Believe it or not, artificial intelligence-generated child pornography is completely unrestricted under the laws of at least 12 states. It is allowed in at least some form in many other states.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where some people want to normalize such depravity. The perverts — who of course prefer the label "minor attracted persons" — style themselves as an oppressed sexual minority, subject to undue stigmatization and discrimination. And there is already a lobbying campaign underway — not just by fringe groups, but by legitimately big-deal academics and researchers — to gain acceptance for their perversion.
By the reckoning of Fred Berlin, director of the Johns Hopkins Sex and Gender Clinic, pedophiles "have discovered through no fault of their own that this is the nature of what they’re afflicted with in terms of their own sexual makeup. ... We’re talking about not giving into a craving, a craving that is rooted in biology, not unlike somebody who’s having a craving for heroin.”
As Wired noted nearly two years ago, when it interviewed Berlin, "Some clinicians and researchers have suggested that AI-generated images can be used to rehabilitate certain pedophiles, by allowing them to gain the sexual catharsis they would otherwise get from watching child pornography from generated images instead."
In other words, mainstream academics have already been making the case for years that watching AI child pornography will supposedly curb predators' appetite for preying on real children.
It seems much more likely that, when the studies are all done, rates of child sexual abuse will be much higher in places where such AI material is more widespread. The more such material in circulation, the more adults will be affected by it. But will the arguments of Berlin and others convince anyone? Will they convince our legal system?
The Supreme Court has fortunately already concluded that AI generated pornographic images of real children (deep fakes, in other words) are illegal. However, the law becomes murky in many states when the AI-generated materials are not based on a real child.
And AI has become so advanced that it can create pornographic images and videos of entirely fake children doing absolutely anything. Here is where the law is failing children that will assuredly be the future victims of these predators-in-waiting. The Supreme Court case New York v. Ferber criminalized traditional child sexual abuse material. But a subsequent case from 2002 (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition) effectively rendered computer-generated child pornography legal, since, as Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed that “virtual child pornography is not 'intrinsically related' to the sexual abuse of children.”
The AI child porn is not just pictures. The technology means that virtual children — practically indistinguishable from real children — can be generated to talk to the pedophiles and let them live out their sick fantasies. The AI will produce likenesses of children to suit these predators' preferences, and it will learn exactly what they like and don’t like.
Although the law is still murky on this matter, one would hope it can be updated to handle this. Perhaps the Supreme Court could even revisit its ruling.
But there is a great impediment beyond the usual slowness of bureaucracy — namely, this woke academic gender movement that teaches pedophilia is biological in nature. According to their dogma, these sexual cravings aren’t the fault of the "minor-attracted persons" — they simply cannot help themselves. Moreover, these realistic but fake child avatars that AI makes possible are supposed to be viewed as legitimately therapeutic for them.
The logic is similar to needle exchange programs. If they won’t stop taking drugs, then can't we at least give them a way to consume safely? Well, perhaps the answer to all these questions starts right there. Those needle exchange programs — how have they worked out?
Let’s look at the hard research. In a single year alone in the U.S., Child Protective Services found strong evidence that 57,329 children were victims of sexual abuse. And we know that number doesn’t even come close to being the real number due to reporting, evidence, et cetera.
One in five girls and one in twenty boys are believed to be victims of child sexual abuse. That is an astounding number — just imagine your child’s class at school. Statistically speaking, there are probably several victims in it.
So, the real question is, with more access to child pornography, will these predators stop at just the AI-generated fake child material? Or will that just whet their appetite for more realistic and then real abuse scenarios?
With the invention of the internet, the amount of child sexual abuse material skyrocketed. Offenders appreciated the anonymity as well as the ability to perceive the children as “not real,” since they didn’t know them in real life. With more access, more and more material was made — and of course more and more children sexually abused to create said material.
This means with virtual or AI child pornography, there is an even greater risk of these predators offending, because the very nature of the AI lends itself to the offenders feeling an even greater detachment.
Over and over again, research shows that this kind of material only increases the chance that a pedophile will abuse a real child in real life. And given the advancement of the AI technology, such that the AI child avatar will tell the pedophile anything they want to hear (acceptance, enjoyment, and who knows what else), the risk of offending on a real child increases even more drastically. Nothing says "effective crime prevention" quite like handing child abuse images and videos to pedophiles and hoping it quenches their thirst instead of making them thirst for more. What could possibly go wrong?
This isn’t harm reduction — it is intellectual acrobatics masquerading as policy.
Other countries have already been thrust into this legal debate. Sadly, many academics argue with a straight face that AI child pornography can help pedophiles "curb their appetites" — even going so far as to claim that “there is a group of individuals for whom looking at these images is a voyeuristic interest and an end in and of itself, not a gateway to something more severe.”
In the course of making such claims, they routinely cherry-pick academic studies for their own purposes. It really makes one wonder about their own proclivities.
But in any case, we cannot allow high-brow academics, living in their ivory towers, to create new risks for our children. Financially, there is probably big business in AI child porn — just like there is in AI girlfriends. Someone makes them and someone buys them. We can’t allow this risk to our children in our country.
While the concept of AI child pornography may seem surreal and so abhorrent that you probably don’t even want to think about it, it is coming to a legislature, courtroom or debate hall near you. Contrary to what many academics will tell you, this invention will not decrease child sexual abuse but vastly increase it.
There are some benefits to the advancement of AI, but there is a terribly dark and horrifying side — one that lawmakers must wake up to and forcefully stamp out now.
Liberty Vittert is a professor of data science at Washington University in St. Louis and the resident on-air statistician for NewsNation, a sister company of The Hill.
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