11 thoughts on “The State Of Computer Graphics”

  1. A while back Jerry Pournelle mentioned the issue of entirely artificial images of child porn, wondering whether something like that should be illegal. After all, the point about real kiddy porn is that perverts are hurting children in the process.
    Ah, found it:

    Disturbing. I have problems with the whole censorship issue: it’s one thing to have local censorship laws, it’s quite another to make it a felony to have something on your hard drive you may not be aware of. And they have even forbidden cartoons of child pornography, which seems odd given that the justification of the laws has to do with protection of children (just as possession of ivory is for the protection of elephants against poachers).

    But it is nearly impossible to have a rational debate on this subject.

    Is it still illegal while using technology like this? “Snuff” porn is illegal, but Hollywood shows literally thousands of very realistic deaths on-screen every year.

    1. I think I’ve read recently that laws have changed since Jerry posed that question. The idea being, I suppose, that catering to that demand risks normalizing it and creating more sexual abuse of minors.

      I don’t know if that’s been studied or if it’s just an assumption, but I would have no trouble believing it would be good enough as an assertion to persuade most voters.

  2. If they ever make equal advances in voice generation, I bet that means we could have brand new movies that are completely CGI, with all dead stars.

    1. Actually, we do have virtually perfect voice generation, but it remains classified. I recall a story about the Pentagon giving a demo to top generals, who thought they were talking directly to George Bush. The concept was that they could recreate the voice and accent of any person if they had sufficient audio samples, and could use the technology to sow havoc in an enemies command and control system by issuing false orders.

      If that technology was combined with this new visual mimicry, we wouldn’t even need Obama and the Teleprompter of the United States could govern us directly.

  3. Around 10-12 years ago, IIRC, a mid-western state took up the cudgels against a producer of “3d” kiddie pron. About 7 years ago, their case bounced off the First Amendment, not a standard law from Congress. Subsequent attempts to write laws around that barrier have failed.

    There *is* an argument against even kiddie pron that does not involve actual children. This is that the brain is an adaptive organ, shifting its dendritic connections so that it does whatever it repeats many times with less effort. This is taken to mean that a person who gets some pleasure (perhaps from feelings of power over someone weaker) from watching a fake child being molested initially would get more pleasure and feel easier about it after the 1,000th such video watched.

    The problem with this idea is that we have not proved it happens like that.

    With the First Amendment to be worried for, there must be proof, and it must be solid.

    However, we seem to be watching a rise in female teacher molestations of students, within 15 years of the rise of online pron sites featuring “hot-for-teacher” categories. The 4 % of the population showing some degree of sociopathy are enabled in acting out by the “perception of permission” as often as not. The presence of these online site categories, now believed to be visited by women nearly as often as men, *may* be allowing attitudes to build of, ….”of course its always done, ….I’m just missing out”.

    Again, we have no hard proof. MRI work is being done with sexual preferences and their changes over time, and what influences those changes. As always with longitudinal studies using fMRI this is costly, so sample sizes are small enough that studies could be challenged as statistically invalid in court.

    Anyone wanting to stop “virtual kiddie pron” will require years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on large-scale studies before they ever indict anyone. I do not see that on the horizon.

  4. So if someone were to invent an anatomically correct robot that had genitalia which felt identical to the real thing then charged $20 a go would that be prostitution? I wonder just how low our productivity would drop if there no more sexual frustrations out there.

  5. Reminds me of Dennis Miller on virtual reality, paraphrasing from memory: “The day Joe Sixpack is able to drop into his barcalounger with a Foster’s in one hand and a channel flicker in the other and f*** Claudia Schiffer for $19.95, it’s going to make crack look like Sanka.”

    1. Classic Miller! I miss his old series.

      Another thought: Isn’t a performer’s likeness already an intellectual property? Can they license or rent said likeness to a CGI company? Can they “save” their image at different times in their life, so they can “play” a young role or an old one? What effect would fair use have on this?

      Or can they stop acting altogether and just license the goods to a movie producer? Sooner or later we will have commercial-grade sound engineering as discussed above in the market. Imagine the conversations: “Joe, get me a 30-year-old Clint Eastwood account. I’m talking Man With No Name, not Dirty Harry, ok? And while you’re at it get me a 25-year-old Susan Sarandon as the female lead!”

      Heck, we could probably re-create Bogart, Bacall, or John Wayne.

      On the other hand, perhaps art movies’ signature would become using “real” actors, the way some directors are returning to practical FX for their movies.

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