Is AI child virtual porn illegal in the US? With the rise of AI art generators capable of making explicit and nsfw content free of charge, I worry about the ethical and moral boundaries that come along with it. In particular, it is possible to create obscene virtual porn depicting children. I have read this &quot;Virtual Child&quot; Pornography on the Internet: A &quot;Virtual&quot; Victim? and this... Citizen's Guide To U.S. Federal Law On Child Pornography I am particularly interested in this particular example: Bob uses such a service to indulge in a fantasy. He uses a list of known child actresses to generate obscene sexual 'art' featuring one of them. Is a law being broken? In the case of yes, who is responsible? Is the owner of the site providing the service committing an offense because they host the service and presumably train the AI, or is it Bob because he entered the tags being used to generate the 'art' which used the likeness of an actual child film star? Is this AI generated form considered to be featuring a depiction of a real child?
Let's clarify the point: the material is most likely illegal per se In the laws of many jurisdictions, the definition of child pornography extends from depicting sexual acts with a minor to depicting sexual acts with an apparent minor. As an extreme example: in Australia, drawn sexual comics with Anime aesthetics are banned wholesale, and England and Wales similarly made photorealistic and even more abstract styles of such material illegal. AI art would fall somewhere under those. In other countries, like the US or Japan, legality is based on the material not being obscene. Obscenity often is a somewhat subjective test, like in the US the standard for a time was &quot;I know it when I see it&quot; (Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)), but was refined into the Miller Test in 1973: Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment. Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 , reaffirmed. A work may be subject to state regulation where that work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest in sex; portrays, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and, taken as a whole, does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Pp. 23-24. The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether &quot;the average person, applying contemporary community standards&quot; would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Roth, supra, at 489, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. If a state obscenity law is thus limited, First Amendment values are adequately protected by ultimate independent appellate review of constitutional claims when necessary. Pp. 24-25. The test of &quot;utterly without redeeming social value&quot; articulated in Memoirs, supra, is rejected as a constitutional standard. Pp. 24-25. The jury may measure the essentially factual issues of prurient appeal and patent offensiveness by the standard that prevails in the forum community, and need not employ a &quot;national standard.&quot; Pp. 30-34. In a totally different definition, japan has its Penal Code of Japan Section 175 reads (in translation) much more like a subjective test, which is often called out to demand conformity (and censor bars): Chapter XXII, Article 175. Distribution of Obscene Objects: A person who distributes, sells or displays in public an obscene document, drawing or other objects shall be punished by imprisonment with work for not more than 2 years, a fine of not more than 2,500,000 yen or a petty fine. The same shall apply to a person who possess the same for the purpose of the sale. Who is in possession of illegal material? This depends: IF the AI was trained on illegal material, the makers of the AI had in their possession material of which possession is illegal. IF the hosting company stores the material generated by the user, and it is of the banned type once evaluated, then the company where the image is hosted might be in possession. In the US, due to Section 230 (of Title 47), the hosting company however is blameless for user-generated and user-stored content. The User is fully to blame. The User, by properly downloading the file actively gets into possession of illegal material, which would make them liable for that Just having the file in the browser cache does not always suffice in the US but courts might evaluate the evidence differently
In the U.S. Those stories could constitute &quot;obscenity,&quot; in which case they could violate all sorts of federal and state laws. I was surprised to discover on this DoJ page: 18 U.S.C. § 1465 and § 1466: It is illegal to sell and distribute obscene material on the Internet. Convicted offenders face fines and up to 5 years in prison. It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998). Under some state laws merely authoring or possessing obscene material is a felony. However, if the material is not obscene then it is actually protected by the first amendment. In fact many public schools (at least when I was growing up) required us to read &quot;literature&quot; (e.g., The Color Purple) that included descriptions of child rape and sexual abuse. Descriptions of purportedly actual sexual abuse of minors are also common in the testimony and published biographies of abuse victims. In the U.K. Such obscene stories are also illegal in the U.K. The relevant law is the Obscene Publications Act 1959. The Crown Prosecution Service provides information on the specific application of that and related laws.
england-and-wales There is nothing in the criminal law to compel Party X to identify Party Y in this scenario - they are under no legal obligation to contact the police or anyone else, and a witness summons, for example, cannot be served as there is no trial. That said, one option is for the victim to make a complaint to the police for an alleged offence of what is colloquially referred to as &quot;revenge porn&quot; contrary to s.33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015: (1) It is an offence for a person to disclose a private sexual photograph or film if the disclosure is made — (a) without the consent of an individual who appears in the photograph or film, and (b) with the intention of causing that individual distress. ... The definitions of &quot;private&quot; and &quot;sexual&quot; may be found at s.35: (2) A photograph or film is “private” if it shows something that is not of a kind ordinarily seen in public. (3) A photograph or film is “sexual” if — (a) it shows all or part of an individual's exposed genitals or pubic area, (b) it shows something that a reasonable person would consider to be sexual because of its nature, or (c) its content, taken as a whole, is such that a reasonable person would consider it to be sexual. The police can then ask Party X to either provide a witness statement identifying Party Y or, if Party X is concerned about unwarranted repercussions etc, to provide this information in confidence and their involvement will be protected as Sensitive Material as per para 2.1(9) and 6.14 of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 Code of Practice.
Under United States law, it is not illegal to simply make an account on a forum where criminal activity takes place. The closest thing I can think of would be misprision of felony (AKA failure to report a crime), which requires active concealment (see United States v. Johnson, 546 F.2d 1225 (5th Cir. 1977)). Simply observing evidence of criminal activity and not reporting it would not qualify. However, if that forum also contains material that is illegal to posses (such as child sexual abuse material), downloading that (even by simply viewing it using your browser) could be a crime. I would note that I am specifically not advising you whether or not doing any of the other things, like making and publishing tutorial videos on how to access such sites, is likely to get you into trouble with the law. If you want that sort of legal advice, you should contact a lawyer, as the advice is going to be very specific to the exact details.
Owing to the First Amendment, in the United States your recourse would be limited to civil action based on violations of terms of service (meaning that "the authorities" are not going to knock on their doors to tell them to behave). This is not "spam" (which could be regulated) as the term is generally understood. It is annoying, but probably does not constitute threatening or child porn. It might involve violation of an anti-impersonation law such as this one from Texas, if the offender uses the persona of a real person as opposed to a fictitious person). That law, moreover, does not criminalize simple annoying. Prosecution may be possible in the UK.
It is neither legal nor illegal, but would depend on the circumstances. For example, such use of a smart assistant might be perfectly fine if the childcare provider could demonstrate a legitimate interest for using the smart assistant, and gave reasonable notice about audio being recorded. Parental permission is likely not necessary. In practice, doing this right would be far too much effort. For example: Has the necessary information per GDPR Art 13 been provided, taking into account the EDPB guidelines on transparency? Under what legal basis are conversations sent to Amazon, an US-based provider, taking into account the Schrems II ruling? How will data subject rights be satisfied, in particular the right to access to these recordings, the right to erasure, and the right to object to further processing? Having discovered such processing of personal data that isn't necessarily kosher, a parent/guardian might start by objecting (GDPR Art 21) to further processing. This could be satisfied by powering off the Alexa devices in all rooms where the child is expected to be. The childcare should respond within one month. If no satisfactory response has been received, one option would be to lodge a complain with the supervisory authority, which would be the ICO in the UK.
Criminal liability is triggered by guilty knowledge. The people who run OnlyFans may know in general terms that it is probable that some illegal images exist on their servers, but so does everyone who allows the public to upload stuff. If that was illegal then the senior management of Google and Facebook would be liable to arrest on the same grounds and the Internet as we know it could not exist. Once the company becomes aware of a specific file that contains such material they need to remove it. If they fail to do so then they become liable. OnlyFans has been doing this: [OnlyFans] provides templates for each successive warning - explaining why material has been removed, and that failure to comply with terms of service may result in the closure of the account. [emphasis added] The site operators also become liable if they have a general policy of tolerating illegal material. This is a grey area; a prosecution would have to prove that the toleration was an active policy rather than merely ineffective moderation. There doesn't seem to be any evidence to support such a claim. Permitting an account to continue after deleting an offending file is not toleration of the offending file. The BBC report does not allege that the OnlyFans policy of multiple warnings has been applied to cases of underage content; rather it talks about cases of incest, bestiality and exploitation of vulnerable adults (such as homeless people), and only where the accounts were particularly popular. The linked articles do report cases where accounts have been set up advertising content by minors, but they were shut down as soon as the company was notified of them. The second article also quotes its source as saying that lots of such accounts get closed down all the time; there doesn't seem to be any evidence of toleration of that material specifically. So in conclusion it seems from the available evidence that OnlyFans have been complying with the law. It is telling that the BBC article specifically does not say that they have done anything illegal. If the BBC had found unambiguous evidence of illegal conduct by OnlyFans management then they would certainly have highlighted this.
1. Is Bob's usage considered a derivative work under US copyright law? Possibly. Under US law, a derivative work is: … a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”. Lee v. A.R.T. Co. - 125 F.3d 580 (7th Cir. 1997) is on point here. There the court held that originality was essential to a derivative work. The selection of a particular frame out of the many available is an editorial choice that possibly meets the threshold for originality and is, therefore, a derivative work. Or it isn't and it is merely an abridged reproduction of the original. It depends on the facts. These include how much editorial originality the selection of the particular frame requires (e.g. the choice of a single frame from a highly dynamic video like a fight sequence requires more originality than the choice of a frame from a pan across a static landscape) and the circumstances surrounding its use. 2. Is Bob's usage considered an "adaptation" under the CC-BY-ND license? Maybe. If it’s a derivative work under applicable work then it is ipso facto an adaptation because that’s how the licence defines adaptation. If it isn't, then it isn't.