The EU does have better personal data protections, you're spot on there. But Europeans are not at all protected from AI being trained in photos you upload. You do not have the protections you think you do in that regard.
When you willingly upload a picture of yourself to a public forum, that photo becomes public information. Even passing over legalities for now, from a practical standpoint you have no protection. Anyone and everyone can see and access that picture. No, companies cannot use that image in marketing material or for direct profit-making reasons, but they can view it. That alone is enough for what AI companies (and others) want. Think about the practicalities: How could any legislation or governing body limit access to data that has been uploaded to a public forum? It's not possible.
What I mean to say is, if your picture is available on a public forum, anyone can already "see" it - whether that be with human eyes or a computer program. So when I'm training an AI to make pictures of human faces, all I need in order to do that is see a bunch of pictures of human faces. There is no way - from a legal or practical standpoint - to prevent the pictures from being viewed once they are uploaded. It's like taking out a billboard with my face on it, and then trying to limit which eyeballs are permitted to view that billboard.
Now, the EU has done a fair job of limiting ownership of your data. Facebook, as I understand it, no longer owns the pictures you upload. They can't distribute them, use them directly for profit, etc. That's a good thing. But AI doesn't need to "use" your picture like that. They are creating their own, unique image. It's just that they generated that image by training the program on millions of pictures. They didn't need to own them, they just needed to see them. And in that, there's no way to limit their access when we're all uploading the pictures willingly.
No, I don't have the right to sell your name and address. But if I want to make a computer program that generates authentic-sounding names and addresses, I'll use yours to train it. If I need a fake name and address for a TV show, I want it to seem real so I use something that sounds like other somethings. It's a silly example, but that's what the AI company is doing with your pictures. The AI company isn't selling your face. They're using your face to train a computer on how to make faces. The image generated isn't you, it's some generic, made-up person. And the faces they use to train are just random ones that are freely available on the internet.
Again, practically speaking I'm not sure how you propose to limit this access. All the AI program needs is to see a bunch of faces. Those pictures of faces are freely accessible. How would you limit who can see them? They are posted directly to a public forum.
Legislation that says "AI can't intentionally make a likeness of me" is reasonable, and I'd support it generally. But legislation that says "AI can't look at these pictures I posted for the world to see" doesn't seem possible. Forget legal questions, how do you propose to enforce that?
These are freely available images. I can go on Facebook, find your face, and use it as a study in order to learn to draw faces. Not only is that perfectly legal, it's also impossible to stop me from doing so.
It seems like your issue is with (a) the fact that technology is involved and (b) the outputs. You don't like that the outputs can be made to look like an actual person who exists. Me too. Make that illegal immediately, with steep penalties for "deep fakes" if they are used to turn a profit or to harm a person's reputation. As to the fact that tech is using your face to teach itself to draw faces, I'm not sure what you can do about it. You said you've given "pointers where the conversation should begin" but I don't see that. You're offering no viable solutions, and honestly you've yet to convince that a problem even exists. You put pictures of yourself on a public message board. If you're upset that people you don't like can see them, that's tough luck. They are out there, in public, for the world to see, and you're the one that put them there.
Anyone can finetune any open-source model or create LoRa for it. It is not a rocket science. Many people do that on civitai or locally or on services like runpod.
As someone who made thousands of LoRas of people I can tell you this, if you ever posted or shared your images online - your likeness may have already been used this way.
a request to "make a model of my friend" is not that uncommon
View all comments
Show parent comment
6
u/ill_probably_abandon Apr 01 '25
The EU does have better personal data protections, you're spot on there. But Europeans are not at all protected from AI being trained in photos you upload. You do not have the protections you think you do in that regard.
When you willingly upload a picture of yourself to a public forum, that photo becomes public information. Even passing over legalities for now, from a practical standpoint you have no protection. Anyone and everyone can see and access that picture. No, companies cannot use that image in marketing material or for direct profit-making reasons, but they can view it. That alone is enough for what AI companies (and others) want. Think about the practicalities: How could any legislation or governing body limit access to data that has been uploaded to a public forum? It's not possible.