Teens "falling victim" to fake pornography?! Over at Fox News (skip the blockquote below to go straight to the meat of the matter), Nikolas Lanum reports on
A troubling trend [that] has emerged in schools across the United States, with young students falling victim to the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered "nudify" apps that have the power to create fake pornography of classmates.
"Nudify" is an umbrella term referring to a plethora of widely available apps and websites that allow users to alter photos of full-dressed individuals and virtually undress them. Some apps can create nude images with just a headshot of the victim.
Don Austin, the superintendent of the Palo Alto Unified School District, told Fox News Digital that this type of online harassment can be more relentless compared to traditional in-person bullying.
"It used to be that a bully had to come over and push you. Palo Alto is not a community where people are going to come push anybody into a locker. That doesn't happen. But it's not immune from online bullying," Austin said.
"The differences, I think, are worse. Now your bully can be completely anonymous. You don't even know where it's coming from," he continued.
… "We're at a place now where you can be doing nothing and stories and pictures about you are posted online. They're fabricated. They're completely made up through AI and it can have your voice or face. That's a whole other world," he told Fox News Digital.Seriously?! Am I the only person that sees the benefits of this "troubling trend" of online bullying?!
Think about it.
Blackmail is now a thing of the past.
That's it.
It's over.
Whether you are a teen or an adult, whether the photos are real or not, you can simply pass all of them off — indeed, you can do so nonchalantly — as fakes or deepfakes. To your classmates, to your spouse, to your constituents. Who will know whether you are fibbing or telling the truth? (Maybe you hardly know yourself…)
(In a totally different context, of course, that is exactly what Joe Biden's White House did…)
As it happens, a considerable size of the audience for these sex photos/videos — maybe far more than half — will already be assuming that they're fakes… (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)
Depression at 16? Suicide at 17? Why fear sextortion at this point? Compliment instead the (anonymous) photo/video creators for doing a good job — for doing an outstanding job.
On my phone I keep receiving photos of Donald Trump tenderly cuddling with Joe Biden or Vladimir Putin or Stormy Daniels. Lots of apps now make you "repair" snapshots that are decades or (over) a century old, colorize them, and make them into mini-movies (the latest one I saw delighted me as it involved Civil War daguerreotypes from the 1860s).
I also keep receiving AI ads where, by combining a couple of photos of myself and of any girl (someone I know and am perhaps infatuated with or some rock or movie star or someone — Marilyn Monroe? Rudolph Valentino? Che Guevara? Queen Victoria? — who has been dead for decades) I can make myself hug or kiss that person — hungrily — on the mouth.
Years ago (long before AI), I was writing a TV script imagining a politician who was on national television and who was all of a sudden ambushed with private photos of him in a compromising position (with a woman other than his wife, with a man, with many women, with many men, at an orgy, in a BDSM cave, with a money shot, whatever…). Talk of falling victim; talk of bullying; talk of harassment (justified or otherwise)!
How should he react?
Ignore the content. And, with an admiring voice, let out a whistle and praise the work: "Wow, that's well done!"
"What do you mean?!" interrupts the TV presenter, visibly frustrated. "No no no! Don't tell me you are claiming they're fake?! We have proof that you were seen at—"
Again, this was before AI, needless to say, which only made the politician's next words even more startling: "It is so how admirable the degree to which studios have made progress with special effects!"
In my story, the politician went on to taking the photos he was in and replacing himself with Woodrow Wilson. Thereafter, he deliberately and openly creating a number of (in his case, fake) photos of other politicians — and even himself — involved in ridiculous positions (an appropriate word in more ways than one), such as with a midget, with a gorilla, and with (a young) Greta Garbo.
Imagine if photos of Barack Obama servicing Chicago gentlemen were to appear now? 44 knows he has nothing to fret about.
3 comments:
It will come down to those situations where their are multiple cameras with the same shot from different angles, from numerous cell phones. These will work for a while.
Naw, AI can do that handily already.
There is a, maybe spurious, story of a South East dictator who after being caught in a honey trap in Moscow, asked copies of the film to show back at home. He wanted to show his prowess with foreign women
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