Instagram is profiting from several ads that invite people to create nonconsensual nude images with AI image generation apps, once again showing that some of the most harmful applications of AI tools are not hidden on the dark corners of the internet, but are actively promoted to users by social media companies unable or unwilling to enforce their policies about who can buy ads on their platforms.
While parent company Meta’s Ad Library, which archives ads on its platforms, who paid for them, and where and when they were posted, shows that the company has taken down several of these ads previously, many ads that explicitly invited users to create nudes and some ad buyers were up until I reached out to Meta for comment. Some of these ads were for the best known nonconsensual “undress” or “nudify” services on the internet.
I think this is why it’s going to be interesting to see how we navigate this as a society. So far, we’ve done horribly. It’s been over a century now that we’ve acknowledged sexual harassment in the workplace is a problem that harms workers (and reduces productivity) and yet it remains an issue today (only now we know the human resources department will protect the corporate image and upper management by trying to silence the victims).
What deepfakes and generative AI does is make it easy for a campaign staffer, or an ambitious corporate later climber with a buddy with knowhow, or even a determined grade-school student to create convincing media and publish it on the internet. As I note in the other response, if a teen’s sexts get reported to law enforcement, they’ll gladly turn it into a CSA production and distribution issue and charge the teens themselves with serious felonies with long prison sentences. Now imagine if some kid wanted to make a rival disappear. Heck, imagine the smart kid wanting to exact revenge on a social media bully, now equipped with the power of generative AI.
The thing is, the tech is out of the bag, and as with princes in the mid-east looking at cloned sheep (with deteriorating genetic defects) looking to create a clone of himself as an heir, humankind will use tech in the worst, most heinous possible ways until we find cause to cease doing so. (And no, judicial punishment doesn’t stop anyone). So this is going to change society, whether we decide collectively that sexuality (even kinky sexuality) is not grounds to shame and scorn someone, or that we use media scandals the way Italian monastics and Russian oligarchs use poisons, and scandalize each other like it’s the shootout at O.K. Corral.
Thanks, I liked this reply. There is a lot of nuance here.