Rep. Joe Morelle, D.-N.Y., appeared with a New Jersey high school victim of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes to discuss a bill stalled in the House.
Rep. Joe Morelle, D.-N.Y., appeared with a New Jersey high school victim of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes to discuss a bill stalled in the House.
I think it doesn’t go far enough. Straight up, no one should be permitted to create or transmit the likeness of anyone [prior to, say, 20 years following their death] without their explicit, written permission. Make the fine $1,000,000 or 10% of the offender’s net worth, whichever is greater; same penalty and corporate revocation for any corporation involved. Everyone involved from the prompt writer to the work-for-hire people should be liable for the full penalty. I can’t think of a valid, non-entertainment (parody/humor), reason for non-consensual impersonation - and using it for humor or parody is a slippery slope to propaganda weaponization. There is no baby in this tub of bathwater.
I dig the sentiment. I do. And If this were my own fantasy world, I’d agree. But unfortunately, we don’t live in the timeline where that is considered even close to reasonable.
Correction: Fortunately, not unfortunately. A rule like that would prohibit any form of public / street photography, news videos, surveillance videos, family photos with random strangers in the background… it’s not reasonable at all.
Yeah, just like the FBI warnings on VHS tapes about massive fines and jail time stopped us from copying them in the 80s and 90s…
I’m not sure this is practically possible.
A $1m penalty is more or less instant bankruptcy for 99% of the population. It’s probably not much of a deterrent for, say an 18 year old. In my jurisdiction I don’t think there are criminal penalties higher than a few thousand dollaridoos. It doesn’t matter whether you think this act is so aggregious that it deserves a penalty 1000 time higher than any other, my point is that it would be unenforceable ineffective.
Secondly, how do you determine whether an image is someone’s likeness? Create any random image and surely it will look like someone, but that doesn’t mean that creating that image violates that someone.
The missing factor is intent. Make a random image, that’s that. But if proven that the accused made efforts to recreate a victim’s likeness that shows intent. Any explicit work by the accused with the likeness would be used to prove the charges.