A hacked database from AI companion site Muah.ai exposes peoples' particular kinks and fantasies they've asked their bot to engage in. It also shows many of them are trying to use the platform to generate child abuse material.
Wait… so you meant to tell me that predatory simps are using AI incorrectly? Man…. If only someone could have called this years ago- something could have been done to minimize it!
Who knew that unchecked growth could lead to negative results?!
A bit off topic... But from my understanding, the US currently doesn't have a single federal agency that is responsible for AI regulation... However, there is an agency for child abuse protection: the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect within Department of HHS
If AI girlfriends generating CSAM is how we get AI regulation in the US, I'd be equally surprised and appalled
If you folks knew how common pedophilic fantasies are amongst the general public, you would be shocked. Just look to cultures like Japan and Russia that don't strongly condemn such things, and you'll find it's about 15% of the population. It's only less in the West because of the near homicidal stigma attached to it that makes people vigorously hide that part of themselves.
Fortunately, this also shows that the vast majority of those people don't offend.
We also tend to define pedophilia as "anything sexual involving a minor", while reacting to it as if it means "violent rape of a toddler", so no shit, we sexualize youth all the time, the 18 year mark is a legal and social formality, not a hard limit on human attraction. Adults will find themselves attracted to teens, and they won't reveal that because who the fuck ever would?
If anything, the issue isn't that people have these attractions and fantasies, it is that some portion of those people can't separate fantasy from reality and are willing to hurt a child to get what they want, or they are sociopaths that consume child porn without feeling disgust for witnessing horrific child abuse.
to cultures like Japan and Russia that don’t strongly condemn such things
As someone from Russia - what?
Unless you mean being attracted to post-puberty, but pre-legal girls. That, ahem, makes sense biologically.
Girls of that age are sometimes kinda cruel to boys, though, so my personal teenage years trauma prevents me from dreaming of them. But if not for it, I think I would.
There is this thing that I feel is most prevalent in the USA, to call any attraction to a girl under the age of 18 pedophilia. Because that's the age to star in porn. The term should truly be used for attraction to children. I think it's an extension of the "pedo panic" where every man is assumed for some reason to be a child rapist now.
As such almost every young man could at some point be caught as a "pedophile"- 17 year olds sneak into clubs all the time, for example. 20 year old hooked up with one? Now he is considered a pedophile even if the actual age of consent is lower.
Meanwhile the porn industry glorifies "barely 18" girls as something highly desirable. It's a little messed up to say the least.
Actual pedos who are into kids should be put in mental institutions. But I would strongly suspect that 15% stated just includes honest young men and creepy old men, none of which are truly pedophiles. That number is way too high.
I think the common incest fantasy in the west isn't too far removed from this too. Like all the actors are above age minimums but they pretend to be step kids or babysitters like these roles aren't commonly associated with children and older teens. It's clearly a form of deflection IMO.
As the other comment implies, that's just the easiest plot to shove porn into. I don't think that many people are watching it for the plot, it just happens to be there. Like, people aren't fantasizing about becoming a plumber to fuck women instead of being paid, for example. It's just a lazy plot because they need to give some reason for the scene.
I actually don't think this is shocking or something that needs to be "investigated." Other than the sketchy website that doesn't secure user's data, that is.
Actual child abuse / grooming happens on social media, chat services, and local churches. Not in a one on one between a user and a llm.
See how they hate pedophiles and not child rapists.
The crowd wants to feel its power by condemning (and lynching if possible) someone.
I'd rather want to investigate those calling for "investigation" and further violation of privacy of people who for all we know have committed no crime.
That's about freedom of speech and yelling "fire" in a crowded theater and thousand hills radio, you know the argument.
See, imo this is the exact kind of thinking that makes pedophilia dangerous. Most people would agree that being attracted to children is a mental illness. Most people would agree that mental illnesses should be treated by a knowledgeable professional. But pedophilia is so stigmatized that someone even admitting they have a problem, one I very much doubt most of them want to have, has people calling for them to be drawn and quartered, regardless of if they've ever actually hurt anyone.
Do I like that there's art and writing of people having fantasies about children? No, of course not. But making it impossible for people to have a safe outlet, to even talk about it with a medical professional for fear of imprisonment, death threats, or worse, makes it so these people can't even get the help they need. It's like teaching abstinence only sex ed. You're trying to get people to stop having fantasies by burying them, but it only exacerbates the issue.
Edit: lol got your downvote less than five minutes in and the whole comment edited to just say "pedophiles bad." I guess I, as you like to put it, "hit a nerve."
As a fiction writer, I do research on espionage, sabotage and even methods of assassination all the time. But I'm not going to make a salted bomb and nuke Jerusalem even though that is an entirely viable evil plot that may even create a net negative death toll.
True poisoners, as Agatha Christie notes, use thallium, not arsenic nor cyanide (though ricin is good if you can get it.) Thallium assassins are also self-regulating, like demolitions experts, killing off those insufficiently careful when handling the stuff.
Modern police are lazy until enough of a stink is made to find a culprit for a specific incident, which is why modern assassins targeting VIPs will find a self-radicalized desperado and point them toward the target. This is the sort of thing FBI is looking for in the investigations of Crooks and Routh. They are likely just blue suicides (or green suicides in this case) but finding a operative pointing them towards Trump would indicate an actual plot. But even if those tracks are found, it would unlikely lead to a specific identity.
I know about this not just to write fiction, but also to understand how things happen, how our fall into one party autocracy and societal collapse plays out. And yes, it means I do a lot of web searches that might excite an onlooking behavioral research agent. Sadly, they'd find I'm yet another boring false positive, though if the nation does succumb to autocracy, I'd certainly write for the resistance. FBI may not care so much about that.
We often look up creepy things just so see if we can, and we do that a lot more than because we're eager to build a bomb or fast-track our inheritance.
Paywall.
That site frankly does not even look legit and looking at the plethora of other AI sites I don't know who would use this one. It's not even displaying correctly and has like 0 information on anything. If I were to stumble upon that site I'd think it is shady as hell.
It is a independent publication for tech critical journalism, founded by ex motherboard journalists.
Only some of their stuff is paywalled, some only requires free account.
Agree on their site but their journalism is usually pretty good.
You are almost definitely getting downvoted because it sounds like you're saying 404media is not legit. I realize that you're not, but I'll admit I interpreted it incorrectly at first.
This is a weird one, because while fantasy is fantasy, and doesn't necessarily indicate an intention to act on anything, these people were dumb enough to share these specific fantasies with some random AI porn site. That's got to be an indicator of poor impulse control, right?
That alone should probably warrant immediate FBI background checks, or whatever relevant agencies have jurisdiction for these types of criminal investigations in each user's locality.
Of course, I am saying it's without actually having read any of the chats. So it's possible my opinion would change from "this should be investigated", to summary executions and burn the bodies for good measure... but no way I'm reading those fucking chats.
No, I am saying that sharing fantasies about underage children with a shady and poorly designed AI porn site, shows a serious lack of judgement and impulse control.
For that reason, yeah, they probably deserve having a quick review of their life to make sure that's the only poor choice they've made in regards to that particular fantasy.
And they weren't just reading, they were prompting the LLM model to generate these specific fantasies. They didn't just come across a fucked up website and read a few forum posts.
Is that an indicator of poor impulse control? Really? Finding some shady back of the internet ai site to put some weird fantasy prompts into to get themselves off? Seems pretty calculated to me. They can't put it somewhere legitimate where content is moderated and policed. Seems like pretty sound logic to me.
Dont get me wrong, these people are sick. If thats what they are into then theres something wrong, but instead of targeting real kids like so many people actually do, you know, like hollywood, celebrities, musicians, the catholic church etc they are entering prompts and reading stories. Sounds like impulse controlled to me.