Response to ChatGPT for AI-Generated Pornography
Last week it was announced that ChatGPT will remove longstanding restrictions and will now allow its artificial intelligence (AI) engine to produce pornography. This is bad news for those trying to protect against the corrosive onslaught of readily available, sexualized content online, and the normalization of sex as commerce and entertainment. Among the many dangers of this development is the likelihood that AI will be used to generate – and to justify the use of – child sexual abuse materials (CSAM, often referred to in the media and the law as “child pornography”).
The business case for allowing people to use AI to generate their own pornography is clear. Online platforms profit by maximizing engagement. The more time that people spend using their products, the more money they make. Imagine now that free tools are available for people to generate pornography, customized especially to suit their personal preferences and desires, in limitless supply. How much time additional time will people spend on ChatGPT now?
The moral case against this is equally clear. The evidence is overwhelming that access to online pornography is severely damaging to healthy relationships and to mental health, causing anxiety and depression, normalization of intimate partner violence, desensitization, addiction, and the need to “escalate” to more extreme content, all of which undermines healthy relationships with “real world” partners.
Access to free and inexpensive pornographic content has exploded over the past decade, and is forecast to expand far more. A 2023 Pew Research Study found that nearly half of teenagers (age 13 to 17) said they are online “almost constantly,” a rate that has nearly doubled since 2014, and another study found that the majority of children are exposed to online pornography by the age of 13. A 2022 survey found that only 42 percent of young adults said that pornography is morally wrong
The advent of open access to AI-generated pornography can only make things worse. If generating written content is allowed to stand as a precedent, it is a matter of time before there is free and open access to AI that will produce realistic video pornography, with users creating their own content. AI platforms driven to expand their markets, and interested consumers, will argue that AI pornography is less harmful than that using real human “performers.” If that rationalization becomes accepted, then how long will it be before the platforms allow the creation of realistic, AI driven depictions of the sexual abuse of children? They will argue that if the children are not real, then pornography involving them is merely victimless fiction and free speech. They will also argue that its availability provides benefits as a harmless substitute to “real” CSAM, preventing some users from exploiting real children, and so, where is the harm?
People driven by morals do, of course, understand the falsehood of these arguments and the patently offensive nature of AI pornography in general, and CSAM in particular. But the development of ChatGPT promoting the use of AI for pornography is being driven by profits and darker motivations, and we must respond.
Through our legislative advocacy, training, and education initiatives, Street Grace is actively engaged in the fight against the expanding pornography industry and commercial sex trade, and we urge you to join us. We encourage:
Contacting your state and federal legislators, urging them to introduce legislation prohibiting the production of AI pornography, as well as supporting current bills to enhance online protections against all obscene content.
Immediately boycott Chat GTP, and let them know about it. Use other AI tools that do not allow generation of pornography.
Contribute to organizations such as Street Grace that oppose normalization of the sex trade and pornography.