Child abuse images removed from AI image-generator training source, researchers say
Washington (AP): Artificial intelligence researchers have said they deleted more than 2,000 web links to suspected child sexual abuse imagery from a dataset used to train popular AI image-generator tools.
The LAION research dataset is a huge index of online images and captions that's been a source for leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.
But a report last year by the Stanford Internet Observatory found it contained links to sexually explicit images of children, contributing to the ease with which some AI tools have been able to produce photorealistic deepfakes that depict children.
That December report led LAION, which stands for the nonprofit Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, to immediately remove its dataset. Eight months later, LAION said in a blog post on Friday that it worked with the Stanford University watchdog group and anti-abuse organisations in Canada and the United Kingdom to fix the problem and release a cleaned-up dataset for future AI research.
Stanford researcher David Thiel, author of the December report, commended LAION for significant improvements but said the next step is to withdraw from distribution the “tainted models” that are still able to produce child abuse imagery.
One of the LAION-based tools that Stanford identified as the “most popular model for generating explicit imagery” - an older and lightly filtered version of Stable Diffusion - remained easily accessible until Thursday, when the New York-based company Runway ML removed it from the AI model repository Hugging Face. Runway said in a statement Friday it was a “planned deprecation of research models and code that have not been actively maintained”.
The cleaned-up version of the LAION dataset comes as governments around the world are taking a closer look at how some tech tools are being used to make or distribute illegal images of children.
San Francisco's city attorney earlier this month filed a lawsuit seeking to shut down a group of websites that enable the creation of AI-generated nudes of women and girls. The alleged distribution of child sexual abuse images on the messaging app Telegram is part of what led French authorities to bring charges on Wednesday against the platform's founder and CEO, Pavel Durov.
Durov's arrest “signals a really big change in the whole tech industry that the founders of these platforms can be held personally responsible,” said David Evan Harris, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley who recently reached out to Runway asking about why the problematic AI image-generator was still publicly accessible. It was taken down days later.
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Rocket from Yemen strikes Tel Aviv, injuring 16, as Palestinians mourn 19 dead in Gaza
Tel Aviv, Dec 21: A rocket fired from Yemen hit an area of Tel Aviv overnight, leaving 16 people slightly injured by shattered glass, the Israeli military said Saturday, days after Israeli airstrikes hit Houthi rebels who have been launching missiles in solidarity with Palestinians.
A further 14 people sustained minor injuries as they rushed to shelters when air raid sirens sounded before the projectile hit just before 4 am Saturday, the military said.
The Houthi rebels issued a statement on the Telegram messaging app saying they had aimed a hypersonic ballistic missile at a military target, which they did not identify.
The attack comes less than two days after a series of Israeli airstrikes on Yemen's Houthi rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and port city of Hodeida killed at least nine people. The Israeli strikes were in response to a Houthi attack in which a long-range missile hit an Israeli school building. The Houthis also claimed a drone strike targeting an unspecified military target in central Israel on Thursday.
The Israeli military says the Iran-backed Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and drones during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The Houthis have also been attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and say they won't stop until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli strikes Thursday caused “considerable damage” to the Houthi-controlled Red Sea ports “that will lead to the immediate and significant reduction in port capacity,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The port at Hodeida has been key for food shipments into Yemen in its decade-long civil war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said both sides' attacks risk further escalation in the region and undermine UN mediation efforts.
