A mother and her 14-year-old daughter are advocating for better protections for victims after AI-generated nude images of the teen and other female classmates were circulated at a high school in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, officials are investigating an incident involving a teenage boy who allegedly used artificial intelligence to create and distribute similar images of other students – also teen girls - that attend a high school in suburban Seattle, Washington.
The disturbing cases have put a spotlight yet again on explicit AI-generated material that overwhelmingly harms women and children and is booming online at an unprecedented rate. According to an analysis by independent researcher Genevieve Oh that was shared with The Associated Press, more than 143,000 new deepfake videos were posted online this year, which surpasses every other year combined.
If it spreads from peers to them and affects them negatively, it’s arguably harassment, which there are existing methods for dealing with. No different than if it were an offensive doodle or mean gossip, which are also unwanted creations.
And what happens in 15 years when an employer finds out that there are images of them doing porn on the internet? How are they going to explain it’s fake when their boss tells them that is the sort of reputation that is harmful to the company?
Well, if they are fake I suspect they will say that. If an employer fires them for something they did not do, that’s a huge lawsuit.
As for proving it, I’m not sure how one does that when this technology matures. Perhaps metadata? Fake porn images have been an issue for some time but usually one can tell if they’ve been doctored, I don’t know if that’s the case with AI deep fakes in the future. Maybe we will need AI to determine if images are AI generated.
