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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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For example taking a picture from a celebrity's instagram and using AI to transform it into a high-fidelity (but technically fake) nude picture of them seems functionally the same as i.e. spying on them in the shower or when they're changing, which are actions I think we can all agree would be some form of wrong or illegal sexual violation (or perhaps we can't? you tell me).

There's a difference in that spying on people involves an intrusion into their private space and sometimes even the threat of more violent acts. It means I have some way of getting into your house, or taking control of your personal devices, or that I have snuck into changing rooms that I shouldn't be in. It's wrong because the steps to doing it in the first place are wrong and because it signals that you don't respect boundaries, your sense of security in your own home is damaged if someone does this to you.

The only instances of deepfakes being used to cause harm that I can think of involve some second step which it is much less philosophically complicated to sanction. If I want to use it to damage your reputation, well that's straightforwardly wrong, but the wrong there is in how the image was used not how it was produced. It's wrong in a simple way, the way in which painting a nude and telling your partner that you posed for it in my living room (assuming that's out of character for you) is wrong.

When someone doesn't want you to see deepfakes of them, doing so violates their boundaries.

So, when is it wrong to violate boundaries?

We don't consider all boundaries sacred, and in fact consider some of them dumb or even harmful.

But even when someone violates a non-sacred boundary, we still usually think of them as a jerk.

Where does this one stand?