
Deepfake porn and the ethics of being able to watch whatever you desire - Vaslo
https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/31/deepfake-porn-ethics-able-watch-whatever-imagination-desires-9526079/
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no1youknowz
I think deepfakes is absolutely AWESOME!

You know what I want to do, I want to actually create sci-fi films with my
favourite actors. But sadly, I don't have the money, time or network of highly
paid actors to do so.

Sucks doesn't it?

But what if I could get the time, a little bit of money and actors who are
just starting out and relatively cheap?

Can you hear that? Just maybe the democratization of film, may just be
happening?

Take a look at this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXHsgucZuJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXHsgucZuJk)

Now imagine, building out very cheap scenes, overlaying them with something
like Unreal3d engine and using deepfakes instead of having someone sit in a
chair for 5 hours because they need makeup, as they are acting as some alien?

Or how about having permission from "Schwarzenegger as a service" (TM pending)
to use his likeness as a deepfake in the film?

I know, I know. People will use this for porn first and if you look at
technology like VHS, internet streaming, VR it's all being used for porn. But
as the tech gets better, gets cheaper. It'll be put into the hands of the
creatives and we'll be a lot better for it.

I'm really bullish about this tech.

~~~
syllogism
> You know what I want to do, I want to actually create sci-fi films with my
> favourite actors. But sadly, I don't have the money, time or network of
> highly paid actors to do so.

But the reason these people are your favourite actors is that they're...good
at acting, right? The deepfake won't improve the performance of your budget
actor (actually it'll probably make it much worse). So your movie will be like
seeing your favourite actors putting in absurdly terrible performances. Are
you sure you want this?

~~~
syntheticnature
This applies to porn, too. If, for example, I was a widower who missed my wife
dearly (to give a relatively benign example), deepfake porn of my late wife
would be someone else pretending to be her, and it'd likely be obvious to me.

~~~
dev_dull
Maybe this tech is just naturally polarizing but this sounds really awful to
me.

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donatj
Personally I think the whole reaction to deepfakes is overblown, and makes
luddites out of otherwise reasonable people.

If it were to become common, society would quickly learn to take all video
with a grain of salt. We already question suspicious images. If the exact line
of how a photo got to you from the camera is unknown people quickly exclaim
things to be Photoshopped.

I don’t think expanding our questioning to video is that far of a societal
jump.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Wasn't there an issue recently of the POTUS tweeting an obviously fake and
doctored photo to his followers? I don't think that group responded with
skepticism. Making a more convincing fake would be even more psychologically
satisfying for people. As it gets better it's harder and harder to disprove it
as being fake and people will be more willing to take the easy path and accept
it. After all, people still accept incriminating photos as evidence.

~~~
Bakary
It doesn't really matter at this point since the underlying problem is
absolute loyalty to a particular cause or person.

~~~
Retra
That loyalty is built on the back of misinformation, and is strengthened by
presenting your opponents in compromising positions. Deepfakes would reinforce
this, so they are not an orthogonal issue.

~~~
Bakary
There's a two way feedback at hand. Disinformation does affect people greatly
but those it affects were already receptive to its message and looking for
more. The neo-liberal, "humanist", The Economist-style view assumes it's just
temporary/fixable insanity and that they would come back to the "rational"
view of the world if they were better educated.

In reality, the people who follow populist movements are both firmly in the
grasp of illusory ideas and hold a very lucid understanding of their place in
the world. They are riled up by fiery rhetoric but they are also well aware,
whether consciously or not, that they have little to gain from a return to the
neo-liberal order in which they have no useful economic role, no community
(whether real or imaginary) to come back to, no access to the wonders of a
globalization, and no real cause or culture to believe in other than competing
against their neighbors for a slightly better place in the rat race.

In San Francisco you can see the end logic of this trajectory. An elite with
highly paid and satisfying jobs served by a pauperized underclass of Uber
drivers and mini-job holders who only have a crumbling public infrastructure
to support them and no prospect of being a socially engaged citizenry.

~~~
Retra
>Disinformation does affect people greatly but those it affects were already
receptive to its message and looking for more.

My point is that its effects are more pronounced, more reliable, and
significantly harder to correct in the presence deepfake style media. People
who are trying harder to make honest evaluations of the world will be making
more committed arguments for dishonest points if they fail to identify the
inauthenticity of a deepfake message, a problem which is purposefully more
likely due to the inherent design of a deepfake message.

We don't need to talk about people who are intending to be manipulated, we
need to talk about the people who are not intending to be manipulated who will
nevertheless be disarmed by new technology.

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tribune
Once I overheard a guy ranting about how iPods were bad because if you carried
your music with you everywhere, you could feel whatever you wanted at any
time, which was unnatural and bad for your psyche.

I think he was crazy. But it gave me pause

~~~
Bakary
It's a good point. One of the problems with media is that it can shield you
from realizing that your life is not going so well.

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xgulfie
Really you can already look at basically any illustrated porn you want, just
pay a bit of money to an artist. This is a huge portion of the furry
community. $50 will easily get you some impressive furry smut.

Deepfakes can only put different faces on people, it can't create some of the
more niche fetishes the illustrated porn market does. Call me back when it can
generate a 800 foot tall bird-man stomping on a pixie.

~~~
b_tterc_p
Hmm, I don’t see why it couldn’t do that? That’s a good idea.

*it being some similar type of GANN

~~~
xgulfie
Someone made a "fursona generator" GAN that kinda worked (but still had lots
of artifacts), generating scenes is a massive leap from that, let alone
parameterized scenes, fringe or custom species, narrow kinks etc.

But yeah I would be super fascinated if anyone was working toward that.

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zupreme
The real danger I see is if/when deepfake-like tech becomes so ubiquitous that
we no longer believe anything we see on video.

What will that mean for surveillance evidence? What will that mean for police
brutality videos? What will it mean for rape/harassment/assault/stalking/etc
videos?

By spreading this tech, which seems inevitable now, we roll back the
protective aspects of video/film by decades, if not more.

~~~
mhandley
Presumably there will be a legal requirement that video used as evidence is
digitally signed by the camera, using tamper-proof hardware and a certificate
chain back to a certified manufacturer. Anything less will just be contested
in court, and thrown out.

~~~
zupreme
I like the digital signature aspect.

But would a phone camera be considered “tamper proof”? What camera would, that
a civilian could readily buy?

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twic
On which subject, 'Face Swap', an entertaining (but somewhat NSFW!) short
science fiction film i saw recently:

[https://vimeo.com/306304445](https://vimeo.com/306304445)

~~~
yboris
Thank you for sharing! This was great :)

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spookybones
I've been using this other unethical tech called Imagination. It's much
cheaper and faster to render and has better privacy protection.

~~~
keiru
Yeah, but the resolution is shit

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jdefr89
Whenever people hear about these issues (and now pretty much any issue sadly)
they always jump to the worst conclusions and stop considering balance, which
is ultimately what we need to preserve. This is a complex issue,
oversimplifying it only serves to make things worse. Like any entity in this
entire universe, deep-fakes can be used for good and bad. I am willing to bet
there is a middle ground that makes sense and allows us to ultimately mostly
benefit from whatever good this technology brings. Its about thinking within
reason. Saying things like "This will be the best thing every" or the opposite
extreme, "This will collapse society!" only speaks to the radical mindset it
seems everyone has been poisoned with.

It is becoming difficult to discuss these kinds of issues at all with the way
everyone seems to so easily move to the extremities..

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grenoire
Beyond ethics, I'm worried more about societal collapse. Going further we
might have entirely generated ultra-realistic and ultra-specific pornography
that will ultimately lead to people just not having sex... This concern has
already been raised with sexbots, but machine pornography (for the lack of a
better term) seems that it'll arrive first.

~~~
IX-103
I'm not concerned about that. Humans are social creatures and can get sick if
they don't have sufficient social contact to get their needs met. One of those
needs is intimacy (and with intimacy, sex often follows). We are very far away
from building a machine that can satisfy that better than a human (since it is
harder problem to solve than the Turing test). And if we do develop such a
machine and people stop having sex, that's not the end of children. Children
can be produced without sex (and eventually may not need a human uterus), so
society would likely continue.

I'd be a bit more concerned about people just deciding not to have children
(because raising children is a pain), but right now there's too many people,
so I'll worry when there are less than 100 million.

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mLuby
What makes you think simulating intimacy is harder than impersonating a human
during conversation?

I remember reading about researchers constructing a fake monkey mother out of
blankets, a heat lamp, and a milk bottle. The babies seemed to get what they
needed in terms of intimacy.

Likewise Paro the Seal seems able to help elders cope with loneliness.

~~~
keldaris
Because intimacy for adults (as opposed to your example, which is a much
simpler problem) includes conversation along with a host of other behaviors.
Impersonating a human during conversation is therefore a necessary condition,
but not a sufficient one.

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zzo38computer
I think these deepfakes should require a disclaimer to indicate what it is.
(It should not be prohibited to produce or view them, however.)

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Proven
It is perfectly ethical to be able to watch what you want.

If the supposed problem is that what you watch may be unethical to some other
person, that also does not compute. Why should I care what some religious
zealot thinks about the ethics of me watching self-created deep fake porn in
the privacy of my home?

