A major backlash against the AI generated celebrity fake porn termed ‘deepfakes’ is now well underway, with the major hub of the community on Reddit now banned, as well as all deepfake porn on Twitter.
The argument against deepfake porn is mainly that it is non-consensual; ‘digital rape’ as some extreme feminists have termed it. This is despite nearly all online deepfake porn currently consisting of celebs (although this will likely change as the software becomes more advanced). Wonder Woman actress Gal Godet was the subject of one of the most infamous Deepfake efforts. The fact is, a very famous and attractive female celebrity such as her is probably the subject of a million male masturbatory fantasies every day. The problem that society is finding difficult to face is that as technology advances, the line between the mental and the digital is becoming increasingly blurred. Should we ban ‘thought rape’ too (some feminists have genuinely used this term to describe any sexual thoughts by a man involving another woman that the woman has not explicitly consented too)? Ultimately, the line between the digital and the mental might break down alltogether, with technology such as Elon Musk’s proposed brain-computer interface.
My opinion is that deepfake porn can be adequately covered by current ‘revenge porn’ laws. The UK has a fairly well worded such law that only outlaws ‘ex-gf’ pornographic images if the intent behind the uploader was to humiliate and degrade. Therefore, private use of deepfake software to generate fake porn scenes involving a celeb, or your ex-gf or crush, would not be illegal under this definition of revenge porn law, and arguably at least celebrity deepfake porn uploaded online would not necessarily be illegal either.
One of the most interesting articles on the deepfake controversy appeared last week in ‘The Verge’. It has a nice selection of thoughts from deepfake supporters and feminists opposing the technology. One deepfaker actually makes the novel argument that deepfake porn might even eliminate revenge porn, in that nobody will know whether porn is real or not.
Many of these sentiments were echoed on the subreddit and directly to The Verge by dozens of users who have little concern about the moral issues at hand or the personal harm deepfakes can cause to their unwilling “stars.” If they don’t make these images and videos, they argue, someone else will. Some users, like Gravity_Horse, even contend that deepfakes could potentially eliminate revenge porn by effectively making any video questionable. “As it becomes more mainstream and near impossible to tell fantasy from reality, anything is subject to being fake,” Gravity_Horse says.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/9/16986602/deepfakes-banned-reddit-ai-faceswap-porn
