For a new kind of crime, the hammer comes down starting December 1on a new kind of criminal.
Signed into law by governor Kathy Hochul, legislation created by state senator Michelle Hinchey will make it illegal to disseminate or circulate sexually explicit images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) using someone else’s likeness without their consent, a practice known as “Deepfake Porn,” Those who do so will go to jail for up to a year and pay a fine of up to $1000.
The same consequences also apply to anyone who circulates the deepfaked media.
“My bill sends a strong message that New York won’t tolerate this form of abuse,” said Hinchey, “and victims will rightfully get their day in court.”
Victims of this sort of misrepresentation will gain the right to pursue further legal action against the perpetrators.
“Exploiting AI tools to generate fake intimate images of people they don’t even know,” said Hinchey, “… is an entirely new realm of digital violation that demands vigilant attention and new legislative protections,” said Hinchey. “My bill sends a strong message that New York won’t tolerate this form of abuse, and victims will rightfully get their day in court.”
Hinchey’s bill, carried in the Assembly by Westchester legislator Amy Paulin, is the first in the state to advance these specific protections.
Proliferating exponentially
The dissemination of deepfakes has been increasing at an exponential rate. It’s been a disconcerting feature of this strange new technological ecosystem humanity finds itself inhabiting.
The company Sensity AI began tracking deepfake videos online in 2018. Over the next two years, the firm said the number of harmful deepfake videos doubled every six months. By 2020, Sensity AI had estimated that there were more than 85,000 harmful deepfakes detected on the web.
Featuring real people portrayed in fake situations by perpetrators unknown, 90 percent of these non-consensual videos depict pornography involving women.
As digitization technology advances, the deepfakes appear more realistic. It becomes almost impossible to discern which is a real image and which is doctored. As the bill notes, the weaponization of deepfakes against young women is extremely concerning.
The New York State law comes on the heels of another signed in 2019 which made “revenge porn” illegal. Revenge porn describes the practice of posting explicit content to the Internet without the consent of the person captured on still shots or video. Most often posted by ex-partners, with men responsible for most of the posting, the intention of posting intimate and vulnerable moments is to embarrass, humiliate and thus gain a kind of revenge against former lovers or out-of-reach crushes.
As with the dissemination of deepfakes, jail time likewise awaits those who would seek to exploit the possession of such material. Again, up to a year with up to a $1000 fine.
Posting or circulating revenge porn has been made illegal in 42 states so far.
Eternal return
While these laws and punishments constitute a belated recognition of a new class of crime, the remedies prescribed have yet to grapple with the crimes’ underlying nature. Every system of law on the planet functions on the premise of causality, that there is a before, a during, and an after. Through this framework, any act can be dissected for motive, judged, and punished if it is found a victimization has occurred.
It is possible for the minds of the perpetrators to evolve to feel regret for their actions and empathy for the feelings of the victim.
Through this same framework, it also possible for the victim to discover a relief for their emotional and mental anguish, if not an acceptance, through the process of moving forward through time away from the intensity of the unhappy memory.
What makes these crimes so troubling is that like everything posted onto the Internet, the content lives there forever. Causality is broken. Regardless of any evolution in the feelings of either the perpetrator or the victim, the victim alone stands to re-victimized as the crime is perpetrated over and over again, every time as though it was the first time.
With wires, microchips and electricity, our new technology has made into flesh the philosopher Friedrich Neitzche’s conception of eternal return. The same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way over and over again for eternity.
What happens to the concept of justice if the crime — even when punished — continues to be recommitted hourly, day in and day out?
Said state senator Hinchey, “Exploiting AI tools to generate fake intimate images of people they don’t even know … is an entirely new realm of digital violation that demands vigilant attention and new legislative protections.”
For the sake of the mental and emotional health of the exponentially growing number of young female deepfake victims alone, our society, if not our justice system, must evolve.
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