Let’s face it: AI is terrifying. Yet despite the horrors within it, AI is also unfortunately more popular than ever. In recent times, we are watching AI take jobs of artists, educators, and now, sex workers? Not even, as the trend of AI NSFW targets regular people, ones who aren’t given the chance to consent to or reject the work before it’s made. These types of images, or even videos, are referred to as deepfakes, which are essentially a type of media edited and created for malicious purposes. Lucky for everyone, this issue likely won’t last long, as the White House is set to pass a new bill that will put a ban on inappropriate AI content.
The bill was introduced to Congress on April 28th after being backed by Melania Trump. The bill is called the “Take it Down Act”, and has all political parties in an agreement to put the act into fruition. This can be noted by the 409 “yea” and 2 “nay” house vote, which will send the bill to President Trump’s desk, as shared by NBC News. This shocking ratio shows how easily people can put their differences aside and come together to encourage “protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children,” as said by Melania.
The bill itself is meant to crack down on “the posting of explicit images, including Deepfake nudes generated of people by artificial intelligence, without consent”, and “generally prohibits the nonconsensual online publication of intimate visual depictions of individuals, both authentic and computer-generated, and requires certain online platforms to promptly remove such depictions upon receiving notice of their existence,” told by Fox News.
While it is evident that many people care about internet safety regarding protecting people from deepfakes, there are a handful of people with another concern. CCN documents the views of Jason Kelley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who says the law creates “a huge threat to security and privacy online.”
This may be true, but tell me what’s more concerning in this situation: intruding on the privacy of a potential AI-loving creep for safety measures or having that minimal privacy to keep hundreds of potential unsuspecting victims safe?
AI is one of many untrustworthy things in this world that people so carelessly use without knowing all the impacts. It is an overglorified source of potentially false information that can be used for wrongdoing as depicted here. AI is almost human in this way, as it can take precious information from innocent internet users without their knowledge and warp it for one’s pleasure. And yet with all this disgusting truth we know about AI, it is still being pushed as our future. Perhaps this bill can be used as a lesson to the world, one that teaches us to be cautious around any type of technology, no matter how advanced or promising they seem, because truly anything can be twisted and degraded for a sick desire.
