Breakdown
- A company that rents idle GPUs has clients dedicated to creating AI-generated adult content
- Users that rent out their CPUs don't get paid money but with Fortnite skins, Roblox gift cards, and more
- AI-generated content continues to be a controversial topic that has escalated with the prevalence of deepfakes.
Salad, a company that rents out idle GPUs in exchange for Fortnite skins and Roblox gift cards has, according to a report by 404media, been renting out hardware to companies dedicated to creating AI-generated porn.
The report does clarify that while there's no solid evidence of Salad and any of its client producing nonconsensual AI-generated explicit images, the company is aware that's one of the uses their partners can give the rented GPUs.
Salad does give users the option to opt out of such content by manually selecting what type of workloads your GPU can be used for. If left as automatic, the company might deem your setup good enough for AI-generated adult content.
The report by 404media does state that “all data related to a container workload, including media generated, is wiped" from the user's system once the task is completed. The content is also fully isolated from the Windows OS, making it inaccessible from the user's machine.
The 404media report does state that multiple Discord moderators in the official Salad server confirmed that the option to opt in to have your GPU eligible to create AI-generated porn was disabled by default in countries where such content is prohibited, adding that "any Stable Diffusion image generation job is automatically considered adult content."
As for the pay, users who lend their GPUs to Salad aren't directly remunerated. Instead, they can spend currency in the Salad shop which offers gift cards for food establishments, and in-game money for games like Valorant, Roblox, Fortnite, and League of Legends. There is an option to receive a set amount of money via PayPal but not the exact quantity the user is owed.
AI-generated adult content is a major point of contention in an already controversial discussion surrounding the use of AI as a content creation tool.
If the usage of AI art can be considered theft in a lot of cases, with websites utilising artists' work to generate "new" images, then AI adult content has to deal with consent and clearer legal repercussions.
This past January pop icon Taylor Swift was the victim of a massive deepfake pornography scandal, with her likeness being used without consent in a series of images depicting her doing obscene acts.
The controversy sparked some action from the United States government on January 10, introducing the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications (No AI FRAUD) Act, with the hopes of creating a baseline federal protection against AI abuse online.
404media stated that they've reached out to Salad for comment with no response from the company.