By Jamie Penquite-Green, Penrith and the Borders CLP member
Deepfake pornography is becoming an increasing threat to women and girls and the labour movement must take it up as an important issue. A recent study from a disinformation and policy think tank, American Sunlight Project (ASP), detailed findings about the alarming rise women politicians in the US being targeted by AI-generated “Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery” (NCII), also known as deepfake pornography.
The study revealed an astonishingly high number of instances – over 35,500 – where 26 members of US Congress – 25 women and one man – were targeted. Women members, the report noted, were “70 times more likely to be depicted”. Collating data through a custom search engine, researchers found “tens of thousands of hits” on well-known deepfake websites and the 26 members of Congress and Senators were found on these websites.
Despite almost all US states having laws against “revenge porn”, that is the circulation of explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent (as of June 2024), states do not have legislation in place directly addressing these non-consensual forms of pornography.
Both revenge porn and deepfake pornography can and does have impact: they have devastated the lives and identity of thousands of women. Earlier this month, the US Senate passed the Salazar’s Bill, named after Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar (Florida), a companion to the House of Representatives Take It Down Act, both aiming to protects victims of real and deepfake pornography.
Victims can only sue individuals
But until legislation comes into law and becomes effective, victims can only sue individuals in civil court which, as the ASP point out, can be “incredibly impractical, time consuming and expensive”. Not only that, but putting the onus for redress on the victims forces them to relive the trauma, when justice is not certain and any returns are minimal.
Members of Congress are quickly notified by the ASP research team, and within 48 hours, images of fourteen Congress members had been removed. But as ASP reported, “this highlights a large disparity of privilege”, in that it shows that wealthy and influential victims can get redress.
In other words, it is a question of class: not all victims – in fact only a tiny minority – have access to the same legal resources as politicians and certainly do not have a high enough public profile to be able to have content removed from social media as quickly as members of Congress or other celebrities.
Using AI-generated deepfake pornography is an act of violence perpetrated against its victims and it can be every bit as damaging, or more damaging than physical violence against the person. But this type of violence does not happen in a vacuum: it demonstrates and is a result of a wider problem of gender-based violence, through disinformation and harassment, and it affects many women at work week-in and week-out.
Capitalism relies ultimately on violence as a tool to subordinate, exploit and oppress workers in general, but women in particular. Misogyny and violence against women and girls, particularly those with public-facing jobs and identities, are an inextricable part of the culture and ethos of capitalism.
At a time when AI is becoming more widespread and readily accessible to anyone with internet access, and alongside the hero-worship of misogynistic figures like Andrew Tate, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, it is no wonder that deepfake pornography is growing.
Who controls social media and AI, and for what purpose?
The ASP report urged elected officials in the US to pass the above bills before the closure of the 118th Congress on January 3. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has also identified a significant rise in the production of AI-generated child abuse imagery. First reported back in 2023, IWF found over 20,000 AI-generated images on a dark web forum in a matter of one month, where more than “3,000 depicted criminal child sexual abuse activities”. Since then, IWF has reported an increase in more severe images, and the generation and circulation of AI-generated child sexual abuse videos as well. Victims include known and famous children.
The question the management and control of social media and the regulation of AI are not ‘neutral’ social questions. It is not an issue of technology or science. These are political and class issues and they revolve around who is in control of social media and AI and for what purpose do they use them.
The fact is that social media and AI are both controlled by a handful of super-rich billionaires whose prime motivation is profit, greed and personal enrichment and most clearly in the case of Elon Musk, political influence to match the economic influence.
If there were advances in artificial intelligence in a socialist society, they would, like any technological or scientific progress, be used to radically and positively transform the quality of peoples’ lives and workspaces. There can be no doubt that on the basis of the planet’s resources and the potentialities within today’s technology that humanity ought to be able to feed, clothe, house, educate and care for the entire global population.
Misuse of social media and AI
It is capitalism – greed, private ownership and separate nation states whose ruling elites foster rivalries and wars – that prevents this from happening, and holds back humanity. The misuse of social media and AI – which are both intrinsically capable of having positive uses – are creating despicable and poisonous caricatures of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’.
In a system of almost perpetual crisis, capitalism, social media and AI are the playthings of billionaires and lawless cowboy operators. It is not a simple problem that will be easily or simply legislated away, by Congress.
Workers are forced to deal with all different aspects of insecurity and precariousness in their daily lives. Jobs are replaced and or made obsolete through big corporations using AI. There is no redress and workers are just dumped on the scrapheap.
AI development remains in the hands of big private billionaire-owned corporations, like Microsoft, Google or Amazon, motivated solely by profit and competitive advantage. Or it is developed in states like China, for the sole benefit of a different but similarly motivated tiny clique. None of these ‘owners’ of AI or promoters of its development are interested in the general welfare of the population of the planet.
Socialists would support any efforts to criminalise the production of AI-generated deepfake pornography and for the creators to face justice. But the real answer does not lie in legislation and the courts, which have not in the past represented the interests of working class people.
The answer must be based on the public ownership and democratic control of information and computer technology in the context of a planned, publicly owned economy. AI and social media must be subject to proper regulation, but that must be through transparent, democratic control by representatives of the state, trade unions and specialists in the industry and users.
Without being hindered by the incentives of greed and profit, proper regulation and democratic management of such platforms would really mean something. It is only in these conditions that technology can be redirected, repurposed and utilised for the benefit of all.
[Top picture: Girl with a Pearl Earring (Compare Ai with Iranian intelligence and art) 2. From Wikimedia Commons, here]
