A Florida man is facing 20 counts of obscenity for allegedly creating and distributing AI-generated child pornography, highlighting the danger and ubiquity of generative AI being used for nefarious reasons.

Phillip Michael McCorkle was arrested last week while he was working at a movie theater in Vero Beach, Florida, according to TV station CBS 12 News. A crew from the TV station captured the arrest, which made for dramatic video footage due to law enforcement leading away the uniform-wearing McCorkle from the theater in handcuffs.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Do we know that AI child porn is bad? I could believe it would get them in the mood for the real thing and make them do it more, and I could believe it would make them go “ok, itch scratched”, and tank the demand for the real stuff.

    Depending on which way it goes, it could be massively helpful for protecting kids. I just don’t have a sense for what the effect would be, and I’ve never seen any experts weigh in.

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Do we know that AI child porn is bad? I could believe it would get them in the mood for the real thing and make them do it more, and I could believe it would make them go “ok, itch scratched”, and tank the demand for the real stuff.

      From bits/articles I’ve seen here and there over the years about other things that are kind of in the same category (porn comics with child characters in them, child-shaped sex dolls), the latter seems to be more the case.

      I’m reminded of when people were arguing that when Internet porn became widespread, the incidence of rape would go through the roof. And then literally the opposite happened. So…that pushes me toward hypothesizing that the latter is more likely to be the case, as well.

    • PhilMcGraw@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      In Australia cartoon child porn is enforced in the same way as actual child porn. Not that it answers your question but it’s interesting.

      I’d imagine for your question “it depends”, some people who would have acted on their urges may get their jollies from AI child porn, others who have never considered being pedophiles might find the AI child porn (assuming legal) and realise it’s something they were into.

      I guess it may lower the production of real child porn which feels like a good thing. I’d hazard a guess that there are way more child porn viewers than child abusers.

      • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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        4 months ago

        In Australia a 30 year old woman cannot be in the porn industry if she has small breasts. That, and the cartoon ban both seem like overcompensating.

        • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          4 months ago

          Nothing says “we’re protecting children” like regulating what adult women can do with their bodies.

          Conservatives are morons, every time.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            They’re not morons.

            Any time anyone ever says they want to do anything “to protect the children” you should assume it’s about control. No one actually gives a shit about children.

    • Thespiralsong@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I seem to remember Sweden did a study on this, but I don’t really want to google around to find it for you. Good luck!

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I’d like to know what psychologists think about it. My assumption is the former, it escalates their fantasizing about it and makes them more likely to attack a child.

      There seems to be no way to conduct that experiment ethically, though.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Real question: “do we care if AI child porn is bad?” Based on most countries’ laws, no.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      There’s like a lot of layers to it.

      • For some, it might actually work in the opposite direction, especially if paried with the wrong kind of community around it. I used to moderate anime communities, the amount of loli fans wanting to lower the age of consent to 12 or even lower was way too high, but they only called people opposed to loli as “real predators”, because they liked their middle-school tier arguments (which just further polarized the fandom when the culture wars started).
      • Even worse might be the more realistic depictions might actually work against that goal, while with (most) loli stuff, at least it’s obvious it’s drawn.
      • An often overseen issue is, data laundering. Just call your real CP AI generated, or add some GAI artifacts to your collection. Hungary bans too realistic drawings and paintings of that kind, because people even did that with traditional means, by creating as realistic tracings as possible (the calling CP “artistic nudes” didn’t work out here at least).
    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      You’re missing the point. They don’t care what’s more or less effective for helping kids. They want to punish people who are different. In this case nobody is really going to step up to defend the guy for obvious reasons. But the motivating concept is the same for conservatives.

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Wikipedia seems to suggest research is inconclusive whether consuming CSAM increases the likelihood of committing abuse.

    • mckean@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      There definitively is opportunity in controlled treatment. But I believe outside of that there are too many unknowns.

    • Pankkake@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Depending on which way it goes, it could be massively helpful for protecting kids

      Weeeelll, only until the AI model needs more training material…

      • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        You need more training material to train a new AI. Once the AI is there, it produce as many pictures as you want. And you can get good results even with models that can be run locally on a regular computer.

      • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I’m not sure if that is how it would work? But this is exactly the kind of thinking we need. Effects: intended plus unintended equals ???