A mother and her 14-year-old daughter are advocating for better protections for victims after AI-generated nude images of the teen and other female classmates were circulated at a high school in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, officials are investigating an incident involving a teenage boy who allegedly used artificial intelligence to create and distribute similar images of other students – also teen girls - that attend a high school in suburban Seattle, Washington.
The disturbing cases have put a spotlight yet again on explicit AI-generated material that overwhelmingly harms women and children and is booming online at an unprecedented rate. According to an analysis by independent researcher Genevieve Oh that was shared with The Associated Press, more than 143,000 new deepfake videos were posted online this year, which surpasses every other year combined.
I dont really think its a “boys will be boys” issue, and more that i dont think any child deserves to have their entire life ruined for something so early in their life. While i dont disagree that its very tramatic for the girls, and it is a really fucked up thing to do that should have no excuses for being acceptable, i feel there are better ways to tackle this issue than marking a 14 year old as a sexual predator or throwing them in jail barring them from a large portion of jobs, housing, etc. for the rest of their life.
But to be clear, i am a prison abolitionist in general, so take that as you will.
These girls are going to have their lives ruined because fake porn with their faces doesn’t disappear from the internet. This could follow them for the rest of their lives. Where is the justice for them?
I am in no way trying to downplay the hurt and pain something like that causes. As a dude, I don’t think I can ever really be able to know what that feels like, but I can recognize it and empathize with it. No one deserves to go through and live with something like that. It totally sucks, I agree.
However, what exactly is destroying another child’s life going to solve? Is it going to make that child stop doing the thing they were punished for? Maybe, but the US recidivism rates beg to differ (44% within the first year). So what then? Is it just to make us feel good, being happy to watch another person get hurt, justified by this made up concept of ‘justice’? That’s the more likely answer, IMO.
There are much more constructive ways to prevent this from happening again that doesn’t require marking a child as an “undesirable” for the rest of their life. I can’t necessarily point to what that might look like, maybe enforced counseling to try and teach someone like that why what they did caused so much harm.
Ultimately, what I am trying to say is that someone like this should be held accountable for their actions, but enforcing suffering from the state is not an effective or moral way to do it.