Rep. Joe Morelle, D.-N.Y., appeared with a New Jersey high school victim of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes to discuss a bill stalled in the House.
It’s not trolling it’s bullying. You need to think beyond this being about “porn”. This is a reputational attack that makes the victim more likely to be further victimised via date rape, stalking, murder. These things already happen based on rumours, deepfakes images/videos will only make it worse. The other problem is that it’s almost impossible to erase once it’s on the internet, so the victim will likely never be free of the trauma or danger as the images/videos resurface.
Trolling / bullying is just semantics, which I don’t think will help us very much.
I think the heightened risk of other crimes is… dubious. Is that conjecture?
Your position seems to be framed in the reality of several years ago, where if you saw a compromising video of someone it was likely real, while in 2024 the opposite is true.
Were headed towards a reality where someone can say “assistant, show me a deepfake of a fictitious person who looks a bit like that waitress at the Cafe getting double teamed by two black guys”. I don’t claim to know all the ethical considerations, but I do think that changing social norms are part of the picture.
I don’t have any authority to assert when anyone else should feel victimised. All I know is that in my own personal case, a few years ago I would’ve felt absolutely humiliated if someone saw a compromising video of me, but with the advent of deep fakes I just wouldn’t care very much. If someone claimed to have seen it I would ask them why they were watching it, and why in the world they would want to tell me about their proclivities.
