A collaborative series by Justice Apple and Mac Pierce
This series of work uses AI--specifically, Stable Diffusion--to create wholly fabricated, wholly fantastic sex scenes. Any time a new form of image-making is introduced, one of the first ways it's used is to create pornography. This has always been true: from the Venus of Willendorf to the painted nude at the height of the Renaissance, new forms of art mean new forms of porn. (In fact, it's impossible to say whether or not the Venus of Willendorf qualifies as such: she was a fertility goddess. Can we really say if her intended audience was to find her titillating?). Of course, AI is no exception--quite the opposite. With AI's transformative power come opportunities for the most insidious kind of abuse. One example of this abuse are so-called nudifying apps. These apps, which use similar technology to that employed by Stable Diffusion, create nudes of people who have in no way consented to appear in pornography, and do so in a frighteningly realistic way.
"Upload and create deepnude photos of whoever you want … [It's] free and fast, absolutely safe!"
This means they are all but designed to create non-consensual pornography, transposing the likenesses of anyone onto nude bodies to create pornography. As these apps claim in their very promos, such tools are free and can be used by anyone after watching publicly available tutorials. In this project, we use Stable Diffusion to create sexually suggestive images from photos of us: fully consenting, and fully clothed adults. Posed in front of recognizable landmarks, these images examine the historical context of the nude, and its uncertain, quite possibly unreal future.
- Essay by Ben Zitsman
A full catalog of works to date is available here - [PDF, 368kb]
Mythologies of AI Consent: A Review of “A Third Act” at Sulk Chicago - Frank Gieser for NewCity Art
