But how would you outlaw it? A neural network is simply a set of coefficients, would certain coefficient combinations be illegal? It's an interesting question.
PS: I am obviously against child pornography, I'm just curious about the implications of being able to generate illegal content and how governments would deal with it.
I think this question is simply a variation of points that have been made clear already in the past - no one legislates against "a set of 1s and 0s", "a set of letters", "a set of ink dots" nor, in this case, "a set of coefficients". Instead, legislation is created/updated for specific end results, and you're done.
For law enforcement purposes, I think it would be similar to a printing press: owning one is not a problem, but inserting printing rolls that look like dollar bills most definitely is.
This reminds me of posts in alt.sex.stories having disclaimers like "Note: All characters in this story live on a planet where one year = 100 Earth years".
An even cheekier way to drive the point home would be for a sex-stories website to have a slider in the footer to update all age values across the site.
That's pushing it too far. An image might be represented as 1s and 0s but what it represents is a "real world event" which actually happened. If it was stored on magnetic tape instead of on a hard drive it would still represent the same thing. It's what the event represents (child abuse) which is illegal.
However, a neural network represents a mathematical model, not a specific "real world event". Although I suppose you might argue that since the dataset required to generate it would be illegal, it is illegal?
In most Western countries, the content can be illegal independent of the real-world event being legal or not, or even if there's no real-world event at all (i.e. fictional depictions). It's not illegal for a teenager to pose in the nude, but it might be considered illegal for them to take a photo of themselves and post it on the internet.
I think linking illegal depictions to illegal events would be saner, but that's not how it currently works.
Interesting. Yeah I agree that it would make sense for the link to be clear.
Come to think of it, a couple of years ago there was this app called FaceApp which came out which used neural networks to modify selfies in funny ways (like making you older/younger/of the opposite sex).
I wonder if anyone has ever run a pornographic image with the "younger" filter in the app. Would that be illegal?
Under some jurisdictions, I imagine so, since even purely computer-generated images are illegal, and there are other laws which criminalise purely drawn material. It may hit a gray spot in the law, but I doubt a judge would have trouble interpreting the existing law. This is in reference to English and Welsh law, by the way. The exact wording of the law concerns a depiction of someone who "conveys the predominant impression of a child".
PS: I am obviously against child pornography, I'm just curious about the implications of being able to generate illegal content and how governments would deal with it.