Mentally undressing your beautiful neighbour or work colleague is not yet a crime, but it may be wise to live under the rule that any use of AI to do the same probably now is, or soon will be. In the last week, two major steps were taken in the crusade against non-consensual AI nudes. The Australian parliament signed into law their anti-deepfake porn bill, which allows any man convicted of sharing such material to be jailed for a staggering seven years. But a more unexpected development was the announcement that the US district of San Francisco has filed a law suit against a number of nudify or undress sites and apps, all of whom are apparently based outside of America.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu has stated his intention to file a lawsuit against 16 of the most popular ‘undressing’ sites online. The sites were collectively visited over 200 million times in the first six months of this year alone. The lawsuit apparently aims to sue for civil damages, as well as take the websites offline, on the grounds that they break state and federal laws relating to the banning of revenge porn, deepfake porn, and child pornography
Interestingly, or rather ironically, or perhaps the word I’m looking for is unashamedly, the lawsuit is also being justified on the basis of California’s unfair competition law. Specifically mentioned is one of the unnamed sites that advertise with the following teaser – “Imagine wasting time taking her out on dates, when you can just use [the redacted website] to get her nudes.”
Unfair competition indeed. No doubt the same law will be used to launch lawsuits against AI girlfriend sites too, before long.
*UPDATE – South Korea, which already had the first and still among the most draconian anti-deepfake porn laws in the world, has vowed to make them even stricter.
SEOUL, Aug 27 (Reuters) – South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday called for digital sex crimes to be thoroughly investigated after media reported that sexually explicit deepfake images and videos of South Korean women were often found in Telegram chatrooms.
The Korea Communications Standards Commission, the state media regulator, plans to hold a meeting on Wednesday to discuss measures to counter sexually explicit deepfakes.
“It’s an exploitation of technology while relying on the protection of anonymity. It’s a clear criminal act,” Yoon said during a televised cabinet meeting.
Yoon talked about sex crimes on social media in general and did not mention Telegram by name.
