MISC Are Celebs Free Game When It Comes to Deepfakes?

Trump just signed a bill into law that makes posting "revenge porn" and explicit deepfake content illegal in the US and it made me wonder something about places like this and CJ.

According to the BBC, the Take It Down Act criminalises posting "intimate images" - real or AI-generated - online without an individual's consent and requires technology companies to remove the content within 48 hours. However, celebs are public figures. Wouldn't stuff specifically involving them fall under parody like what happened with Hustler and Jerry Falwell?

Is all of our Celeb Fakes and AI art about to get scrubbed from the internet or is it going to be business as usual?

 

Hard to say but I would be careful at least right away

 

Well, if you look at summary of decision in Hustler v Falwell it says "Parodies of public figures which could not reasonably be taken as true are protected against civil liability by the First Amendment, even if intended to cause emotional distress. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed." So the question becomes could those deepfakes be reasonably seen as real? With all the leaks and stuff we got over last few years... the answer is probably yes, they could be seen as potentially real so they would not get protected under Hustler v Falwell decision. But I guess we'll not know for sure until some celebrity sue a site for posting fakes.

That said, enforcing such law might be difficult on sites that are not US based, unless EU and others make same or similar laws. Still, better safe then sorry would apply in this case.

 

It's US law and even in the US it will be near impossible to enforce, this is just another attempt by US politicians to exert power over "big tech". It will also definitely be put in front of scotus at some point in the future, frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it was this administration based off their penchant for posting deepfakes.

 

Interesting situation. I just skimmed through the bill, now law, and agree it’s hard to enforce because it focuses on producing a deepfake. It would take some technological sleuthing to track a fake to an author. Also, I didn’t see anything about sharing a deepfake that someone else made.

 

Jennifer Lawrence's ACTUAL nudes are still online after a decade.

So yeah, I don't think they have a prayer of stopping the fake stuff.

 

Because nobody have a reason to take them down... but if they go after site owners and server providers that will no longer be the case.

And like you said, those are ACTUAL nudes which are not illegal and can't get you into trouble with the law. It's different things with stuff that can get you in the trouble with the law, that is not that easy to find. It's not impossible but finding it takes some (or a lot) of work. I mean, we can find porn from 70's and 80's relatively easy unless it's Traci Lords stuff... same thing will apply here.

 

I don't think that because your job makes you famous that you should be "free game". That's kinda a horrible idea that says a lot about you.

Famous or not, they are still people and I can't imagine how shitty it must feel to see yourself put into that. Imagine it was your sister, mother, cousin, niece. Are they "free game" to everyone else?

 

This new law covers real images as well so in theory it covers leaks.

 

Yeah it's recently become law in the UK. Possession, hosting, sharing...
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-crackdown-on-explicit-deepfakes

Early days but over the next decade, hopefully creating Deepfakes will be treated by Porn websites the same way as rape or incest videos - totally unacceptably and simply not hosted.

A two-year jail term is the maximum sentence, but perpetrators will obviously be on the Sex Offenders Register - and you can then wave goodbye to personal relationships, family and future job prospects. Life over. For what?! Not worth it...

 

What I mean as "free game" is that as public figures they are not excluded from being parodied. There are literally commercially released porn parodies of the damn president and there is nothing he can do about that because as a public figure he is fair game.

 

He can't do anything because those parodies could never be taken as real which protects them under Hustler v Falwell... but in case of celebrity deepfakes they COULD be considered to be real which would lose them that protection and made them subject of this law.

In the end, it doesn't really matter because I doubt site owners would want to risk being targeted by law because of deepfakes and potentially ending up in prison. So as soon as the law get into effect we might see purge of celebrity fakes from a lot of sites, including this one.

 

That's not parody. It's imitation and presenting these things as being real and trying to make them as real as possible.

This isn't having Tom Cruise as Dirty Harry or something like that. It's putting someones explicit likeness into hardcore porn without their want or permission.

 

Unless you make money out of it...yes it should be free game.

 

Dont think anyone should be free game to deepfakes, I always think would I be ok if someone did it to my daughter would it piss me off.

 

Doesn't matter... besides, do you really think anyone makes those fakes just for fun? They are definitely made in order to make money out of it.

 

Hustler vs Falwell means nothing. That was a very liberal court at the time. The first case that comes up they will over turn it.

Plus there is a massive difference between caricature style parody, like the example of Dakota Fanning with giant boobs, versus a realistic likeness depicting explicit acts.

The first amendment is not the free for all half the people out there think it is. It was 106 years ago with Oliver Wendell Holmes and the whole can't yell fire in a crowded theater.

Just like slander and defamation, anything done with malice is not going to be covered by the 1st amendment. And generating realistic explicit content of people would constitue malice, and would also violate privacy.

Will they catch all of them? Even most of them? Hell no. When I ran my celeb sites I got 19 cease and desist over the years. Actually got sued and lost 3 times (although the most I ever paid was $4,500). Yet every single image I ever got nailed on is still up on hundreds of other sites to this day

 

It was certainly more liberal then today, but the decision was still unanimous and it was written by William Rehnquist.

Could they still overturn it? Sure, but it would take a very specific case. Overturning a split decision where you have written dissent(s) is much easier then overturning a unanimous decision which is why (according to legend) Warren insisted on Brown v Board of Education decision be unanimous...