[cultofmetatron]

I think the ethics here get complicated. for me the line would be if the AI itself was trained on actual CSAM. as long as no one was sexually violated in the course of creating the final image, I see no problem with it from an ethical perspective; all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children. Wether it does or not is a complex topic that I won't claim to have any kind of qualifications to address.

[croes]

> all the better if it keeps potential predators from acting on real children.

The big question is if, those pictures could have the opposite effect.

[mrighele]

If there is no proof there should be no ban. What if parent is right (more widespread porn caused people to have less sex after all) ?

This means that a ban caused more harm on real children.

[delecti]

That's a valid and interesting question to ask and study, but I don't think it's relevant to the decision of whether it should be illegal.

[pdpi]

And the followup big question is — how do you measure which effect, if any, occurs in practice?

[chii]

So do you believe violent video games induce more violent crimes then?

[hansvm]

IIRC, violent crime is increased in people pre-disposed to it when they use outlets and substitutes (consuming violent media, etc). That might not translate to pedophilia, but my prior would be that such content existing does cause more CSA to happen.

[alexgieg]

That's incorrect. There have been studies on this. In a few cases seeing depictions of violence causes an urge to act violently, but in the majority of people predisposed to violence it causes a reduction in that impulse, so on average there's a reduction.

The same has been shown to be the case with depictions of sexual abuse. For some it leads the person to go out and do it. For the majority of those predisposed to be sexual predators it "satisfies" them, and they end up causing less harm.

Presumably the same applies to pedophiles. I remember reading a study on this that suggested this to be the case, but the sample size was small so the statistical significance was weak.