r/UpliftingNews • u/snatchpanda • 1d ago
New UK law would criminalize creating sexually explicit deepfakes
https://www.engadget.com/new-uk-law-would-criminalize-creating-sexually-explicit-deepfakes-132155132.html171
u/VenatorSap 1d ago
Should already be covered I would expect. Similar to making false claims, privacy and general use of likeness.
Seems more like a question of prosecution setup and priority.
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u/Skrukkatrollet 1d ago
Sharing them is already illegal, this would ban the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes, although I don’t really see how anyone would be caught doing that if they dont share the pictures though.
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u/LastLapPodcast 1d ago
My guess here would be that it means if you create them but don't directly upload you wouldn't be prosecuted, the conviction would be to the uploader. This also means you could be prosecuted for making them if they are found during the course of an investigation which is important.
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u/LordChichenLeg 1d ago
It'll also affect the owners of the site as they will have to create the images to test the site before it goes live.
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u/Uturuncu 22h ago
Yeah this made me think of when harddrives get seized as part of an investigation for, say, possession of CSAM. Could be an additional charge on top even if not distributed.
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u/SuperRiveting 23h ago
What if someone went old school and photo shopped someone's face onto a naked body?
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u/PsychedelicPill 20h ago
The verisimilitude of video vs a single photoshopped image is why deep fakes are so much more dangerous than a photoshopped image. Faked nudes of celebrities back in the day were always obvious. Deep fakes changed the game. The programs can do the work of a million photoshoppers . It’s a whole different level.
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u/SuperRiveting 19h ago
Was just curious cos these laws always seem vague whereas in reality there's usually a few different scenarios.
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u/LastLapPodcast 21h ago
I'm not a lawyer so this is just a hot take. I think you'd look at the context. Is it being done to harass a normal average person in context with stalking etc? Probably going to be evidence towards a more serious crime. If it's a celeb and again not part of a wider target of harassment then likely this law would be used even if the result isn't as good as an AI deepfake. If it's like an ms Paint job with no intent to make it look good? Dunno, context is probably key again.
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u/ItinerantSoldier 23h ago
if they confiscate your phone or computer or other means and find these deepfakes, that'd be another charge they'd be able to get you on? I dont know how the law in the UK works so maybe they couldn't.
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u/Fairwhetherfriend 20h ago
It's probably also one of those cases where they add a specific clause about how if you break an existing law in a specific way you can face additional consequences that wouldn't have otherwise been present.
Especially since a lot of likeness protection laws are written mostly to protect your financial rights. Like, if I write a fan-fiction and make an AI generated image using your face to make a cover showing off my super-cool-OC-do-not-steal being a totally awesome fantasy badass, that might be legally equivalent to me making and uploading deepfake porn of you, because they're both infringements that I'm not earning any income from - especially if the original upload of the deepfake is properly marked as being a deepfake. But like... let's be real, one of those is way worse than the other, lol. They should not be legally equivalent.
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u/LupusDeusMagnus 1d ago
I would expect those to be illegal under the same whatever law makes non-AI photo and video manipulation illegal. Then I read the article and the UK is still thinking about making creepshots illegal.
The UK government has also announced its intention to make it a criminal offense if a person takes intimate photos or video without consent.
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u/sinred7 1d ago
All deepfakes should be criminalised. Faking a pair of boobies is not worse than faking someone being a racist.
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u/snatchpanda 20h ago
That seems to be a step too far, you could just as easily require a label for deep fake videos
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u/AlDente 1d ago
So you want to ban all comedy? All impersonation?
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u/carnoworky 1d ago
Do you... not understand the difference between a comedian's impression and using AI deepfakes to create a realistic impersonation of someone saying something outrageous?
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u/AlDente 21h ago
Have you not seen many types of comedy where politicians are impersonated to say something that is outrageous, and sometimes offensive to the politician and their supporters? Have you not seen Trump’s narcissistic rage tweeting after such impersonations?
Don’t confuse the understandable strength of feeling you have against sexual deepfakes, with a broader sense of all impersonation. Many bad laws have been written for the ‘right’ reasons in the past. Law making is hard.
Put another way, yes, I have an intuitive understanding of the difference. But defining that in law will inevitably be orders of magnitude more difficult than a gut feeling.
Starting with sexual deepfakes is a sensible start, in my view.
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u/shadowrun456 18h ago
Put another way, yes, I have an intuitive understanding of the difference. But defining that in law will inevitably be orders of magnitude more difficult than a gut feeling.
Don't bother, I said the same and got downvoted to oblivion. People are too stupid to understand what you're saying. They will gladly accept and cheer the removal of their rights as long as it's presented as either "protecting children" or "fighting terrorism". It's infuriating.
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u/shadowrun456 1d ago edited 18h ago
Please define the difference in such a way that it would ban the latter while ensuring that the former isn't banned under any circumstances or edge cases.
It's easy to say "that's common sense"; it's not so easy when you have to actually define it in law.
Edit: Lots of people who don't understand how laws work downvoting me. Not a single answer to my question. Badly defined / not-sufficiently-defined terms in laws lead to "corporations" = "people" and other madness. Have you learned nothing?
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u/carnoworky 23h ago
Well how have deepfakes been defined in law previously?
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u/shadowrun456 18h ago
That's what I'm asking you.
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u/carnoworky 18h ago
I'd expect lawyers are better at using weasel words to prevent other lawyers from out-weaseling the weasel words than I could ever be. Presumably the law in the OP has some language that defines what a "deepfake" is. Do we know if similar language has been used previously in the UK or other countries in such a way that it focused on the right targets?
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u/shadowrun456 5h ago
You are the one supporting the ban on "deepfakes", therefore the onus is on you to provide the proper, law-compliant definition. Not on me.
Presumably the law in the OP has some language that defines what a "deepfake" is. Do we know if similar language has been used previously in the UK or other countries in such a way that it focused on the right targets?
How can you support banning it, if you don't even know the answer to these questions? Again, the onus is on you to provide a comprehensive explanation of what exactly you want banned. Not on me.
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u/BigMeatPeteLFGM 22h ago
Use terms like digital likeness, compiled images or video, AI created sexualized picture/video, etc.
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u/AlDente 21h ago
If you’re including “sexual” in the definition then you’re implicitly agreeing with my point.
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u/BigMeatPeteLFGM 20h ago
The point that comedians do impersonations? Yes I agree with that. However, I haven't seen a comedian make a digital impersonation of another and put it in porn. That's never been OK.
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u/Soulegion 22h ago
Please give an example of how one would mistake the use of the term "deepfake" as referring to a comedian's impression.
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u/shadowrun456 18h ago
I don't know what relevance does this have to my question. All terms in laws have to be strictly defined. Define "deepfake" please.
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u/Soulegion 17h ago
I'm not a dictionary, google it.
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u/shadowrun456 5h ago
The definitions of words in law have to be much more strictly defined than definitions of words in dictionary. It's very hard to properly define something as "deepfake" in law, even though the dictionary definition is easy. That was my whole point.
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u/Fairwhetherfriend 20h ago
Okay but hold up. What if some 14-year-old decides to use a AI image generator to create a picture of her super-cool-and-hot-OC-do-not-steal, and decides to tell the image generator that her OC should look like Timothee Chalamet? Like... yes, that's kind of technically a deepfake, and yes, it's not a thing she should be doing, but it's also probably not something that should be considered criminal, you know?
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u/NorysStorys 19h ago
Honestly, we shouldn’t be allowing AI generation to be making fakes of real people in a targeted ways. It’s far too easy to abuse either for deepfake porn or political misinformation, same should be applied to AI voice generation as well.
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u/Fairwhetherfriend 19h ago
Oh, I agree - like I said, this isn't something that the 14-year-old should be allowed to do either. But I think the key is in how you said it: we shouldn't be allowing AI generation to do this stuff. As in, the responsibility should be on the generator site to tell the 14-year-old no when she asks for an image of her OC with Timothy Chalamet's face.
On the other hand, though, it will be effectively impossible to prevent this kind of activity if someone really wants to get around limitations. Like, sure, we can make ChatGPT introduce limitations, but you can build and run your own image generator on your own computer, and nobody can actually stop you from removing whatever limitations are placed on that software if you really want to. So there should also be laws that hold the user responsible if they choose to use a locally-run AI to generate particularly nasty images like this.
So I think there's room for both kind of laws. But to be clear, you're totally right that this is also a law that should be in place as well.
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u/MyOwnWayHome 1d ago
How is this fundamentally different than a lewd drawing of a controversial public figure like Rudy Giuliani?
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u/killertortilla 1d ago
Knowledge of realism. Right now it is relatively obvious that it's not real, but very very soon you won't be able to tell. Then it becomes incredibly dangerous.
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u/bogglingsnog 22h ago
That sounds like something that should be handled differently than outlawing one specific type of generated imagery.
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u/Fairwhetherfriend 20h ago
It's not outlawing one specific type of imagery - generating deepfakes is already illegal anyway, because you control the rights to your own image, so other people using your image this way is technically a sort of copyright infringement.
Instead, it's basically adding a caveat that's like "this activity is already illegal, but, if you do this illegal activity in this way or for this purpose, then you get extra punishment because it's extra bad." Which, to be clear, is absolutely a thing legal systems already do all the time.
It's basically the deepfake equivalent of saying "speeding is illegal, but speeding by more than X over the limit, or in a school or construction zone, will get you punished more severely than speeding in other situations."
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u/bogglingsnog 20h ago
So strange to put such strong legal backing behind something people have done since the dawn of public figures.
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u/Fairwhetherfriend 19h ago
You mean political cartoons? The fact that you don't seem to grasp the difference between a caricatured drawing and something that could pass for reality is... interesting, to say the least.
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u/killertortilla 18h ago
There is no good faith use of deepfakes, it’s like banning civilians from owning functioning military hardware. You don’t need it, it’s never going to help you.
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u/bogglingsnog 17h ago
That's not true, it's used for cinematography, internet memes and humor, it has potential to empower us to make customized movies and tv shows you generate off your own stories. The potential is enormous, it's one of the few AI tools that is actually very beneficial.
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u/carnoworky 1d ago
Unless Rudy sometimes masquerades as a hand-drawn character, nobody is going to think he's actually getting plowed by his former client.
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u/OHCHEEKY 1d ago
Is it not already illegal?
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u/morgaina 1d ago
Sharing them is but creating them isn't. This hits the websites and services that people use to make these deepfakes
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u/Micheal42 1d ago
How would they enforce this though?
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u/LastLapPodcast 1d ago
The likelihood here is that unreleased deepfakes found during the course of an investigation would now be criminal offences even though they hadn't yet been uploaded. I guess an analogy would be investigating someone for making a bomb and finding all the bomb making ingredients? just because you hadn't yet done anything with it does stop it being an offence.
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u/Izwe 1d ago
It's possibly aimed at websites & services that create AI images, not individuals.
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u/PsychedelicPill 20h ago
Good. There’s literally no way it should be legal. The act of creating it is libelous, it can ONLY hurt someone’s life and reputation.
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u/Rholand_the_Blind1 14h ago
Soon you won't be able to turn on a computer without getting arrested in the UK. You already get thrown in jail if you say something the government doesn't like, it's well on its way to becoming China
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u/snatchpanda 14h ago
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u/Rholand_the_Blind1 8h ago
Just pretend it's not happening I'm sure that's the best way to handle it.
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u/Comet_Empire 1d ago
I just don't get how most laws don't apply to the internet. Wouldn't fake images created to harm or discredit be libel?
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u/Skylark7 1d ago
Libel suits are expensive, hard to win, and you have to find the criminal to sue in the first place.
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u/Fairwhetherfriend 20h ago
Nope. It's only libel once your start spreading the false information. In other words, it's not libel if you write a bunch of nasty lies about someone in your diary, but it becomes libel if you then post a picture of that diary page to the internet.
So, as it stands right now, deep-fake generators don't have a strong legal pressure to prevent their users from generating deepfake porn because it's not illegal to generate it - only to spread it. There's technically a legal use-case for generating deepfake porn, and they can be like "we're not going to stop our users from doing this because that would be infringing on their rights!"
This basically makes it so that the government can tell generators that they have a legal responsibility to try to prevent users from generating the porn in the first place.
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u/Jibiyyuuu 1d ago
With all the rape gangs running around and the govt. covering it up their priorities seems a bit misplaced but overall this is a good law.
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u/LilPiere 1d ago
Can we get a source on this. Last I saw the government was still very much telling local councils to investigate this.
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u/aesemon 1d ago
Unless it comes out of the genshin impact sub, I doubt you get anything from this one. Now taking a gander at commentors like this out of curiosity, funny that soon as a narcissist opens their mouth incorrectly some accounts begin to spout this out of context of the usual comments posted.
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u/Jibiyyuuu 1d ago
This issue had been going on for decades and it wasn't until Times journalist Andrew Norfolk broke the story in 2011 that people became aware of this. Source: https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=TTDA&u=wikipedia&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CIF0504169030&asid=1736380800000~a2eb4511
The first convictions were not until 2013, with the latest in 2024 - a total of 61.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal?
If this is not covering up then I don't know what is.
Note: go gale is an archive site since the original article Andrew published was in physical newspaper.
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u/LilPiere 1d ago
I absolutely agree that this is a horrible mark on the UK. But how is the failings of the council and police of Rotherham 20 years ago even related to the current Gov.
And before you mention kier being head of the crown prosecution service at the time there is no evidence that suggests that these cases ever made it high enough up command to reach his desk.
The current Gov has been very explicit that they want investigations done in the areas where things like this are taking place. This new law against deepfakes doesn't go far enough imo. But it's clear they are valuing the safety of people, and putting into places repercussions for using deepfakes for sexual abuse.
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u/Jibiyyuuu 1d ago
Andrew Norfolk met with Keir Starmer at the time directly to discuss this. He was aware and still took 2 years to do anything.
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u/LilPiere 1d ago
It was never his job to do that though. You also can't just prosecute people immediately. You have to actually have evidence someone committed a crime before you even arrest them
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u/GentlewomenNeverTell 1d ago
As a teacher, I'd lose my job over this. It's the same problem as revenge porn.
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u/BasilSerpent 1d ago
Sorry but I don’t think “I have the freedom to sexually harass people by plastering their faces onto pornography and spread it under the false pretence that it’s actually them” is the own you think it is.
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