Hi
Sorry for the slow reply but certain aspects took over my life and no it was not our friendly supervisors.

As said I think we are on the same page in many ways on the way "society" views and handles this subject.

In ways we are old timers now and so experience has shown us that, if there is the hint of doubt then societies defensive guards will rise. Yes in relative terms there may only be a minority of individuals who would go onto "contact" offences after viewing any "imagery" but, thats a risk that society just takes the easy perspective of e.g. wrap them all up in one room and throw away the key.

The general members of society does not look at the detail just the 124 characters of the msg at best. They do not understand the complex nature or simply the basic reasons why a unfortuantely few use "imagery". Some would argue there is little difference between what the SUN / news of the world published in the past (bearing in mind they published photos of 16yr olds) and what is around today. 

I mean my office was a contact as it was prostitution (paying for services), but I am treat as if I was someone stalked, raped and murdered a female. I mention this solely because a "contact" offence can very simply happen, though unknowingly but that does not matter. The arrest statistic and so vote gathering in an election year is what matters.

One thought came to mind that given this law on AI, when will it be expanded to include other aspects such as "rubber dolls" as they can be dressed/made to any spec?
take care




Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.

Ah yes, I forgot about revenge porn, another one I’ll pop on the ‘realistically men only’ list. Jeez, if I did actually put together a list of new laws like this I wonder what the length would be. They are all symptom punishing in the end. None of them do anything to eradicate the actual problems which lead to the offending and I just can't see female offenders being reported. With my tinfoil hat on, attacking men is a vote winner for disgruntled women... btw.

I stopped short of iioc in my rant because of the reasons JASB has sufficiently described. That doesn’t mean there aren’t potential uses though. You would never order a long-term 20-a-day smoker to quit with a court order, that’s bordering on inhumane. So could AI be used in a programme to wean entrenched/compulsive offenders away from iioc…? It would definitely help reduce reoffending and be available to those who can't afford to get therapy. Not ideal, but a lot better than the current system. Perfect is the enemy of the good. It’s just tricky when those ‘blanket responses’ /virtue signals are used to shut everything down.

Realistically, further down the line, with the speed of AI development, I wouldn’t be shocked if adult sites became generative/personalised. Write a prompt and voila, you get a video of whatever you’ve managed to think up. Although, under this new law, that perfectly legal (but mirky) business… would be illegal in the UK… *Sigh*.

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Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

I did say it was speculative. We know that some people will continue to harm real children and that no law, no prison sentence and no punishment, however barbaric, will deter them. But there may be others who will be satisfied with AI images and who will not take the risk of searching for real images.

On the other hand, because the law currently treats possession of AI images as being just as bad as possessing real images, then some may conclude that if they are going to be punished anyway, for AI images, then they might as well possess the real thing. 

It could go either way.

Hi
Again I agree with the basics of your comment, however not all of it
When someone is arrested on a "sex offence" we all know that they search for videos, pictures conversations etc in fact anything that can strengthen their case. The "findings" are always publicized to again get societal" support.

If you take "videos", it is believed that watching these videos strengthens the offenders need for gratification well pass the behaviorial controls hence an offence can be committed, so they believe.
When someone is arrested on a suspected "terrorist" offence the same procedure is followed for proof of radication etc.
However I am yet to hear from the "authorities" that "violent video games" i.e. grand auto theft,  can have the same effect - though I believe many do believe their is a link.

Therefore my friend your words 

therefore it actually prevents real children from being harmed.

can be open for discussion as not everyone has sufficient control over their desires to not seek contact in reality.

We know if there is even the smallest "arguement" that can be raised then a "blanket" reaction will be incurred; and that is what happening with many aspects of our modern lives and not just this topic.

Keep happy.





Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope is for tomorrow else what is left if you remove a mans hope.

It's really an extension of the revenge porn laws. If somebody wanted to cause distress to an ex partner, they would share intimate images of that person online, but if they don't have any intimate images, they can create them using deepfakes. That's why the law has a specific requirement, that the prosecution must prove intent to cause harm. So creating images to flood the porn market would still be legal.

But it's interesting that you mention that, because in the iioc world, AI is already flooding the marketplace with computer generated images of children. It's been speculated that the long term effect of this will be to destroy the market in real iioc images, and therefore it actually prevents real children from being harmed.

I'll stick my neck out and say whatever this law is, it'll be the same as the 'adult cyberflashing' law. It's just virtue signaling and introducing lazy and poor legislation when attempts at regulation fall short.
Adult fakes may have been an "aggravating factor" (?) but certainly not a crime. But now it'll be upgraded to a full charge which opens the door to impose heavier sentences, perhaps.
I find it hard to believe someone will be arrested for adult fakes alone. If somebody... let's face it, a man, is arrested, what on earth does that achieve? Another short sentence and SHPO and all the problems that the sentence causes.

A radical thought might be to flood the mirky world of porn 'industry' with AI adult porn, which will go a good way to destroy the human porn industry that does nothing but ruin the lives of women, and arguably men, all over the world. But if we lead the way in trying that in the UK... we'll now be arrested?!

And hey, let's ban cigarettes, ban wet wipes and constantly demonise AI... say the most disingenuous right-wing government that is supposed to pride itself on 'free speech'.
History will look back at the UK government and their lies over the last 5 to 14 years with horror and their dismissal cannot come soon enough.

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Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

The online safety bill definition says "References to a photograph or film also include—(a) an image, whether made or altered by computer graphics or in any other way, which appears to be a photograph or film"

So it has to look like a photo or video, which excludes political cartoons. Other politically motivated deepfakes would only fall under the act if they were sexually explicit, which most are not. But there is probably some scope under say the malicious communications laws for them already, which make it an offence to post anything obscene or indecent online, so that could include a cartoon.

Oh, so if under18s was already covered, this means the new law is about fakes of adults!? That is quite ridiculous.
Do you have a link to what the law says?
I wonder if this is more about politicians not wanting to be in fakes and losing votes. Eg. a certain Lord and a pig. Arrest the person rather than fight the impossible task of getting stuff off the internet.
I wonder where that leaves satirical comics like the ones in newspapers...?

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Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

Its mainly aimed at sexually explicit images or videos of adults, including celebs, as under 18s were already covered by the iioc laws.

Deepfakes of what exactly? Celebrities, any adults, under 18s or all of the above?
I never quite understood the whole deepfake thing. I know there was a thing about Miss Swifty fakes but I didn't actually see her speak out about it, it was more that someone somewhere was angry about something, which is always sus.
With celebrity iClouds being hacked or... "hacked"... all the time, it's probably easy to find the real thing these days.
But I'll pop this on the growing list of "new laws which realistically only affect men".

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Fighting or Accepting - its difficult to know which is right and when.

More laws were introduced this week to criminalise deepfakes. The distribution of these images was already illegal, but now they have criminalised creation of images too. It's the kind of slippery slope we saw with iioc. First distribution and production only were criminalised, but later on they added possession to the list.

I expect deepfakes will go the same way. The logic for extending the ban to possession, in the case of iioc, was that it reduces demand, so you could make the same argument for deepfakes too. We know that there are forums where people share these images and plenty of people sell the images too. 

There are important loopholes in the legislation at the moment. The prosecution must show an intent to cause harm, which could be tricky. But that requirement could be removed, if the legislation doesn't have the desired effect of eliminating the market for deepfakes. Since the law only applies to the UK and not other countries, it is not going to stop these websites from operating, but it will mean potentially another thing that the police can check for, when they are scanning somebodies devices.

Another interesting difference is that the penalty for creation of deepfakes is less than it is for distribution, while with iioc, production carries a heavier sentence than distribution.