OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pushing to release an “adult version” of ChatGPT, while Elon Musk has advocated allowing Grok to generate R-rated content. If you’re not already concerned that allowing AI to create adult content is a bad idea, perhaps this new survey will change your mind.
More than half of American teenagers have used AI tools to generate nude images of themselves or others, according to a new study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chad Steel of George Mason University.
The survey collected responses from 557 English-speaking US residents between the ages of 13 and 17. The survey was anonymous and conducted with parental consent.
What did the study find?
The results are hard to sit with. 55.3% of teens surveyed reported using nudification tools to create at least one image of themselves or others. 54.4% said they had received AI-generated nude images.
Even more concerning, 36.3% reported that a sexualized AI image of themselves had been created by someone else without their consent, and 33.2% said those images were shared without their permission.
The results were largely consistent across different demographics. However, male participants reported higher rates of creating and distributing these images, both consensually and non-consensually.
Why is this a big concern?
People have been sending nudes to each other since the dawn of smartphones. However, doing that requires a willing participant. AI nudification tools don’t. Anyone with a photo of you and access to one of these apps can create a fake nude image without your knowledge or consent.
Victims of this kind of abuse experience consequences similar to those of other forms of child sexual exploitation material, including a sense of dehumanization and lasting disruption to their lives.
Steel sums it up well: “Teens are no longer just digital natives but AI-natives. ‘Nudification’ and GenAI apps are their new ‘sexting,’ only with more challenging issues surrounding consent.”
The hope is that findings like these will prompt lawmakers and educators to act before the problem becomes even more difficult to address.