CSAM does not have a universal definition. In Sweden for instance, CSAM is any image of an underage subject (real or realistic digital) designed to evoke a sexual response. If you take a picture of a 14 year old girl (age of consent is 15) and use Grok to give her bikini, or make her topless, then you are most definately producing and possessing CSAM.

No abuse of a real minor is needed.

Are you implying that it's not abuse to "undress" a child using AI?

You should realize that children have committed suicide before because AI deepfakes of themselves have been spread around schools. Just because these images are "fake" doesn't mean they're not abuse, and that there aren't real victims.

It doesn't mention grok?

I don't understand your point.

In a further comment you are using a US-focused organization to define an English-language acronym. How does this relate to a French investigation?

Item one in that list is CSAM.

Or “regulators don't understand the technology; short of turning it off entirely, there's nothing we can do to prevent it entirely, and the costs involved in attempting to reduce it are much greater than the likely fine, especially given that we're likely to receive such a fine anyway.”

Do you think that data is stored at the office? Where do you think the data is stored? The janitors closet?

> official institutions were using Twitter as a communication platform before it belonged to Musk and started to restrict visibility to non-logged in users

... thereby driving up adoption far better than Twitter itself could. Ironic or what.

Or the companies could obey the law

You appear to have posted a bit of a loaded question here, apologies if I'm misinterpreting your comment. It is, of course, the public that should decide what communication is of public interest, at least in a democracy operating optimally.

I suppose the answer, if we're serious about it, is somewhat more nuanced.

To begin, public administrations should not get to unilaterally define "the public interest" in their communication, nor should private platforms for that matter. Assuming we're still talking about a democracy, the decision-making should be democratically via a combination of law + rights + accountable institutions + public scrutiny, with implementation constraints that maximise reach, accessibility, auditability, and independence from private gatekeepers. The last bit is rather relevant, because the private sector's interests and the citizen's interests are nearly always at odds in any modern society, hence the state's roles as rule-setter (via democratic processes) and arbiter. Happy to get into further detail regarding the actual processes involved, if you're genuinely interested.

That aside - there are two separate problems that often get conflated when we talk about these platforms:

- one is reach: people are on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, so publishing there increases distribution; public institutions should be interested in reaching as many citizens as possible with their comms;

- the other one is dependency: if those become the primary or exclusive channels, the state's relationship with citizens becomes contingent on private moderation, ranking algorithms, account lockouts, paywalls, data extraction, and opaque rule changes. That is entirely and dangerously misaligned with democratic accountability.

A potential middle position could be ti use commercial social platforms as secondary distribution instead of the authoritative channel, which in reality is often the case. However, due to the way societies work and how individuals operate within them, the public won't actually come across the information until it's distributed on the most popular platforms. Which is why some argue that they should be treated as public utilities since dominant communications infrastructure has quasi-public function (rest assured, I won't open that can of worms right now).

Politics is messy in practice, as all balancing acts are - a normal price to pay for any democratic society, I'd say. Mix that with technology, social psychology and philosophies of liberty, rights, and wellbeing, and you have a proper head-scratcher on your hands. We've already done a lot to balance these, for sure, but we're not there yet and it's a dynamic, developing field that presents new challenges.

Full marks to France for addressing its higher than average rate of unemployment.

/i

You and I must have different definitions of the word “immediately”. The article you posted is from January 15th. Here is a story from January 2nd:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98p1r4e6m8o

> Have the other AI companies followed suit? They were also allowing users to undress real people

No they weren’t? There were numerous examples of people feeding the same prompts to different AIs and having their requests refused. Not to mention, X was also publicly distributing that material, something other AI companies were not doing. Which is an entirely different legal liability.

Kiddie porn but only for the paying accounts!

The other LLMs probably don't have the training data in the first place.

How is that relevant? Are you implying that being a US military contractor should make you immune to the laws of other countries that you operate in?

The onus is on the contractor to make sure any classified information is kept securely. If by raiding an office in France a bunch of US military secrets are found, it would suggest the company is not fit to have those kind of contracts.

Even if it is, being affiliated with the US military doesn't make you immune to local laws.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/us...

I know it's hard to grasp for you. But in France, french laws and jurisdiction applies, not those of the United States

You were downvoted -- a theme in this thread -- but I like what you're saying. I disagree, though, on a global scale. By resilience, I mean to reference something like a monoculture plantation vs a jungle. The monoculture plantation is vulnerable to anything that figures out how to attack it. In a jungle, a single plant or set might be vulnerable, but something that can attack all the plants is much harder to come by.

Humanity itself is trending more toward monoculture socially; I like a lot of things (and hate some) about the cultural trend. But what I like isn't very important, because I might be totally wrong in my likes; if only my likes dominated, the world would be a much less resilient place -- vulnerable to the weaknesses of whatever it is I like.

So, again, I propose for the race as a whole, broad cultural diversity is really critical, and worth protecting. Even if we really hate some of the forms it takes.

I really don't see reasonable enforcement of CSAM laws as a restriction on "diversity of thought".

This is precisely the point of the comment you are replying to: a balance has to be found and enforced.

The point of banning real CSAM is to stop the production of it, because the production is inherently harmful. The production of AI or human generated CSAM-like images does not inherently require the harm of children, so it's fundamentally a different consideration. That's why some countries, notably Japan, allow the production of hand-drawn material that in the US would be considered CSAM.

I like your username, by the way.

CSAM was the lead in the 2024 news headlines in the French prosecution of Telegram also. I didn't follow the case enough to know where they went, or what the judge thought was credible.

From a US mindset, I'd say that generation of communication, including images, would fall under speech. But then we classify it very broadly here. Arranging drug deals on a messaging app definitely falls under the concept of speech in the US as well. Heck, I've been told by FBI agents that they believe assassination markets are legal in the US - protected speech.

Obviously, assassinations themselves, not so much.

Hi there - author here. Care to add some specifics? I can imagine lots of complaints about this statement, but I don't know which (if any) you have.