Some of the most harmful applications of AI tools are not hidden on the dark corners of the internet, but are actively promoted to users by social media companies.

Instagram is profiting from several ads that invite people to create nonconsensual nude images with AI image generation apps, once again showing that some of the most harmful applications of AI tools are not hidden on the dark corners of the internet, but are actively promoted to users by social media companies unable or unwilling to enforce their policies about who can buy ads on their platforms.

While parent company Meta’s Ad Library, which archives ads on its platforms, who paid for them, and where and when they were posted, shows that the company has taken down several of these ads previously, many ads that explicitly invited users to create nudes and some ad buyers were up until I reached out to Meta for comment. Some of these ads were for the best known nonconsensual “undress” or “nudify” services on the internet.

  • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    5910·
    8 months ago

    Lot of people in this thread who don’t seem to understand what sexual exploitation is. I’ve argued about this exact subject on threads like this before.

    It is absolutely horrifying that someone you know could take your likeness and render it into a form for their own sexual gratification. It doesn’t matter that it’s ai rendered. The base image is still you, the face in the image is still your face, and you are still the object being sexualized. I can’t describe how disgusting that is. If you do not see the problem in that I don’t know what to tell you. This will be used on images of normal non-famous women. It will be used on pictures from the social media profiles of teenage girls. These ads were on a platform with millions of personal accounts of women and girls. It’s sickening. There is no consent involved here. It’s non-consensual pornography.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      927·
      8 months ago

      The AI angle is just buzzword fearmongering though - this is something you could do with photoshop back in the 90s (and people did, usually with celebrities and with varying levels of quality).

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        25·
        8 months ago

        Photoshop was not advertised for its ability to make fake nudes. The purpose of Photoshop is not to make fake nudes. It is a general purpose image editor. These two things are distinctly different.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.worldEnglish
        182·
        8 months ago

        Middle school boys could not create realistic depiction of their classmates engaged in sex with photoshop. At least not without significant time and effort. Now they can generate hundreds of photos in a matter of minutes.

      • PraiseTheSoup@lemm.eeEnglish
        113·
        8 months ago

        Wrong. That took time and effort and some level of knowledge from the user, meaning the end product was still somewhat rare. We already know that a decent “AI” image generator can spit these out in seconds with zero skill or knowledge required from the user.