In the last week or so, 10 out of the 25 most popular cameos using my face are various fetishes, including one where I’m a centaur-woman pregnant with octoplets. It’s not just me, either. I’ve seen this kind of content made with cameos of other women: female creators, another woman tech reporter, and a female employee of a prominent venture-capital firm.
**I don’t get why anyone is surprised **
A lot of the comments here seem to be missing some key points from this article:
- The writer made her own likeness available to everyone on purpose. She did this knowing what would happen, but it was part of the exercise of seeing how weird it would get. So the points that she was stupid for doing, or that she was outraged by this, this are missing the point. Was she stupid? Maybe, but she made a conscious sacrifice on her likeliness. Was she outraged? Clearly not.
- It’s short-sighted to say “yeah this will happen, so don’t put your is image out there”. There are lots of people (especially women and girls) who have gone out of the way to avoid having their image/likeness out there for these it similar reasons. But they have still ended up the victim of humiliation and trauma from photoshopped images or deep fakes made against them.
- This second point was a big part of what the author was trying to point out. It’s both a warning to others about being careful of protecting your identity, and an alarm sounding that there are some really weird and creepy fetishes out there that people can get their likelinesses pulled into, even when you actively try to avoid that.
- It also highlights the lack of safeguards on this kind of issue. Consent, age, level of fame… none of that matters in this issue. And in most cases the companies behind these tools don’t do shit to address these concerns.
I’ve allowed anyone to make “cameos” using my face. (You don’t have to do this: You can choose settings that make your likeness private, or open to just your friends — but I figured, why not? …)
Maybe because of this shit? A learning experience, I guess.
If an option exists that nobody should ever choose, why is it an option? In what situation would this option ever make sense?
In a situation where someone doesn’t understand the implications and a corporation can make money of their misfortune. That pretty much describes most of social media.
Love this bit
But there is something different and unsettling here: It’s people being able to use my face (easily) to create content for potential sexual gratification without my consent.
But she did consent when she allowed people to use her face. I’m not saying what those people are doing with it are morally right but she consented when she clicked the box allowing cameos.
As a journalist she did it to see what would happen. And then wrote an article about what happened. This is definitely worth talking about even if she did click the box, the box isn’t really the point here.
She consented to something but didn’t consider/understand what that something implies. While it might be obvious for terminally online people, most people don’t expect “cameos” to necessarily mean “fetish porn cameos”.
What else would it mean? That’s the kind of content the internet creates.
What else would it mean? That’s the kind of content the internet creates.
a centaur-woman pregnant with octoplets
You may have spent too much of your lifetime on the internet if you think that this should be common knowledge, haha
(I say that as someone who probably fits into that category)
Haha fair enough. Although I didn’t mean that specifically, just weird sexual content in general.
I assume many people just live in a sanitized, sterile internet created by Google/Meta et al. They might have never encountered the gooner/pervert culture before. Again, when most people see “cameo” their mind doesn’t jump to “fetish porn cameo”. As such, I don’t think there was real consent here.
If someone expects content moderation or the other safeguards you have in large parts of the internet it might come as a surprise that a large platform allows fetish porn content to be made with “cameos”.
Tbh, the word itself is super vague and ambiguous and doesn’t reflect what it means in this context.
She consented to something but didn’t consider/understand what that something implies.
so… she’s stupid?
The question is what did she consent to (as in, what was the thing she did expect that this checkbox created)?
“Cameo” doesn’t exactly evoke “allow people to create fetish porn with my face”.
If the button was labelled with that or some other more clear text, I don’t think there would have been a need for this article.
And that’s pretty much the point of this article: “Beware of corporate double-speek, this harmless word here means ‘allow fetish porn with your face’”, and that kind of warning article is not only important but pretty much essential in today’s world, where “autopilot” doesn’t mean that the car is fully self-driving, and where even “full self-driving” doesn’t mean “fully self-driving”.
And the only indication one has that words don’t mean what they mean is a multiple hundred page long terms of services full of legal jargon that most people can’t understand but that legally protect the corporation.
As Marc-Uwe Kling said: “Die Welt ist voll von Arschlöchern. Rechtlich abgesicherten Arschlöchern.”
“The world is full of assholes. Legally protected assholes.”
Plausible deniability? Nobody will be able to prove any video of you is real.
“I’ve allowed anyone to make “cameos” using my face. And they went and did it! Can you believe this?!”
By default, it doesn’t let anyone but you use it. They had to go and click the box that allows everyone else to.
Hard to pretend they weren’t expecting it.
A pervert problem, or a pervert opportunity?
Found Sam Altman’s Lemmy account
Both, tbh
This isn’t a woman complaining about people getting creative with her face, it’s a report on her experience with Sora.
One of the key points stated at the beginning was:
Although nudity or sexual content is banned, I discovered people making fetish content with my face.
Which opens the question about what, exactly, someone is consenting to when they allow other people to use their face, and what’s considered pornographic.
She went on to say users were making underage fetish content and potentially pornographic material anyway. This is a problem with any AI generated content and why so many stable diffusion platforms have banned words and groups of terms, if they don’t flat out ban all sexual terms. But, since the apps use real language, it’s impossible to think of every possible route to an end. The terms of service and moderation try to plug the holes, but they can’t be 100% effective.
There’s an ancient rule along the lines of “If a new invention can be used for sexual purposes, then it will be used for sexual purposes.”
Internet Rules 34 and 35 are descendents of this rule.
People who don’t know are due a rude awakening.
Did you hear about the president’s 34 felony convictions? Google “Trump Rule 34”
It seems people keep forgetting what the internet is for
Also this fun old video.
Who could have seen this coming?
but I figured, why not? And left my likeness open to everyone, just like Sam Altman.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Honestly about as bright as posting your credit card details on social media.
Privacy is something you can’t really get back once you give it away. Your likeness is just another part of that
She’s a journalist and her photos are already out there.
All she’s doing is driving follower inflation with her op-ed posted on business insider. Seems like a perfect choice given those circumstances.
People don’t understand what free use means. Free use means any use, even for the stuff you might not approve of. This relates to the true spirit of FOSS: it’s free, for anyone, for any use.
I thought that was the new target demography they were going for?
As a journalist who has covered internet culture for a long time, I’ve seen enough hand-drawn images of Sonic the Hedgehog showing feet and pregnant Barack Obama
Either you’re the wrong person for the job, or please say what you really saw.
