The ACLU Fights for Your Constitutional Right to Make Deepfakes
The ACLU Fights for Your Constitutional Right to Make Deepfakes
States across the US are seeking to criminalize certain uses of AI-generated content. Civil rights groups are pushing back, arguing that some of these new laws conflict with the First Amendment.
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Sigh, ACLU, is this really that high a priority in the list of rights we need to fight for right now? Really?
Also, am I missing something, or wouldn't these arguments fall apart under the lens of slander? If you make a sufficiently convincing AI replica that is indistinguishable from reality of someone's face and/or voice, and use it to say untrue things about them, how is that speech materially different from directly saying "So-and-so said x" when they didn't? Or worse, making videos of them doing something terrible, or out of character, or even mundane? If that is speech sufficient to be potentially covered by the first amendment, it is slander imo. Even parody has to be somewhat distinct from reality to not be slander/libel, why would this be different?
ACLU, is this really that high a priority in the list of rights we need to fight for right now?
You say this like the ACLU isn’t doing a ton of other things at the same time. Here are their 2024 plans, for example. See also https://www.aclu.org/news
Besides that, these laws are being passed now, and they’re being passed by people who have no clue what they’re talking about. It wouldn’t make sense for them to wait until the laws are passed to challenge them rather than lobbying to prevent them from being passed in the first place.
wouldn't these arguments fall apart under the lens of slander?
If you disseminate a deepfake with slanderous intent then your actions are likely already illegal under existing laws, yes, and that’s exactly the point. The ACLU is opposing new laws that are over-broad. There are gaps in the laws, and we should fill those gaps, but not at the expense of infringing upon free speech.
Oh, I completely understand you're correct here, I'm just, so, so tired of fighting to keep all the sociopolitical gains of the past 10-50 years, y'know? I know they have a lot going on, it just feels shitty considering the rest of the political climate.
They want you to be tired. They will never stop bringing the fight, because to them our freedom is an existential threat to their existence.
Keep up the fight for personal liberty. And make no mistake—it is a fight.
It's important we don't let people of influence insulate themselves from criticism using this as a scapegoat.
For me its more the risk that making real and fake speech indistinguishable renders any speech meaningless.
I stopped supporting the ACLU when they wrote an op-ed supporting Citizens United.
They have their heads firmly up their asses on a handful of fairly crucial issues.
Precisely. I stopped supporting them when I found those articles.
There’s a flaw in the core premise of their argument, and it goes to the intent of equality that should (and I consider to) be an intrinsic intent of the Bill of Rights and its amendments:
- Speech is not subject to the law of scarcity, thus it is free (as in beer); any person with a steady supply of air, food, and water can speak indefinitely if they so wish. Thus, any citizen can engage in speech indefinitely, in theory.
- Money-as-speech is subject to the law of scarcity, and thus normal citizens can run out of it. Only the ultra wealthy can truly just spend money without real concern for how much they have left. Thus, the wealthy have a disproportionately larger (by several orders of magnitude) amount of money-as-speech available to them, by simple virtue of the fact that they’re crazy rich. Rich people can “speak” in this context essentially indefinitely, while normal people cannot; this is obvious, fundamental, and definitely not equal or egalitarian.
The fact that the ACLU straight up refuses to acknowledge any of this is absolutely asinine, in my opinion. CU is the foundation of a LOT of issues in our modern politics. It basically made it legal to buy elections.