Four run afoul of the country’s strict anti-adult content laws
In a fascinating intersection between the do-it-yourself, AI-generated explicit materials boom and their country’s staunch ban on anything depicting realistic genitalia, last month, four Japanese citizens were arrested not for creating erotic imagery but for failing to specify the results of their “spread leg” prompts should be obscured.
Soranews24 reports this is a national first as many have and will likely continue to be cited for accurately depicting sexualized nudity and sexual activity, but Japanese authorities haven’t yet extended their reach to AI image-generating software services.
Described by Soranews24 as “four men and women with ages ranging from their 20s to 50s,” the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has specifically accused them of distributing obscene imagery by selling posters of their AI prompts for several thousand yen each—netting one of the four at least seventy thousand US dollars or approximately ten million Yen.
Old laws, new world
Differing from many of Japan’s rules and regulations, Article 175 precedes its constitution, which was predominantly imposed by the Allied Occupation forces in accordance with Japan’s World War II surrender terms.
Part of its 1907 penal code, Article 175 sets out a punishment of two years imprisonment and/or a two million, five hundred thousand Yen, nearly $20,000 fine.
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But since its original inception more than a century ago, it and other Japanese obscenity laws have varied widely in how they’ve been enforced—particularly as legal authorities struggle to deal with technological advancements from clandestine video rental services to the Internet.
Maebari, pixelation—or else
In an early attempt to avoid persecution, a number of adult entertainment producers began fitting their performers with adhesive-backed pubic hair shields called maebari.
Ironically, the term and practice faded into obscurity when shaving became all the rage as Japanese obscenity laws tend to zero in on pubic hair depictions.
With the advent of digital photography came genital pixelation, the lack of which got the “four men and women” in trouble.
More questions than answers
In the Soranews24 article, one person said of the Japanese AI-generated adult content prosecution, “There are only a few countries that criminalize uncensored nudity.” Then continued, “Anyone can find it on the Internet anyway, so these laws are useless. I think people struggle to contemplate if it’s really a problem to enjoy parts of the human body.”
Another said it was an example of Japan’s anti-obscenity laws falling behind the times, “There are people who upload uncensored images to social media. Does that not count as distribution?”
What’s especially troubling about this case is its selective enforcement; Authorities not going after a particularly egregious purveyor of adult materials or someone using AI to create underage imagery, instead prosecuting four people who—as far as we’re aware—did what thousands have already done. They simply had the misfortune to be at the wrong place at the worst time.
More frustratingly, it’s unlikely their arrest will hinder others from doing the same. If anything, it’ll force similar AI adult content creators to be extra clever in getting their products into the hands of others.
Such content might not even be preventable. Why should anyone pay for AI-generated adult content when they can make their own by simply prompting for it?
Technology finds a way
Japan’s not alone in attempting to stuff the genie back in the bottle. The United States and other countries are increasingly being steadily bombarded by proposed and actually enacted laws against the creation, sale, or distribution of adult materials.
Often hidden behind the self-righteous camouflage and well-known logical facility of “thinking of the children,” similar laws either seek to criminalize the exchange of consensually created explicit content, or will set up as many digital or monetary roadblocks as necessary to financially strangle the industry.
If there’s a ray of sunshine in all of this, it’s just as Japanese obscenity laws—or more precisely, their erratic enforcement—can’t stem the adult technology wave, so too other repressive ordinances won’t be able to either.
Not that legal systems won’t stop trying by making examples of people whose only crime was getting caught doing what a majority of people on this planet have always done: making and ejoying images of other, consensually naked adults.
Image Sources: Depositphotos
