« The Deepfakes affair of the Channel is singular by its magnitude » – Liberation
Chance of the parliamentary calendar. While his constituency moved from a vast matter of Deepfakes (false images generated by artificial intelligence) pornographic targeting twelve college students from the English Channel, the deputy Philippe Gosselin (LR) tabled on Tuesday March 11 a bill aimed at strengthening the protection of minors online and the fight against pedocrime. And so, as he explains to Libé, « incriminate the creation and dissemination of Deepfakes ».
This is not the first time that minors have been victims of pornographic deepfakes worldwide. What do you suggest to stop the phenomenon in France?
Today, texts exist on the criminal level allowing the incrimination of harassment, including sexual harassment. With our bill, we want to go further. Several points seem to us protruding. First of all, we offer a worsening of sentences against the authors of offenses committed on minors under the age of 15. Then we want to incriminate the creation and dissemination of Deepfakes. We propose, moreover, to develop a specific sanction on the sharing of such images or their unsolicited shipment. Finally, and more radically, we ask for the penalization of manufacturing and provision generative AI models to generate pedocriminal content.
In France, had you ever heard of affairs similar to that of your department?
In Normandy, some cases had already been reported to heads of establishments. In other regions, some stories have sometimes been publicized … but quite little in reality. Most of the time, they go under radars. The Deepfakes in the Channel affair is singular by its magnitude. They are twelve young girls. Twelve. Not two, not three. It may be the occasion, for young people, for families, to realize that there are risks with AI. Everyone knows that this technology exists, that it spreads at high speed, but the law is late. You have to put the double bites. And on such a subject, I think we should make it a common front.
Are you surprised that the first case of this magnitude takes place in the Channel?
It is true that it seems counter-intuitive. You might think that as we are a little further from major cities, we would be a little more spared by these problems. But even with us, we are not immune. Our population is not under a bell and is also crossed by world developments. Sometimes later, and that is why we have to alert our young people who are therefore less vigilant than others. The majority say to themselves in good faith. These individuals say that as they live in a quieter department, there is no reason for them to have online problems. On the contrary, they must be made to understand that when they publish on social networks, anyone can today save their face very easily and do anything thanks to AI. With us too, it is possible.
