MISC Are Celebs Free Game When It Comes to Deepfakes?

There is a long term project by some to make it easier for famous people to sue for libel/slander so if Hustler v Falwell gets overturned, it probably won't have anything to do with depictions of nudity.

If I had to guess, the weak link on the law signed might involve the whole reporting process. A portion of the things being banned by this bill were already illegal but now they're more illegal.

The biggest concept of a case that could impact AI involves AI's usage of copyrighted materials in it's training. I think the hope for AI people would involve the concept of "fair use" protecting them.

Copyright law is both a mess and also not something that a lot of people vote on, so it just rolls along.

 

I believe -- although I'm not a lawyer -- that the bill requires sites (like Phun) to remove AI and unconsented graphic images on request. So yes, I would think that if, for example, Jennifer Lawrence sent the site a letter saying that she wanted all the AI images of her removed, then Phun would be required to remove them. Just because she's a celebrity wouldn't exempt her from the law's anti-AI protection. "Leaks" are likely a little more "grey area" because there is an argument to be made that she, as a celebrity, is "news-worthy" in a way that a non-celebrity isn't and so the images wouldn't be covered.

Where the "Hustler" decision would factor in is if she tried to sue for defamation or something like that. At that point, she's a celebrity and it's an obvious fake, so everyone would be protected.

 

But that is the thing: with some of those fakes it's not so obvious and if it's not obvious then it would loose protection under Hustler v. Falwell because that only protects obvious fakes and parodies, the ones that cannot under any circumstances be considered real...

 

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146/text

There is no exception for celebrity. If the images aren't signed off on or obtained via the authorities, then they are covered in the act.

 

The Taylor Swift fakes got a lot of flak and it's still difficult to find them online. I think it depends on how popular the celeb is and how much money she has for litigation.

 

I like AI and I like making AI fakes. For fun.

All the ones I have done here are gone. It’s harder on other sites because you have to go one at a time, and in theory, stuff posted before the law went isn’t something I can be charged for, even if they still have to be taken down if someone requests it.

The “poster child” for the law was to protect minors from having fakes posted of them and ruining their lives. I don’t want anyone’s lives ruined, but it’s a horribly written law. They could have made a law protecting minors only, but as usual, they went over the top and tried to cover literally everything that could ever be a problem. The law is far overreaching. While I think there will be some kind of very obvious legal test at some point in the future, I also know that I don’t want to be the one that tests it.

The problem is that it is totally unclear what the limits are. I went crazy a while back and between paparazzi shots and “famous” scenes from TV and movies, made a lot of videos of two woman kissing (still wearing clothes and otherwise normal) and now it’s not even clear if those are forbidden. There is someone on Instagram doing them (obviously not as good as mine, LOL) and I am waiting to see what even happens with that channel and others.

But the real stupid is that anyone who wants to share that type of material will just go deeper underground, using telegram, torrents, mega, dark web, or the many other countless even more anonymous methods.

So yeah, like others have said, stay away for now.

 

The NO FAKES* Act (S1367 or HR2794) is getting attention today (Martina McBride was one of the people testifying in a hearing for it in the Senate). A lot of the focus of the bill is on things that weren't covered by Take It Down but there is some potential relevance to people who do faking.

(* - "Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act" - turns out the worst thing the Patriot Act did is create contrived acronyms for every big bill)

The description of the Senate bill is "To protect intellectual property rights in the voice and visual likeness of individuals, and for other purposes." - I guess if you weight bills on how similar they are to the DMCA, this would be a bit of an AI DMCA.

Most of the discussion about this bill is going to be about stuff like the concept of creating a song from someone through AI. But it's not impossible there'll be some images ("visual likenesses") created that wouldn't qualify for removal under TID but could qualify under No Fakes. I'm not an attorney or pretending to be one. Those who are can look that over. There is a difference in some aspects of this bill compared to TID (which might be reasons why some people who were pushing for action on deepfakes were critical of parts of Take It Down)

Just a bill to keep an eye on just in case you're generating pictures of Maisie Williams as an Amazon warrior (not to pick on Maisie) or you're using deepfake voice technology to make money for whatever reason. Even if "Take It Down" remains the main law on explicit images or it gets struck down by a court somehow, there'll be other laws that would cover some of the same ground covered in TID.

 

For anyone thinking that being a celebrity makes you free game for fake porn, then take the girl you care about most in the world, think about if she becomes famous, in any way. Is she now fair game for the rest of us? Do you want their deepfake of them getting banged all over the internet?