back to article US senator wants to slap prison term, $1M fine on anyone aiding Chinese AI with ... downloads?

Americans may have to think twice about downloading a Chinese AI model or investing in a company behind such a neural network in future. A law proposed last month by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), if successfully passed by Congress, would impose penalties of up to 20 years in prison or $1 million in fines for violating its …

  1. dsch

    Hawley has no policy ideas, only bandwagons-of-the-week. Sometimes it makes him look like a sane Republican senator, but that is only by coincidence.

  2. IGotOut Silver badge

    I take it the $500 million

    Stargate bullshit machine investment is just being spent on bribes and marketing.

    1. Yorick Hunt Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: I take it the $500 million

      Marketing - 'murica's #1 product for at least the past couple of centuries.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I take it the $500 million

      You missed a few 00s out. Its $500 *billion* for Stargate.

      1. Ganso
        Terminator

        Re: I take it the $500 million

        $500 BEEELLION !!? \(˚☐˚”)/

        1. collinsl Silver badge

          Re: I take it the $500 million

          Yes, with a B

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I take it the $500 million

            $500 millibon then? Shirley you mean $500 millibonbon, and associated millifroufrou!

  3. Scotech
    Big Brother

    Regards the UK...

    Are we going to ban photoshop too, since it can be used to create CSAM? And don't forget the analogue hole - best ban cameras too, just to be on the safe side. And people can draw some pretty disgusting stuff too, so we'd better ban arts and crafts supplies too, right down to crayons!

    We already have laws against the production of CSAM, real or simulated. The issue isn't that there are new tools capable of producing the stuff, it's that there is insufficient capacity to police the end results. As the article points out, these proposals are basically unenforceable anyway. Short of stationing a police officer beside every device in the country capable of running a text-to-image model to watch over the user's shoulder and cuff them the moment the model spits out anything naughty, there's no way to prevent someone from doing this in their own home. Unless they share the results, how would they ever know? And I know this is a heretical view in this age of pearl-clutching 'think of the children' arguments - but frankly, in those cases, I'd rather those resources be directed to tackling cases where actual, real-life kids are being harmed, than inconveniencing some weirdo generating completely fake images that result in no actual physical harm being done.

    Let's get our priorities straight, and not let the new shiny distract us from what actually matters here, hmm? Unless this is all just a big song and dance to make it look like something is being done about a problem, without any real intent to actually DO anything about it... I mean, perish the thought that our parliamentarians might be more interested in appearances than outcomes!

    1. Long John Silver
      Pirate

      Re: Regards the UK...

      I wholly agree with the priorities you stated.

    2. trindflo Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Regards the UK...

      Let's just ban hands. Nothing bad can happen without those.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Regards the UK...

        You say that, but I bet Google can find you images of people using their feet to fire a gun and have you ever seen kick boxing?

      2. Bebu sa Ware
        Windows

        Re: Regards the UK...

        Let's just ban hands. Nothing bad can happen without those.

        Actually the offending bit of anatomy is a normally bit lower but easily reachable as politicians frequently demonstrate.

        Reminded me of the obligatory† dis-arming of the Jackelian King before his ascending the throne in Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air

        I am sure Musk's Neurolink could implant the capability to control your naughty software to replace any lopped extremities.

        † also surgical

    3. Felonmarmer

      Re: Regards the UK...

      "And people can draw some pretty disgusting stuff too, so we'd better ban arts and crafts supplies too, right down to crayons!"

      Don't forget the sculptures! Let's face it, if you paint it in oils and stick it up in a manor house for the rich to ogle it's OK. Print it out for the top shelf for the plebs to get hold of then it's a problem. The difference between filth and erotica has always been the person consuming it.

      It does seem that the media and politicians think that AI image generation is just an advanced form of collage, in which case scissors and glue are the next target.

      1. Bebu sa Ware
        Coat

        Re: Regards the UK...

        The difference between filth and erotica has always been the person consuming it.

        I imagine it can be both hence "down and dirty." Contemporary smut's greatest offence is the total lack of imagination or originality but then I suppose just reflecting reality.

        It does seem that the media and politicians think that AI image generation is just an advanced form of collage, in which case scissors and glue are the next target.

        The juxtaposition of the words "politician" and "think" is ungrammatical in the extreme forbidden by syntax and unsupportable by any assignment of semantics. Mention "collage" you get at best "What? Oxford or Cambridge?" You're a braver man than I if you're contemplating exposing these wallies to scissors and glue.

        A simple Gedankenexperiment is to imagine an AI based application that amongst other things can synthesise legal NVE video footage.

        So far so good as this already exists in some form - I imagine the spontaneously sprouting extraneous limbs and appendages can only keep things fresh.

        The human cast being machine synthesised could be parameterized by skin, eye and hair colours, height and weight, vital statistics† ... you get the idea but wait and... age so that merely changing 18 into 17 you cross this ridiculous line.

        So much of this nonsense is perilously close to Orwellian "thoughcrime" but I suspect Blair's premonitory warnings are instead today's playbook.

        † eg ginger hair shingled bob, diamond face, green eyes, 180cm, 90-60-90cm, 68kg, 27 years etc etc or whatever melts your butter.

    4. tiggity Silver badge

      Re: Regards the UK...

      Meanwhile in the UK, people with CSAM (and often involving large amounts of images) keep avoiding jail. So would be just about typical for UK to jail someone for a general purpose piece of software whilst not jailing people with CSAM.

      1. Tilda Rice

        Re: Regards the UK...

        Yeah, Starmer needs to read this memo. He's fond of not prosecuting pedophiles, either from Rotheram or Top of the Pops.

        Certain I will get downvoted, from the same people who postcomments on every thread about Musk or Trump even when the article isn't about them :)

    5. Tubz Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: Regards the UK...

      But AI will scan every device for everything and report back to our masters for the local thought Police to invite you in for a chat, don't bother with a lawyer, we have the documents written and dated, just need your signature.

    6. -maniax-
      Windows

      Re: Regards the UK...

      > so we'd better ban arts and crafts supplies too, right down to crayons!

      Don't forget hammers and chisels!

      Have you seen some of the hard-core stuff the Ancient Greeks & Romans produced?

      It's filth I say, utter filth

      icon = all the dirty old men in their macs who go the museums to ogle stone dangly bits

  4. Long John Silver
    Pirate

    American desperation? Routine British feel-good panic?

    Penalties associated with detectable breaches of the proposed USA law are so over-the-top that if implemented, they would indicate last-ditch desperation. If this legislation enters statute, its deterrence effect will be negligible; that's because serious operators in the AI world are a great deal more canny than the Senator and his fellow legislators; some will leave the USA, and others will cover their traces. As for other people using freely downloadable technology, e.g. Johnny doing his college homework, breaches of this law would be of similar magnitude as the number of people persistently downloading the caterwauling of pop singers from YouTube. The Senator may not care whether his proposal gains traction; by merely giving him his 'fifteen minutes of fame' he will have consolidated his standing as a stout defender of security and advocate on behalf of copyright rentiers.

    The British legislation will be equally crass as that suggested for the USA, but with differing purpose and almost certain assimilation into law. A new 'British disease' arose during the dismal Blair era and thrived ever since during the nation's stewardship by non-too-bright Conservatives. The UK has fallen under the thrall of titillating 'national panics'. These have encompassed 'mad dogs' (two breeds), gun-toting school caretakers (one actually), Internet paedophilia, Satanic child abuse, an allegedly sexually predatory BBC national icon (now deceased), long-running, and continuing, investigations and prosecutions pertaining to alleged historical child molestation, 'grooming gangs', and more.

    Each of the above-mentioned occasioned considerable emoting in Parliament, and MSM passion. In some instances pressure on police and prosecution authorities appears to have led to substandard evidence being accepted. Undoubtedly, innocent people have been harassed.

    In the present context, Blair era sexual offences' legislation primarily directed to curbing child molestation aided by the Internet knocked onto panic by curators of museums and art galleries. Immense investigative resources are channelled into tracking the distribution of illegal images, but with little evidence of effect upon direct child abuse. The legislation is a dog's breakfast, to which every MP was anxious to add their pennyworth. The newly proposed legislation is again of worthy intent, but is one stage further abstracted from provable actual abuse; images can portray adults and children who never existed; the only conceivable justification in those instances for punishing people is an unproven link between that activity and 'hands on' abuse.

    Anticipate a merry legislative dance, with stern editorials in newspapers. The resulting Act will be as unhelpful in guiding investigative and judicial proceedings toward prioritising use of resources towards tangible (i.e. actual and potential victim protection) as that earlier in this century. On the plus side for Mr Starmer's government, this will act as a distraction of the public from urgent parochial and geopolitical concerns. MPs, most of whom in effect are compliant Commons voting fodder, shall be in their element because under discussion, for once, is a topic they (wrongly) believe they understand and an opportunity to parade before their constituents their moral outrage; never mind that few have uttered a word of criticism during Johnson's incompetent handling of Covid-19, the foolish, deadly for many, NATO proxy war against Russia, and barbarity in Israel.

    1. BebopWeBop

      Re: American desperation? Routine British feel-good panic?

      Generally I both laughed and agreed - but it was not 'just one gun toting caretaker was it' - legislation restricting hand guns and others in the UK has my full support

  5. Terafirma-NZ

    Friends excluded

    So if passed (and I doubt it will) will we see Microsoft get hit with a fine given they run Github the very place you can find the models this targets, or will it just be all the people that fork and download?

    History shows us as empires built walls of protection it becomes their very downfall.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good going bright bulb!

    I hope they extend this ban, fines ($1+ million), and prison terms (20+ years), to other products from China as well, EV car batteries, PV panels, computer chips, jeans, furniture, cookware, household hand and power tools, garlic ... whatever Walmart, Tesla, Amazon and others sell really. That'll show 'em! </dumbass>

    1. trindflo Silver badge

      Re: Good going bright bulb!

      Most of the groups you list had already been briefed on the products to warehouse ahead of the tariffs taxation without representation. This is just an opportunity to driver their lesser competitors out of business.

  8. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    The Times they are...

    a-deranging.

    And I daresay "the curse, it is cast."

  9. martinusher Silver badge

    Sign of weakness

    Lots of noise and effort going into "Stopping China" but a lack of a cohesive policy to compete (except for the usual "Throw a bunch of taxpayer money around"). Smaller, more efficient " good enough" models that didn't need their own nuclear power station were bound to happen. Its the story of computing.

    1. Wang Cores

      Re: Sign of weakness

      Welcome to Elbonia. Or Elon-Bone-Ya, at least.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Land of the free?

    Where all your internet downloads are monitored and the great dicktator's police will turn up at your door for expressing un uhmurrikan thoughts.

  11. Felonmarmer

    MIT license?

    As DeepSeek was released open source under the MIT license, doesn't that give the defense for using it and developing from it with regards to this potential lagislation? Should be no problem removing the censorship layer either which seems to act on the generated output with a simple text scan for keywords.

  12. heyrick Silver badge

    for violating its restrictions on AI-related trade and collaboration

    Dear Josh,

    Your AI products know me and my site, and when asked reply with relevant information thus indicating that they have visited and ingested large parts (if not the entirety) of my online persona and the content that has over the years, taken many many hours to put together. Nobody asked me first, and the content and training of these American AI models are generating large revenues for American companies with no recompense or even attribution to me (and ditto for everybody else in the world who has created something that the LLMs have "taken").

    As the lawful copyright holder, and moral rights holder, of the work that I have created, I am perfectly okay with other countries (such as China) taking a copy of what you, Americans, took from me. A tiny part of that whole is my work, and feel free to try every bit of legal chicanery you can but to my mind it would be a derivative work because an AI doesn't "think".

    The fact that nobody can sort out whose bit is where is not my problem, and given the total lack of respect for the rights of whatever was copied (such as restricted, GPL, or whatever) suggests that this was entirely intentional. Again, not my problem.

    tl;dr: As the copyright holder of stuff that your AI models ripped off, I'm perfectly okay with the Chinese stealing from you what you stole from me. How dare you steal our collective works and say "it's all mine, precious". Fuck you.

  13. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Insanity

    The USA is definitely in the Asylum now.

    ... and it looks like the UK is volunteering to pay the rent!

    1. Evil Scot Bronze badge

      Re: Insanity

      Cues up Fun Boy Three single

  14. Lazlo Woodbine Silver badge

    Instead of improving the quality of American goods...

    The current administration is just going to ban anything that's better than American products, which are, as Frank Zappa so eloquently said back in the day "All what we got here's American made,

    It's a little bit cheesey, But it's nicely displayed"

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: Instead of improving the quality of American goods...

      "It's a little bit cheesey, But it's nicely displayed"

      Ugh. Don't talk about that weird shiny concoction that Americans call cheese.

      Or the so-called chocolate.

      Or...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Instead of improving the quality of American goods...

        (NDLR: one might translate cheesey into plouk or ringard though, or both, bit like hey and rick might ranslate into Éric, but different ... literal vs phonetic vs idiomatic etc ... -30-)

      2. C.Carr

        Re: Instead of improving the quality of American goods...

        You do know the year isn't 1985, right? There is very high-end cheese and chocolate in the USA. Some of us live in cities and don't shop at Walmart.

        Also, those Cadbury eggs are nasty.

  15. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    Another defunct law...

    USA is known to have a lot of weird laws. And it is no problem, since judges + common sense results in those old laws to be (usually) ignored.

    If that process makes to court! The judges see "huh? Why should the land of the free deny buying stuff from wherever we want?" -> twelve middle fingers from twelve judges into the virtual direction of the senator -> another law for the trash pile, right on day one.

    Another example from the real USA: Lots of cars in many states (not all?) don't have a front license plate, even though the law says there has to be one. No fines, nothing, just 'cause it won't make it in any court. And even in states where it was brought to court: "Huh? I am from (Neighboring state)? And I am supposed to re-register here and buy a new license plate just for vacation?" -> well, that was it with the law... Ignored.

  16. gnasher729 Silver badge

    I can see massive tariffs on all US AIs in China. Which means zero sales. And really cheap AI being sold from China to Europe, Japan, Korea, Canada and Mexico.

  17. DS999 Silver badge

    That's a gift to corporations

    $1 million for an individual but only $100 million for a corporation? For a megacap tech company that's a parking ticket. OK losing your federal funding would be a hit if you have a lot of contracts like say Microsoft, but not all of them do. Anyway they'd probably get around it by creating a subsidiary so that if it runs afoul they don't risk the parent company's contracts.

  18. C.Carr

    Research

    Do we know for certain that access to genAI CSAM doesn't in fact _reduce_ the acquisition and production of the real thing? Seems to me we might want to figure that out prior to potentially making things worse.

  19. Conundrum1885

    Ridiculous!

    I looked into this, seems that they might ban pretty much every .safetensor and .ckpt file that 'may have been trained on unethically sourced materal'

    Cue 3am raids on folks using these models for legitimate purposes, or pretty much anyone who owns a PC with a graphics card made in thie last ten years.

    Actually got a model running on a 750Ti w/2GB RAM as an 'experiment' though basically worthless as the image quality is terrible.

    Given that these models are widespread and can be downloaded or for that matter put on a memory card I question the UK and US's motivation here

    as merging two or more models can cause significant issues in addition to randomness or plain faulty VRAM causing unexpected results.

    Someone could fall foul of this law or laws by simply clicking the wrong link thus downloading something that uses their resources to generate illegal content

    in a way hard to detect even with antivirus, entirely without their knowledge.

    If you want to discuss this issue please get in touch, I am on ----07----781--- 13---73---09 ask for 'Chief High Sorcerer'

  20. Crhys

    Hawley is a complete tool. Grandstanding attention (they would say sex worker here, rhymes with, and is a bore).

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