A good question. I could think of at least one valid use for a deepfake: Imagine a deceased father, and his daughter is getting married. You could deepfake a father-daughter dance at the reception (with the daughter's permission).
But that's one use, and I can think of very few other legitimate uses, and many, many, many uses that I think are illegitimate.
A cynical view would be that they'll get around to legislation that covers other deepfakes once too many politicians get their reputations ruined by deepfakes of them doing things that they didn't do (or did but nobody has real video to prove it).
Thinking this through as I write it; please forgive if it’s a little disjoint.
I could imagine a scenario where AI companies doing license their API to anyone with a credit card, but to someone willing to sign a contract with indemnification. Maybe then the daughter wouldn’t go directly to some AI website, but might hire a local or online human artist who had such a contract. Maybe she wouldn’t look for “artists who can do AI stuff” but “artists who can add my dad to my picture”. The art is what she’s paying for, not the specific technology used to create it. And the human artist would think “well, I obviously have the daughter’s permission. I can’t ask the dad for his, but that’s a normal thing for a dad to do, and it seems unlikely he’d mind” and accept the commission. Maybe it turns out there are dads who don’t want to be involved, like they disowned their crackhead kid or something. That risk would be part of the human judgment going into the project. Today the woman could ask an AI “can you add a picture of me dancing with my dad, King Charles?” A human artist would say “that ain’t your dad” and reject it.
Maybe all but requiring a human in the loop wouldn’t be a bad idea.
But that's one use, and I can think of very few other legitimate uses, and many, many, many uses that I think are illegitimate.
A cynical view would be that they'll get around to legislation that covers other deepfakes once too many politicians get their reputations ruined by deepfakes of them doing things that they didn't do (or did but nobody has real video to prove it).