So there I was just scrolling by, trying to catch an interesting topic or announcement that might influence our world or my crypto bags, and suddenly this headline about people spending thousands of Euros and making holiday plans to visit a non-existent tourist spot caught my attention:

"A Malaysian couple traveled for three hours from Kuala Lumpur to the country’s state of Perak to visit a tourist spot that exists only in an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video....staff member said she thought they were joking and told them the cable car attraction did not exist. She told them there was nothing to see in the quiet town...explained that what they saw was an AI-generated video...The hotel staff said the elderly woman was angry after learning the truth and vowed to sue the journalist in the video. The member of staff said she had to insist to the woman that none of the people in the video were real."

Imagine if the staff member didn't explain this, then they would spend thousands on lawyer fees trying to sue a non-existent person from a non-existent news channel.🙃

As you could imagine they weren't the only ones who showed up looking for the non-existent cable car. But right after this article, I saw this one which was published today as well and was even weirder: University of Hong Kong warns student over AI-generated porn pics of classmates

Seriously, the online world is changing rapidly right in front of our own eyes. The internet and technology right now are like that Lenin saying that "there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen."

Whether it's blockchain, AI, AI 'human' chats, UAV tech, computing, 3D printing, there has been so much development in the past decade it's unreal and as you can read from the above examples, not all of it has been for the better. Laws have to be amended to be able to deal with these things, but as always with most countries, they will try to use it to further restrict people ad their freedoms in other fields as well.

I mean, I'm still trying to make up my mind about this part of the last article on how the person who made the videos (referred to as 'x' in the article) was unable to be held accountable by the victims because "a university staff member cited legal advice suggesting X’s actions were not likely to have constituted an offense, including “ragging”, which the disciplinary committee could address, making it difficult to refer the case to the relevant department....They added that current legislation only regulated the non-consensual distribution of AI-generated intimate images, while the act of generating such images itself was not criminalized...As a result, victims are unable to seek punishment for X through Hong Kong’s criminal justice system.”

And who will the first person try to hold accountable now? Youtube or whichever place she saw that AI video published? Also, did the other students even see the videos x made? He didn't really publish it right? Did he keep it on the laptop long enough for the university to somehow see it as well? Or is all this happening because they "heard" it from x's friend, and then got the confirmation from x himself? Just...weird yes, but punishable? No.

Do we want that to be punishable? Well, sort of yeah, but again, be careful what you wish for because this my friend has the potential to open up a can of legal consequences even AI could not imagine. The students posted their own pictures online right? There is no crime in saving images from the internet. The AI tool he used is legal right? I take it those adult scenes he created as well and no one was underage. And yet still, something feels off here.🤔