If your machine has a powerful GPU, it might seem a bit of a waste to leave all the computing power in the background and rarely run when it's idle. In that case, Salad, a company that offers game codes, gift cards, and other items in exchange for a user's GPU resources, might seem like a reasonable way to get the machine working.
However, by default, the software settings opt-in users to generate adult content. There is an option to “Manually configure workload type” and users can uncheck the “Adult Content Workload” option (via 404 media), but this is easily overlooked during the setup process. Officially tested and confirmed by myself.
On the Salad Discord server, moderators claim that the adult content workload option is turned off by default, and that Stable Diffusion image generation jobs are automatically considered adult content. Several users asked if turning off the setting would reduce their income on Salad, and they answered, “If there is high demand for certain adult content workloads, you may see a slight reduction in your income. However, there are no plans for that.” We place these companies at the core of our business model. ”
Earnings earned by renting GPU time to Salad can be redeemed in-store, and users can redeem them for a variety of rewards, including Roblox gift cards, Fortnite DLC skins, and Minecraft vouchers.
The company explains on the Salad website that “some workloads may generate adult-oriented images, text, and video,” and that the generated adult content is immediately available to users as soon as the workload is complete. It says it will be deleted from the system. This vague generalization regarding the creation of sexually explicit content generally marks all image production as “adult” as Sarada cannot view or control the images created through its platform. This is probably because the basics are covered.
However, one of Salad's clients is CivitAi, a platform for sharing AI-generated images that was previously investigated by 404 Media. The service was found to host image-generating AI models of certain people, which could be combined with pornographic AI models to generate non-consensual sexual images. I will share the link to the study here, but as a content warning, the subject matter discussed is very graphic in nature.
A CivitAI spokesperson told 404, “Salad handles some of the image generation depending on the time of day. We scale the service depending on the amount of demand.” Given the relevance here, it seems very likely that Salad's user is generating his AI porn for the site.
Well, this all sounds very vulgar, doesn't it? There's something about the combination of generating AI porn in exchange for vouchers for games frequently played by children and young people that really raises hackles, especially since there's no obvious option to disable it.
The creation of non-consensual sexual images of real people is particularly deplorable, and when combined with the level of abstraction here, many people will be able to create this content on their machines without having clear knowledge of its contents. This means that it may have been generated. I'm signing up for.
Oh, the internet can be terrible sometimes. I would like to leave this area here.
