Funny how my daughter used to run to us and mispronounce YouTube as “NudeTube”. When my wife and I recall that, we can’t help but feel amused by her innocence.
Today’s papers however give no cause for amusement. It is about an app that allows users to virtually “undress” women using artificial intelligence. The app is entitled most candidly, “DeepNude”.
How it works is almost ingenuous due to the simplicity of the idea with the help of technology.
All you have to do is to take a photo of a clothed woman “and transform that into a nude image.” The technology embedded will help you strip the object of your fantasy according to your baser instinct. You basically turn yourself into a fledgling director of your own private striptease show.
I trust you can take photos of strangers in common places like the MRT, malls and even schools, or flip through personal photo albums and glitzy magazine covers, and take furtive shots of the ladies, whether they are fully or scantily dressed, and then let your imagination go wild with them in the privacy of your own room. No one will know. Hush hush.
Alas, I can really hear the cash register ringing with such app that is based on the three vectors of success: simplicity, accessibility and autonomy.
But before the creator of the app start planning for a lifestyle change with the cash pouring in, the story doesn’t end there. Like all stories, there is a catch here. It is called conscience.
After a social media uproar, DeepNude was shut down. CCRI (Cyber Civil Rights Initiatives) said: “This is a horrifically destructive invention and we hope to see you soon suffer consequences for your actions.”
A law professor, Mary Anne Franks added this objection to the chorus of protest: “It’s good that it’s been shut down...the app’s intended use was to indulge the predatory and grotesque sexual fantasies of pathetic men.”
Apparently, and quite unwittingly, the creator from Estonia said: “We never thought it would be viral and (that) we would not be able to control traffic.”
Never thought it would go viral? Not being able to control traffic? Are you serious?
In a hyper-sexualized, postmodern world, where liberty has no or little boundaries, and values are what you make of it as long as nobody gets physically hurt, you really think an app like that would not go viral?
And not to mention, a world where we can’t even remember where we had last buried modesty, possibly in an unmarked grave nobody wants to talk about (because we will be accused of being outdated or holy prude), I think it is safe to say that if you sell something that offers generous runway space to launch our most intimate sexual fantasies to the boundless skies, you can be sure that you have struck gold of the most carnal kind.
You don’t need me to tell you this. Let‘s hear it from this theologian, Frederick Buechner.
“Lust is the ape that gibbers in our loins. Tame him as we will by day, he rages all the wilder in our dreams by night. Just when we think we’re safe from him, he raises up his ugly head and smirks, and there’s no river in the world flows cold and strong enough to strike him down. Almighty God, why dost thou deck men out with such a loathsome toy?”
And how about Freud? Didn’t he once say that our modern civilisation is driven by “erotic energy”?
Mm...let’s continue with where we left off...and it is a cautionary word from the creator.
They added: “Despite the safety measures adopted (watermarks), if 500,000 people use it, the probability that people will issue it is too high. We don’t want to make money this way.”
FYI, DeepNude was launched a few months ago, and the creator has intended it was for pure entertainment. But after the overwhelming response, they said that they have “greatly underestimated” demand for the app. You think?
With that few months of commercial traction, I am sure many men who have downloaded the app must have had their appetites filled to overflowing with an app that gives them the full autonomy to do as they please with the female body.
Lesson? Although DeepNude has been taken off the market, I am quite sure it is nevertheless thriving in the black market.
CCRI said: “The app is out there now and will be used, despite the creator taking it off the market. If only there were a way to disable all the versions out there.”
Alas, you can disable the apps, but you can’t disable the wanton culture that feeds on the minds of our young who are openly defying any boundary and responsibility that seek to treat the opposite sex with respect, honour and protection.
And if the desire of the man is for the woman, and the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man, then, thanks to our pornified culture, we have turned the desires of our young into one that lusts only after the woman’s body.
She is nothing more to him than that. And once that is sated, they are on the prowl for the next sexual high. Sadly, it will never satisfy because their future wives can never compete with the many sexual fantasies they can manufacture at a few clicks of the buttons with the aid of technology. And mind you, no one will know. It’s all hush hush, until something leaks, cracks and breaks of course.
At this juncture, it is tempting to ask, is this the freedom that we have been craving after or fighting for? Is this what it means by living in the modern society, full of technological wonders, and enlightened in every way by the fortification of knowledge that frees us to pursue happiness, progress and prosperity for all and sundry?
Let me end with this quote for your Sunday morning mental digest: -
“It is a mistake to suppose that all men...want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it...The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.”
Ultimately, we as a society pays for it. The script is all too familiar. We try to do right, to prevent the moral haemorrhaging. But in our ennobled pursuit, in our earnest attempt to turn society around to save our future generation from moral decay, family disintegration, broken marriages, and even climate changes, we have ironically acted in ways that have undermined and sabotaged all that earnest efforts.
In other words, we have taken two steps forward only to find we have previously taken three to four steps back.
So, God help us, because we sure as hell can’t help ourselves. And if science or reason, technology and the hallowed market-driven capitalism have collectively debunked religion and they are thus deemed as the glowing trinity of our salvation, that is, our new city on the hill, I honestly do not see it emerging anytime soon from the dreaded distant horizon of our modern civilisation.
Or, is it just me?
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