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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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I find myself confused about what exactly you're asking for necessary and sufficient conditions for?

I offer these general points in the hope they'll help, as I wonder if there was some misunderstanding upthread:

  1. Creating and distributing lifelike fakes with intent to deceive (AI generated or not) is likely more injurious than creating and distributing sketches, actor representations etc.

  2. Creating and distributing non-lifelike images (e.g. paintings, caricatures, actor representations) cannot simply trick people, but could still change how someone is viewed, perhaps forever, and therefore still be injurious. (Every time I think of British PM John Major, I see him as his grey underpanted caricature, an example where the injury to Major is easily justified to my mind by its satirical value.)

  3. Creating and distributing a convincing fake with an 'AI generated' watermark is somewhere in between these two – a lifelike fake with seemingly no intent to deceive. Because extremely lifelike, this case allows room for doubt as to whether the watermark is true, plus the very existence of the image brings the possibility of deceit firmly into play (e.g. a watermark can be easily removed).