[akersten]

Unless they released a model named "Tom Cruise-inator 3000," I don't see any way to legislate that intent that would provide any assurances to a developer that their misused model couldn't result in them facing significant legal peril. So anything in this ballpark has a huge chilling effect in my view. I think it's far too early in the AI game to even be putting pen to paper on new laws (the first AI bubble hasn't even popped, after all) but I understand that view is not universal.

[dleeftink]

I would say a text-based model carries a different risk profile compared to video-based ones. At some point (now?) we'd probably need to have the difficult conversation of what level of media-impersonation we are comfortable with.

[akersten]

It's messy because media impersonation has been a problem since the advent of communication. In the extreme, we're sort of asking "should we make lying illegal?"

The model (pardon) in my mind is like this:

* The forger of the banknote is punished, not the maker of the quill

* The author of the libelous pamphlet is punished, not the maker of the press

* The creep pasting heads onto scandalous bodies is punished, not the author of Photoshop

In this world view, how do we handle users of the magic bag of math? We've scarcely thought before that a tool should police its own use. Maybe, we can say, because it's too easy to do bad things with, it's crossed some nebulous line. But it's hard to argue for that on principle, as it doesn't sit consistently with the more tangible and well-trodden examples.

With respect to the above, all the harms are clearly articulated in the law as specific crimes (forgery, libel, defamation). The square I can't circle with proposals like the one under discussion is that they open the door for authors of tools to be responsible for whatever arbitrary and undiscovered harms await from some unknown future use of their work. That seems like a regressive way of crafting law.

[thaumasiotes]

> The creep pasting heads onto scandalous bodies is punished, not the author of Photoshop

In this case the guy making the images isn't doing anything wrong either.

Why would we punish him for pasting heads onto images, but not punish the artist who supplied the mannequin of Taylor Swift for the music video to Famous?†

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7FCgw_GlWc

Why would we punish someone for drawing us a picture of Jerry Falwell having sex with his mother when it's fine to describe him doing it?

(Note that this video, like the recent SNL "Home Alone" sketch, has been censored by YouTube and cannot be viewed anonymously. Do we know why YouTube has recently kicked censorship up to these levels?)