Deepfake porn and the ethics of being able to watch whatever you desire

https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/31/deepfake-porn-ethics-able-watch-whatever-imagination-desires-9526079/

by Vaslo • 7 years ago

65 77 7 years ago

grenoire• 7 years ago

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.

Tharkun• 7 years ago

Sex with more than one person is a lot more fun than even the most pleasurable wank to even the most ultra specific porn. In fact, you could do the naughty with someone while watching your ultimate kink. There is zero risk of societal collapse due to a lack of sex.

jrl5432• 7 years ago

For now

chadmeister• 7 years ago

That's really rather dramatic. It will certainly lead to a lot of changes and society will function very differently, but pornography leading to the end of the world...really?

commandlinefan2• 7 years ago

Would that honestly be so terrible? Aren’t we running the risk of overpopulating ourselves out of existence anyway? If a quarter of society just sort of “drops out” into a fantasy world, and they’re happy there, not hurting anybody, what’s the problem?

iamatworknow• 7 years ago

One could argue that a problem would the type of people who would have access/interest in such a thing. Seems like it would largely be restricted to the (relatively) rich and tech savvy at first, and could precipitate a trend in these people no longer reproducing and passing down the genetics which may have played a role in the success that engendered their ability to acquire or use, not to mention develop, these products in the first place.

IX-103• 7 years ago

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.

mLuby• 7 years ago

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.

devonkim2• 7 years ago

I’m more concerned with the economic realities and the political changes that happen (see: Andrew Yang’s thesis for why our current POTUS was elected) prior to coming up with solutions and that our global power structure is not necessarily good for human progress long term. None of our predictions about technology matters if we hurtle ourselves into another world war that wipes out major areas that concentrate the vast majority of technologists and a second Dark Age occurs as religion and bigotry triumph over reason and tolerance - all because we create technology that must benefit the already-wealthy by design.

Much like the really facile conflict in the movie 2012, will all those 100 million be white and Asian winners of capitalism?

Lastly, human sexuality is super complicated and even with mass-produced customizable porn I’d expect a trend back to imperfect, flawed relationships like we have now eventually. I still see zero answers to what the female equivalent of porn is, so I don’t think every developed country will turn into a mirror of Japan (women may choose to emigrate to find love / purpose similar to how most single men tend to emigrate for economic reasons from developing countries). Most of the West is so culturally obsessed with sex and most Judeochristian religions dogmatically encouraging population growth I don’t see it being possible without a Dark Age of the world happening... which global war could indeed cause.

Funes-• 7 years ago

Younger generations, at least in the US, are already having much less sex than the ones that precede them[0]. Sexbots and on-demand creation of digital pornography will most definitely come--no pun intended--and fill a need that's being neglected more and more: having intimate relationships with actual people. It's bound to happen, I would say; especially if isolation, depression and anxiety rates keep their upward tendency.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex....

enriquto• 7 years ago

(...) we might have entirely generated ultra-realistic and ultra-specific pornography that will ultimately lead to people just not having sex...

This is really funny... the church has spent centuries trying to convince people to not fuck around, and now we are achieving this goal through porn.

DoofusOfDeath• 7 years ago

I see the humor in your post, but I think it misses a little about mainstream Christian theology:

IIUC, the idea is that people should fully enjoy sex for the purposes that God intended, but should limit themselves to that. (There are some secular arguments for/against adhering those those behaviors, but other reasons will depend on premises only meaningful to Christians.)

So Christian theology, in general, isn't to keep your pants on. It's to screw to your heart's desire with your spouse, but nobody else.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 7 years ago

People don’t have children because they want to have sex, they have children when they want to have children.

Even if something better than sex came into being, people’s wish to have children would be unaffected, and I doubt they would have any problem engaging in old-school sex for that purpose.

wool_gather• 7 years ago

This is true only where reliable birth control is readily available -- and used. Accidental pregnancy is pretty darn common.

dvfjsdhgfv• 7 years ago

People don’t have children because they want to have sex, they have children when they want to have children.

That's not completely true even in the so-called developed parts of the world.

LastZactionHero• 7 years ago

Ordinarily, Billy would work hard to make money with his paper route, then he'd use the money to buy dinner for Mavis, thus earning a slim chance to perform the reproductive act... But in a world where teens can date robots, why should he bother? Why should anyone bother?!

- Futurama, I Dated a Robot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrADTN-dvg

donatj• 7 years ago

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.

SketchySeaBeast3• 7 years ago

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.

Bakary4• 7 years ago

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

the_gastropod• 7 years ago

There have been at least two cases where the president has tweeted altered videos: 1. Showing Jim Acosta "karate chop" a Whitehouse intern (a few frames removed from the video to turn the lowering of an arm into a violent "chop" 2. A slowed down video of Nancy Pelosi speaking, to make her sound drunk / mentally incapacitated.

Deep Fakes or not, I think people are largely already comfortable with questioning the authenticity of videos.

otakucode3• 7 years ago

The solution was already known decades ago. Rene Magritte illustrated it well with his painting 'The Treachery of Images.' You've probably seen it. It's the one with the image of a pipe with the phrase, in French, below it saying "This is not a pipe."

Images are not reality, and society has yet to grasp that distinction despite the pervasiveness of images and how long they've been around. No amount of effort will ever make images into reality, nor reality as harmless as images. People do wish for, and maybe not unreasonably so, the ability to trust their eyes and initial perceptions. They want the picture they see on a screen and perform significant acts of interpretation upon to reach some belief that it represents something that happened in reality to be proven correct. But it almost never is. The difficulty of communicating with images is just as large as communication with language, it's just not acknowledged when images are involved.

bliblah• 7 years ago

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-p...

This just happened a few days ago and it was basic alterations and despite being authenticated as an altered video there are still those who:

-Deny it was altered

-Spread it for the sole purpose of misinformation

People will weaponize this technology like they do all others and gladly welcome it with open arms. We simply need to develop ways to identify and prevent abuse of powers.

no1youknowz• 7 years ago

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

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.

syllogism2• 7 years ago

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?

Retra5• 7 years ago

Are they though? It's hard to say someone is good at acting if they are put into roles where they basically play themselves. And moreover, what better way to act like someone else literally being someone else? Film studios are already keen to paste virtual masks on their actors.

In any case, somebody wants this.

syntheticnature3• 7 years ago

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.

ebg132• 7 years ago

Or how about having permission

Yes. How about having permission first?

When people talk about the ethics of deepfakes, they are talking about consent. What else do you think they're talking about?

buildzr• 7 years ago

If you keep something private, don't publish it or claim it's real, etc, what's the difference between making a deepfake of something and having a fantasy in your head?

pesmhey• 7 years ago

One alternative is to criminalize fantasizing about other people. Isn’t it gross that a person can create the likeness of another person in their mind and perform all sorts of sexual depravity with that unreal image? Absolutely disgusting and we need to do something about it.

pjc50• 7 years ago

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

Just like regular intellectual property licensing, either they won't even talk to you or it'll cost far more than you can afford. If you do it without permission you'll get takedown notices or worse.

The fake porn problem really should not be underestimated in a society that still does incredibly vicious slut-shaming. Previously you could argue that one could avoid this by not taking any nude photos or allowing your partner to do so, but once these things start getting generated from just a face it's going to be practically impossible to control it and the demand for legal action will grow.

flycaliguy• 7 years ago

I think you are imagining something that may be the end result of AI merging with the Netflix model.

Today Netflix produces shows by analyzing audience preferences. It's focus groups 2.0. In the future they might start generating shows based on individual preferences. Photo realistic content staring all your favorite actors in a plot you'll love in a setting you'll love. You might even be in it. Why not? Why not have every movie woven into your life? You could take this line of thought in some pretty crazy directions!

Hmmmm... Want to star in the greatest movie you've ever seen? No problem, just hand over every last detail about yourself!

Bakary4• 7 years ago

To paraphrase Henry Ford, wouldn't you end up in a situation where people ask for and get a horse carriage when they really would have wanted a car?

Personally the media that has had the greatest impact on me was also some of the most unexpected or unfamiliar.

otakucode3• 7 years ago

What I'm curious about is if the existing contracts actors sign with movie publishers that give them the rights to use the actors likeness in perpetuity mean they can use them via deepfakes and stop actually paying the actors. I imagine that deepfake technology was not imagined when people agreed to such contracts, and that it will have to be considered in the future. It would now be trivially easy for, say, Sony Pictures to make the next Mission Impossible film by hiring low-cost actors and digitally replacing their features with Tom Cruises without involving him financially at all.

Eleopteryx• 7 years ago

Just maybe the democratization of film

I've been thinking about this for a while. The "despecialized" versions of the Star Wars films prove that audiences can dictate the nature of a creative work in lieu of (or in spite of) its creator(s). It became apparent that eventually fan-edits of films, and fan-remakes of films, might eventually supplant the official material in certain cases.

But beyond the concept of "superior" or more popular versions of flawed films, there would be branching iterations that eventually are so distinct from their source material that they'd essentially be different things all together. Which is exciting to me.

sitkack• 7 years ago

This is wonderful for actors, it just made appearance a non-issue.

xgulfie2• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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

*it being some similar type of GANN

xgulfie2• 7 years ago

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.

turingbike• 7 years ago

This is not a bad pitch

inawarminister• 7 years ago

As ever, the weeb community is progressing faster in this regard: https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/index.html

There's already an algorithm for decensoring hentai pages [0, even reaches HN's front page last year], I'm not surprised if there are a few efforts trying to generate a whole comic from zero already lol.

The future will probably be automated scripts running in VR-MMD and bespoke engines, and it'd be probably a very good future for a while.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18328213

Edit: nevermind, seems furries also have their own generators, though I suspect anime girls (and boys), being more... standardised, have better outcome already. And the second link is about a different regulatory regime, but eh.

jdefr89• 7 years ago

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..

twic• 7 years ago

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

https://vimeo.com/306304445

yboris• 7 years ago

Thank you for sharing! This was great :)

Proven• 7 years ago

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?

tribune• 7 years ago

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

Bakary4• 7 years ago

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.

zupreme2• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

zupreme2• 7 years ago

I like the digital signature aspect.

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

spookybones• 7 years ago

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

keiru• 7 years ago

Yeah, but the resolution is shit

zzo38computer• 7 years ago

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