Artificial intelligence innovations already aim to replace real, good human relationships — but what about bad ones?
Without a doubt, the most pernicious of these “bad” relationships are pedophilic in nature. Child abuse, whether pursued physically or digitally, is nothing new to the human experience. And now, AI-generated images and videos open up a world of access to the production of pornographic material.
The Take It Down Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law a little over a week ago, targets the broad trend of “deepfakes” by requiring that social media companies remove artificial sexual content, of any person and any age, within 48 hours of a filed complaint. These have to do with real people used in fictional scenarios, while a growing threat involves fake, AI-generated people placed into the same sort of pornographic contexts.
Despite such products being the logical outcomes of advanced AI, the recognition that made-up children are developed for the purpose of pornography is shocking enough to warrant precautionary legal action.
The opposite seems to be the concern of the United Nations. Details of a new treaty, adopted in December 2024 and up for a round of ratifications in July, leave room for countries to decriminalize child pornography that does not involve a real child.
The actual print of the treaty permits states to define “child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation material” as something that either “depicts, describes or represents a real child” or “visually depicts child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation.” A scenario involving a fictional child (or children) in various sexual situations may have no conflict with the law. And indeed, more liberal countries will likely follow that path under the banner of “harm reduction.”
As seen in American states’ approaches to drug use, harm reduction is a well-tested concept that is rarely successful. While the idea operates around “safe” access to commonly harmful activities, it only results in people more hopelessly chained to their addictions and less certain of their moral content. Such is the case with the notion that virtual child pornography will ease pedophiles off of real child abuse. Any form of pornography will sustain the dysfunction, and whether by pressure or by comfort, will bring the offender to the point of seeking a real outlet in the real world.
So, not only is the idea positive content for pedophilia, but it is also fodder for the condition. Beyond its vulgarity in this context, “harm reduction” is precisely the sort of enduring concept that helps a globalist vision limp along: Anyone can see that it is another form of escapism. By virtue of our current administration, the U.S. itself is unlikely to adopt such a stance on these various distinctions within child pornography. But as with everything else we have come to adopt, it is only a matter of time.