Hugging Face Is Hosting 5,000 Nonconsensual AI Models of Real People (404media.co) 30
An anonymous reader shares a report: Hugging Face, a company with a multi-billion dollar valuation and one of the most commonly used platforms for sharing AI tools and resources, is hosting over 5,000 AI image generation models that are designed to recreate the likeness of real people. These models were all previously hosted on Civitai, an AI model sharing platform 404 Media reporting has shown was used for creating nonconsensual pornography, until Civitai banned them due to pressure from payment processors.
Users downloaded the models from Civitai and reuploaded them to Hugging Face as part of a concerted community effort to archive the models after Civitai announced in May it will ban them. In that announcement, Civitai said it will give the people who originally uploaded them "a short period of time" before they were removed. Civitai users began organizing an archiving effort on Discord earlier in May after Civitai indicated it had to make content policy changes due to pressure from payment processors, and the effort kicked into high gear when Civitai announced the new "real people" model policy.
Users downloaded the models from Civitai and reuploaded them to Hugging Face as part of a concerted community effort to archive the models after Civitai announced in May it will ban them. In that announcement, Civitai said it will give the people who originally uploaded them "a short period of time" before they were removed. Civitai users began organizing an archiving effort on Discord earlier in May after Civitai indicated it had to make content policy changes due to pressure from payment processors, and the effort kicked into high gear when Civitai announced the new "real people" model policy.
Is anyone surprised... (Score:5, Informative)
...that a business whose name evokes a movie scene where a hostile alien entity forcibly envelops and implants its offspring into an unsuspecting space merchant-marine doctor would host nonconsensual sexual content?
Re: (Score:2)
Just wait until it is revealed how many models of real people are held in the database of the TSA!
Re: Is anyone surprised... (Score:3)
Nah, TSA wouldn't do that... According to them they don't even confiscate things from people, they helpfully dispose of things that were "willingly abandoned" under duress.
Re: (Score:3)
Have a look at their logo and then ask yourself if it is based on an alien or maybe on the emoji with the same name as the site.
The GAIvatar problem again? (Score:2)
Your Subject made me think you were going for funny, but I'm not getting the joke. However you are also referencing a movie I don't recognize, so maybe it's no joke, but just my ignorance showing again. So can I ask you to clarify your intention? (And of course it's always possible the real meaning was just "I'm in a hurry to claim FP" with little underneath.)
My Subject is from another website where the discussion topic was AI-related problems and the best labels for various important terms. For example, AG
Re: (Score:1)
He's making an obvious reference to the hit Sci-fi/Horror film " Alien [wikipedia.org]," in which the monsters' larval forms have come to be colloquially called "face huggers" in pop culture, though I'm not sure that term was ever actually used in the movie. If you watch relevant clips from the movie, or indeed any of its sequels, I'm sure the reference will become obvious. It's an astute observation, and bears serious consideration as plausible, however I'm fairly sure the actual origin of this company name comes from auto
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't nonconsensual sexual content. What are you supposed to do about the people who just actually look and sound like you? Are they supposed to be denied use of your 'likeness' as well. That term is misleading, it only extends to actual images of you not cartoons that look and sound similar to you and that's what "AI" is producing.
The real criminals are the payment processors. They are defrauding their shareholders by pushing perfectly legitimate and paying clients off their platforms by trying to regul
God save the (Score:2)
God save the PORN.
AI can use copyright materials and so what is there to stop them from anything else?
Our society doesn't respect individuals (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no right to individual identity, even though there ought to be. We don't really recognize that people are unique and that their uniqueness has intrinsic value that belongs to the individual. We live in a world where nearly anything is copied and sold, and we have to wait around for a legal framework to protect ownership. Unfortunately the people writing the laws are the people doing the stealing.
And frankly, our culture is too immature and wholly unprepared for much of the technology that has arrived this millennium. There are numerous problems that technology has caused society that we still haven't handled adequately. We either need to step up our game, or pump the brakes. Burying our head in the sand isn't an option. (how many clichéd metaphors can I mix?)
Re:Our society doesn't respect individuals (Score:4, Insightful)
here's no right to individual identity, even though there ought to be.
One question I would have here, with voices, is how do you go about gaining that without taking away rights from others - for example someone who may coincidentally have a similar voice to make a model of their own voice, etc?
Sounds silly, I know, but I am speaking from the perspective of someone who has a huge biological family (learned about it 12 years ago in fact), who despite not growing up together have a metric fuckton of similarities in habit, behavior, voice, and appearance too.
People are not snowflakes - in that we are not so unique that features found in one person aren't unable to be present in another. If we don't go about dealing with the AI issues carefully, we could end up making IP laws and the like even more fucked up than they really are - and in a way that benefits the corporations that people are afraid of/trying to wrangle in the first place.
Re:Our society doesn't respect individuals (Score:4, Interesting)
One question I would have here, with voices, is how do you go about gaining that without taking away rights from others - for example someone who may coincidentally have a similar voice to make a model of their own voice, etc?
The responsibility to demonstrate providence should fall on the one making the model. And be independently confirmed. Transparency is the key to making most things fair, but businesses really hate exposing how they operate.
Re: (Score:2)
"The responsibility to demonstrate providence"
So you run with the guilty until proven innocent? I think not. Voices and 'likeness' aren't unique and therefore you only own ACTUAL recordings of your image/voice and not impressions such as AI models produce.
Re: (Score:2)
"People are not snowflakes - in that we are not so unique that features found in one person aren't unable to be present in another."
Especially to the degree they are successfully copied by these models. The voices or generated content might 'pass' but they aren't actually perfect or accurate.
Re: Our society doesn't respect individuals (Score:2)
I know what you mean, but would apply a correction: you live in a country where that is the case, not a world. Here in Denmark, we are about to pass a law giving individuals copyright over their digital identity.
https://medium.com/@sorabg/fac... [medium.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Waiting for a wave of Sonny Chiba face makeovers.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure if someone takes a picture and makes it public, they are responsible for that action - but selfies and social media posts by the individual are by definition going public.
It's like the music industry putting music all over the place and then is shocked people don't feel compelled to pay them for it every time that music hits an ear.
We do need to rethi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"We don't really recognize that people are unique and that their uniqueness has intrinsic value that belongs to the individual."
That's because an individuals likeness and the sound of their voice AREN'T unique. Even discounting identical twins everyone has not one but many doppelgangers walking around without anyone trying and celebrities have hundreds because people are trying.
Nobody should have a right to control fantasies, not even the subjects of those fantasies and AI generated virtual sex with someone
Stop quoting 404media (Score:4, Insightful)
Just browse 404media a bit and you'll see that they do nothing but post clickbait about how AI is going to end humanity. Don't give them the attention they are seeking.
Re: (Score:2)
404media does some cool stuff from time to time, but most of their stuff is crap. Like this article here...
wow (Score:1)
Just wait until they figure out what I imagine in my head!
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, and there is little difference between AI generated cartoons and what you imagine in your head, neither are real and neither have the slightest impact on subjects of your imaginings. In fact, I'd go further and say that not only do people not have a right to deny others fantasies but that people have a right to their fantasies.
Ideally anyone would be able to snap a pic of their crush and enjoy all the AI generated VR porn they please.
Proving once again that fraud is primary use of AI (Score:2)
We don't approve of fraud, but we have the best tools to do fraud. We're hoping people won't do fraud but we're still working on coming up with a second valid use case.
Re: (Score:2)
Have a look at Hugging Face. They are for most people just a storage provider (and to a limited amount a VM hoster). Their interface already looks like git and indeed the easiest way to download a model is to just clone the model page using git. The VMs are called spaces, in which you can showcase if you created something cool. Nothing of that is officially moderated by Hugging Face and if you see abuse you need to report abuse, just like you do if you see a GitHub repo that is against their content policy.
Highly illegal (Score:2)
At least for anybody that resides in the EU or is an EU citizen.