ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

Skip to main content

Child abuse images removed from AI image-generator training source, researchers say

Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File) Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)
Share

Artificial intelligence researchers said Friday they have deleted more than 2,000 web links to suspected child sexual abuse imagery from a database used to train popular AI image-generator tools.

The LAION research database 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 that it worked with the Stanford University watchdog group and anti-abuse organizations in Canada and the United Kingdom to fix the problem and release a cleaned-up database 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.â€

The cleaned-up version of the LAION database 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.

CTVNews.ca ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

Weeneebayko Area Health Authority and the Government of Ontario have awarded a $1.8 billion fixed-price contract to design, build and finance a new Far North hospital.

A gargantuan gourd – affectionately named ‘Orangina’ by the urban gardeners who grew it in the front yard of their Vancouver home – earned the massive honour of being named B.C.’s heaviest giant pumpkin Saturday.

The eight sons of Richard and Sarah Harvie from Gormanville, N.S., are believed to be the most siblings from one family, from either North America or the British Commonwealth, to serve in World War II.

Ontario Provincial Police say a man has died after striking obstacles on the St. Lawrence River while driving a personal watercraft.

Some Manitobans are cleaning up Sunday morning, after intense winds barreled through southern parts of the province Saturday.

Local Spotlight

Weeneebayko Area Health Authority and the Government of Ontario have awarded a $1.8 billion fixed-price contract to design, build and finance a new Far North hospital.

Bubi’s Awesome Eats, located on University Ave West took to social media to announce the closure on Friday.

Some Manitobans are cleaning up Sunday morning, after intense winds barreled through southern parts of the province Saturday.

Avry Wortman, 13, scored two touchdowns on Sunday during her team's win in the under 14 Greater Moncton Football Association.

A gargantuan gourd – affectionately named ‘Orangina’ by the urban gardeners who grew it in the front yard of their Vancouver home – earned the massive honour of being named B.C.’s heaviest giant pumpkin Saturday.

Chantal Kreviazuk is set to return to Winnipeg to mark a major milestone in her illustrious musical career.

From the beaches of Cannes to the bustling streets of New York City, a new film by a trio of Manitoba directors has toured the international film festival circuit to much pomp and circumstance.

A husband and wife have been on the road trip of a lifetime and have decided to stop in Saskatchewan for the winter.

The grave of a previously unknown Canadian soldier has been identified as a man from Hayfield, Man. who fought in the First World War.