A problem you'd probably run into here is that it would be rather difficult to prove that no real CSAM was involved in the process of making the somehow-okay fake CSAM. Image generation models require training sets, after all. Do the companies training these models have the necessary data and evidence to prove every individual in every training image was over 18? Is generating fake CSAM okay if you trained the model on non-CSAM photos of real kids? I don't think so.

There are of course situations where being aggressive about this can hinder people's freedoms - like an adult who looks 'too young' having their freedoms curtailed because any photos or videos would Look Like CSAM - but I don't think they're common enough harms to justify holding back on regulation here.

Personally I think that even if the training data, is made of images of people who are over 18, the state of the adult industry is that there is a lot of harm and exploitation involved in that even. Do we have the evidence necessary to prove every over 18 person who's images are in the training data are okay with that use? So there is no somehow-okay anything. But if were dealing with models that can combine concepts .. then "adult" + "sex" = "sexualized adult" so "child" + "sex" = "sexualized child" .. this is just a fundamental capability of the technology. Without even getting into nudity where its easy to see how non CSAM, non-sexualize medical images etc, can fill in the gaps for the model. This is why I think just calling it CSAM is confusing the arguments. I see the base harm as being the promotion of sexualization of children. And this is more a harm and risk to society and to people consuming these images. Of course if you extend this to "real childs image" + "sex" to get a sexualized deepfake then there is a kind of harm to that individual too, but its still a disctint thing from physical abuse.. This is just my instincts on this but I'd be really interested to see some real discussion between people with actual extensive understand and experience of all these areas.

> like an adult who looks 'too young' having their freedoms curtailed because any photos or videos would Look Like CSAM - but I don't think they're common enough harms

It is extremely common in some parts of the world. Age from visual appearance basically doesn't work inter-culturally, with or without AI, and ... there are people amassing something like 1/3 of the world that look like kids until they must retire from all work including use of gas stoves to boil water. Said people just literally look like kids, attracts wrong kinds of the rest 2/3, wrongly reject them if others come over, and gets banned on social media as being underaged, all the time.

edit: I have feeling that the concept of "adults by appearance" might be the case of suspicious discontinuities created by industrial revolution; it is often said that the modern concept of binary child/adults dichotomy is the result of industrialization though the concept of child always existed. For this reason, there might have been selective pressure towards attaining "definitely adult" appearances at younger ages in forerunner regions, and less such pressure at regions that followed it. IMO that makes more sense than assuming people from some regions are obsessed with certain things.

Hand drawings and photoshopping a minor's face onto an adult body are already illegal. Having a machine do the work automatically doesn't change that.