If someone makes a deepfake on their own computer, watches it, and doesn't share it with anybody, I don't see how that's markedly different (morally) from just imagining the same thing. Some people have a very strong visual imagination and others don't have it at all, it's only fair if they can use a technological substitute.
Also some entertainment works by artificially instilling a desire which cannot be fulfilled. If people can use deepfakes and masturbation to defuse that desire it might be a moral positive for them.
I think it's a fundamentally different thing, morally speaking.
Imagination is fleeting, ephemeral, jumbled, and usually linked to a specific state of mind that passes once the person has either grown bored of the imagination of achieved whatever satisfaction they wanted from it.
A deep fake image or video is persistent on your device and may leak some day, but worse is that feels real in a way mere imagination never can and it's something a person could go back to over and over, feeding into and enhancing their obsession with the non-consenting person.
I think it's a bad thing in ways that imagination and porn are not.
What if I photoshop my crush's face onto a naked body? Wouldn't that be similar to having a personal deepfake?
I agree with the person you're replying to, you can't stop people doing these things in the privacy of their own home and these deepfakes are functionally similar to other photo / video editing techniques.
_Distributing_ those photoshops / deepfakes is another thing entirely though, and one I am fully against.
My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets.
Of course it took years for me to perfect my artistic skill in the area of erotic fingernail sculptures and by that time anyone could afford a Photoshop license.
The question wasn't whether people can be stopped from doing it, because for the most part they can't be, but whether it's moral. Or at least different in a moral sense from merely imagining someone else doing those actions.
And yes, photoshopping your crush's face onto a naked body is just as unethical and immoral, even if done in the privacy of your own home, for the same reasons I mentioned above.
Compared to deep fakes, however, it has a much higher effort, lower reward, and less realism, which acts as its own inhibitor. Deep fake generators are becoming trivial to use, and not just for one or two pictures but for as many videos as you'd want. That's going to result in a very different driver of obsession.
> photoshopping your crush's face onto a naked body is just as unethical and immoral, even if done in the privacy of your own home, for the same reasons I mentioned above.
The reasons you mentioned above were "it feels more real than imagination" and "a person could go back to it over and over, enhancing their obsession with the non-consenting person". These are not moral bads that require a "no lusting after people, even in your heart" style rule. Being obsessed with people starts in high school and can persist for decades. They never find out, and it never hurts them.
I'm sure many people would like to take away others' ability to picture them naked, but fortunately they didn't have the ability to enforce that by starting a moral crusade against a Github repo. It's one of life's innocent little pleasures.
I never said this was about a "no lusting after people, even in your heart" rule, nor do I believe it should be. If someone lusts after someone else in their head and never does anything to harm the other person there's obviously nothing wrong with that.
It's immoral because it's creating something persistent that could harm someone without their consent, amongst other things.
I also question your assertion that obsessions of this type are always harmless, because it's obvious that many are not and escalate into outright stalking, confrontations, or worse, and anything that makes that sort of obsession more likely or helps to enhance it where it exists increases the chances of that happening.
Morality evolves with technology. At some point in the future even killing someone migh not be very immoral if technology reaches the point where we can back up and recover from back up.
Maybe, but what’s the relevance? We can’t predict that, nor can we adjust today’s morality to match what technology might enable in future.
Perhaps murder will one day be not very immoral, but that doesn’t mean we should treat it any differently today.
Right now, creating fake naked pictures and videos of real and non-consenting people is immoral. In some jurisdictions it’s illegal. It’s also probably harmful, by taking obsessions further than mere imagination would allow.
Also some entertainment works by artificially instilling a desire which cannot be fulfilled. If people can use deepfakes and masturbation to defuse that desire it might be a moral positive for them.