, because laws vary by jurisdiction.

Most of us here are likely to be worse at painting such boundaries than an LLM. LLMs can pass at least one of the bar exams, most of us probably cannot.

[chrisjj]

> Note that in this case using them for producing CSAM

There's no such report in this article.

[chrisjj]

> Photoshop is fine, running a business where you produce CSAM for people with photoshop is not.

The law disagrees - at least in UK. CSAM is illegal regardless of tool used.

> I did not see the details of what happened, but if someone did in fact take a photo of a real child they had no connection to and caused the images to be created

The article makes no report that happened. And it does report that is prohibited by the tool in question. But it does then quote a child safety advocate saying tools should not be allowed to "generate this material", so is misleading in the extreme.

[ls612]

Somehow I doubt the prosecutor will apply the same standard to the other image generation models, which I bet (obviously without evidence given the nature of this discussion) can be convinced by a motivated adversary to do the same thing at least once. But alas, selective prosecution is the foundation of political power in the west and pointing that out gets you nothing but downvotes. patio11 once put it that pointing out how power is exercised is the first thing that those who wield power prohibit when they gain it.

[lokar]

You often see (appropriately, IMO) a certain amount of discretion wrt prosecution when things are changing quickly.

I doubt anyone will go to jail over this. What (I think) should happen is state or federal law enforcement need to make it very clear to Xai (and the others) that this is unacceptable, and that if it keep happening, and you are not showing that you are fixing it (even if that means some degradation in the capability of the system/service), then you will be charged.

One of the strengths of the western legal system that I think is under appreciated by people here is that it is subject to interpretation. Law is not Code. This makes it flexible to deal with new situations, and this is (IME) always accompanied by at least a small amount of discretion in enforcement. And in the end, the laws and how they are interpreted and enforced are subject to democratic forces.

[ben_w]

> These models generate probably a billion images a day.

Collectively, probably more. Grok? Not unless you count each frame of a video, I think.

> If getting it wrong for even one of those images is enough to get the entire model banned then it probably isn't possible and this de facto outlaws all image models.

If the threshold is one in a billion… well, the risk is for adversarial outcomes, so you can't just toss a billion attempts at it and see what pops out, but a billion images, if it's anything like Stable Diffusion you can stop early, and my experiments with SD suggested the energy cost even for a full generation is only $0.0001/image*, so a billion is merely $100k.

Given the current limits of GenAI tools, simply not including unclothed or scantily clad people in the training set would prevent this. I mean, I guess you could leave topless bodybuilders in there, then all these pics would look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, almost everyone would laugh and not care.

> That may precisely be the point of this tbh.

Perhaps. But I don't think we need that excuse if this was the goal, and I am not convinced this is the goal in the EU for other reasons besides.

* https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2022/10/09-19.33.04.html

[nl]

Even the OP's quote made it clear this isn't the case. Companies need to show they rigorously tested that the model doesn't do this.

It's like cyber insurance requirements - for better or worse, you need to show that you have been audited, not prove you are actually safe.