In the last year and a half, generative artificial intelligence has produced more images – fake, of course – than all the photos taken by the method of shooting a camera in the first 150 years of the history of photography, which now has about 180 years, according to a study by Everyday Pixel. In total, 15 billion photographs have been created using AI platforms in just 18 months. This data is only evidence that we are facing the first wave of a tsunami for which we were not prepared.
The defenselessness of women and girls whose real faces are linked by artificial intelligence to naked bodies to create false pornographic images hits us as a society and puts us before a colossal threat for which we have no firm and forceful responses. The minors from Almendralejo that the Police have identified as the alleged authors of the false pornographic images of some of their classmates are between 12 and 14 years old. At those ages, when they cannot be judged, they have had access to everything necessary to cause harm.
The problem with generative artificial intelligence is that in many cases it had no ethical barriers when its algorithms were created. Let's imagine for a moment that those who developed the platforms from which fake pornographic photos are manufactured had been clearly aware of what could happen and had a firm will to avoid it. They would have just had to set clear boundaries so that no one could do what those kids did. On the contrary, what many of the companies – not all – that work with generative AI have done has been to develop their models and then try to contain problems as they arise. It's the difference between being proactive or reactive.
Europe and the United States also act in reaction to the problems, which have begun to rush to prepare legislation to try to contain all the misuses of technology. Along the same lines, several of the companies that are today at the forefront of generative artificial intelligence, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic, created a group called Frontier Model Forum last July to guarantee what they called “safe and responsible development.” of frontier AI models.”
This commitment comes when all of these companies already have models available to the public, although their platforms are not the ones that have been used for the false pornographic images. Technology should combat, rather than enable, violence against women. For this, a tool with the enormous power of AI should be subject to ethical principles in its very development base. It is hardly credible that they could not do it before.
