It's so frustrating that "just call the cops" is the answer, at the very same time that the cops are creating a massive disruption to our society.

And even if this were a viable answer: legal process _where_? What's to stop these "creators" from simply doing their computation in a different jurisdiction?

We need systems that work without this one neat authoritarian trick. If your solution requires that you lean on the violence of the state, it's unlikely to be adopted by the internet.

How long would the legal process take? How much would it cost? Does she have to sue all proprietors of commercial video generator models? What about individuals using open source models? How many hours of her time will these suits take to organize? How many AI videos of her dad will she have to watch as part of the proceedings? Will she be painted as a litigious villain by the PR firms of these very well-capitalized interests?

Her goal seems to be to reduce the role in her life played by AI slop portrayals of her dad. Taking the legal route seems like it would do the opposite.

> Rather than "pleading" for them to stop, wouldn't she have more success going after the ai content creation companies via legal process?

But that shouldn’t be the first step. Telling your fellow man “what you are doing is bothering me, please stop” is significantly simpler, faster, and cheaper than contacting lawyers and preparing for a possibly multi-year case where all the while you’ll have to be reminded and confronted with the very thing you don’t want to deal with.

If asking doesn’t work, then think of other solutions.

Asking people to stop seems like the first step. Especially since this is specific to people sending them to her in particular. People think they are being nice and showing some form of affection, but as she mentions she finds it disturbing instead.

So I don't think there was actually malicious intent and asking people to stop will probably work.

No, she would not have any success. Take a look at this list and think about the sheer number of companies she would need to sue: https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-video/arena?tab=leader.... You'll see Google, one of the richest companies on the planet, and OpenAI, the richest private company on the planet. You'll see plenty of Chinese companies (Bytedance, Alibaba, Tencent, etc.). You'll also see "Open Source" - these models can't be sued, and removing them from the internet is obviously impossible.

The most these lawsuits could hope to do is generate publicity, which would likely just encourage more people to send her videos. This direct plea has that risk too, but I think "please don't do this" will feel a lot less adversarial and more genuine to most people than "it should be illegal for you to do this".

There's two things potentially at stake here:

1. Whether there is an effective legal framework that prevents AI companies from generating the likenesses of real people.

2. The shared cultural value that, this is not cool actually, not respectful, and in fact somewhat ghoulish.

Establishing a cultural value is probably more important than any legal structures.

Not really. From what I understood of the interview is that her complain is not about money or compensation (which she may be entitled to), but about how people use the technology and how they interact with it and with her. Legal process or even the companies implementing policies won't change that problematic society behavior.

Since the raise of generative AI we have seen all sorts of pathetic usages, like "reviving" assesinated people and making them speak to the alleged killer in court, training LLMs to mimic deseased loved ones, generative nudification, people that is not using their brain anymore because they need to ask ChatGPT/Grok... some of them are crimes, others not. Regardless most of them should stop.

Well, he’s right. Entering the public square means exposure not only to what someone chooses to see but also to what others choose to share with them. That isn’t harassment, despite the victim mentality you’re promoting. If she doesn’t like it, she’s free to leave social media, simple as that. The same principle applies here on Hacker News: we all have to read posts from people who dislike AI. I believe those people will eventually be left behind, I don't care if they are left behind, and I have no interest in reading anti-AI arguments in 2025. After all, where were they when AI algorithms were being developed back in the 50s and 60s?

I installed a landline in my house, and today my wife told me it was scary. Why?

Because it was ringing. I suggested she pick it up to find out why it was ringing, but apparently that’s not something you do in the age of mobile phones.

> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

In this situation, who's the person unable to sit quietly in a room—the person who is receiving unsolicited artificial videos of her dead father, or the people who are generating artificial videos of a dead man and sending them to his daughter?

Yes, but taking your self-reflection euphemism literally, and why it wouldn't be enough, here's a rough sketch of several categories of us workers, in an industry that became the new "greed is good" mecca, maybe 25 years ago:

* Reasonably well-intentioned, but we're not particularly bright, and not much for introspection. We never thought about where this money came from, and accepted executive chatter about creating value or whatever, but it was boring to us.

* We see a survival threat, and ourselves as doing things we're not proud of, and don't like to think about it. (It's much easier for an observer to be sympathetic with this today, than for most of the last 25-30 very comfortable years in tech, when most of us were chasing the jobs that were much more than comfortable, at companies that were in the news for being sketchy. We even twisted the entire field's way of interviewing for all jobs, to match the extensive practicing that everyone was doing for the interview rituals of the strictly best-paying, well-more-than-comfortable jobs.)

* Like the above, but we're not actually feeling a threat, just rationalizing greed.

* We're greedy sociopaths, who don't even care to rationalize, except to manipulate others.

* We're not a sociopath, but we've been fed a self-serving aggressive libertarian philosophy/religion, and ate it up. Like the first category in this list, we're not particularly bright or introspective, but we're much less likeable.

* We question the field-wide festival of sociopathic greed, and we've been implicitly assembling a list of things we apparently won't do, companies we apparently won't work with, etc. And it's because of reasoned values, not just appearances or fashion.

It's a technology that enables a set of behaviors. Seems reasonable to wish that didn't happen if you don't like the behaviors.

Science has allowed us to destroy our planet at industrial scale and provided the tools to destroy ourselves and as a result all humans will likely be dead long before the next planet killer asteroid.

Science rules! (I'm only half joking)

> it's just an algorithm, like any other algorithm

Can you bubble sort your way into a video resembling Robin Williams?

It's not just an algorithm. it's also a massive application of computing resources and a complete indifference to the numerous people pointing out why x, y, and z are really bad ideas.

This is a bad argument. You may as well say “It’s just a thing that has been invented. Do you wish that all things that have been invented hadn’t been invented?”.

Right. But a machine that helps plant seeds at scale could be used for bad by running someone over, but it's core purpose it to do something helpful. AI's core purpose isn't to do anything good right now. It's about how many jobs it can take, how many artists can it steal from and put out of work, and so on and so on. How many people die from computer mice each year? How many from guns? They're both technology and can be used for good or bad. To hand wave the difference away is dangerous and naive.

While this is true, the horrific usage of a tool can vastly outweigh pitifully minimal benefits.

I'm not implying those adjectives apply to AI, but merely presenting a worse case scenario.

Dismissing the question of "does this benefit us?" with "it's just a tool" evokes Jurassic Park for me.

It's real hard for me to conjure up "good" uses for, say, mustard gas or bioweapons or nuclear warheads.

"Technology is neutral" is a cop-out and should be seen as such. People should, at the very least, try to ask how people / society will make use of a technology and ask whether it should be developed/promoted.

We are all-too-often over-optimistic about how things will be used or position them being used in the best possible light rather than being realistic in how things will be used.

In a perfect world, people might only use AI responsibly and in ways that largely benefit mankind. We don't live in that perfect world, and it is/was predictable that AI would be used in the worst ways more than it's used in beneficial ones.

But not in equal quantity. Technology does not exist in a contextless void. Approaching technology with this sort of moral solipsism is horrifying, in my opinion.

I strongly disagree. Many technologies aren't neutral, with their virtue dependent on the use given them. Some technologies are close to neutral, but there are many that are either 1) designed for evil or 2) very vulnerable to misuse. For some of the latter, it'd be best if they'd never even been invented. An example of each kind of technology:

1) Rolling coal. It's hard for me to envision a publicly-available form of this technology that is virtuous. It sounds like it's mostly used to harass people and exert unmerited, abusive power over others. Hardly a morally-neutral technology.

2) Fentanyl. It surely has helpful uses, but maybe its misuse is so problematic that humanity might be significantly better off without the existence of this drug.

Maybe AI is morally neutral, but maybe it isn't.

We have very little idea what is "good or bad," especially over the long term.

If not them, it would just had been others doing the same thing.

Yes.

Absolutely yes.

It is technically correct that Sam Altman and everyone on OpenAI's board are individual people, but I don't see how that would prevent legal action?

I saw that too. It's so unbelievably and transparently emotional manipulation. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad and terrifying.

Hold on, really? That seems wildly crazy to me, but sadly I'd believe it. I'd love it if you had a source or two to share of some of the more egregious examples of this.

I've seen a lot of horrible uses of AI, but this particular application the most sickening to my very core (schoolchildren using AI to generate porn of their classmates is #2 for me).

I had never made that exact connection, but my impression of the Dune universe was that it was hopelessly dark and horrific, basically humans being relentlessly awful to each other with no way out.

That sounds like more of a 4chan effect.