For context, it’s already super illegal to do the thing this law is about, even if you do it with scissors and glue. What they’re suing over is being held liable whenever some rando asks for that… no matter how hard they try to stop those randos from asking for that. Take a minute to consider this task: you’re explaining to a robot when it’s appropriate to accurately depict nipples, and the robot is flexible enough to work with concepts like ‘female-child-shaped adult man.’ Humans will surely outsmart machine rules.

So there’s three problems.

One is that this law presumably also applies to local models. The self-professed haters can imagine that will end image AI altogether, which, no. Even if it became de jure restricted, the ingredients are images you like and a video game computer, so obviously it would continue underground, with zero restrictions. Fortunately(?) it’s more like killing only local models, further centralizing power and wealth, keeping proprietary and secret the programs that let your computer do whatever you ask for. It’s not lessening the part where some corporate datacenter expects you to send it all your files and pinkie-swears that’s different from spying.

Two is that this entire format of law is directly connected to Texas pretending you can sue your neighbor for getting an abortion. Inventing liability is like inventing debt - there’s a bloodless violence to it. The direct use of state power to do some things is so disgusting that other parts of the state have said You Can’t Fucking Do That, so the latest blatant cheat is to pretend it’s a civil matter. Punishing you for being gay is not permitted, but if any rando can claim damages for hearing that you held hands, then the bajillion-dollar not-a-fine is between you and them. Somehow. This specific law, tangentially, creates some perverse incentives to erase crimes and hope nobody noticed. Twitter telling the Minneapolis PD that some local tricked their server into drawing Charlie Chaplain’s dick should not be met with ‘thank you, citizen, that will be five thousand dollars.’

Three is that if you’re holding people accountable for illegal pornography, the remedy is not a fine.