Let me address that. I do agree with you that there is a difference, but the context matters. In this case, Johnny is making these fakes with the faces of a bu

Let me address that. I do agree with you that there is a difference, but the context matters. In this case, Johnny is making these fakes with the faces of a bunch of the girls at school. Everyone knows they are fake. So in this sense, they are just the stick figure drawing. Johnny is not seriously trying to impugn the reputation of Belle. He is name calling in order to get a rise of out her for the amusement of him and his friends. It's wrong, it's mean, it's immature, and it should be punished, but it's very different from the following scenario, which is what I believe you are getting at. Let's say we have a woman, Jane, and she is engaged to her fiance Fred. Johnny generates fake nudes of Jane, and then he tells Fred, untruthfully, that Jane is unfaithful and that he slept with her last week... in fact she's been been begging for it and sending him nudes for months. Don't believe me? Here Fred, look for yourself... What is the difference between these two scenarios? It's like the difference between using a fake police badge or fake gun as a novelty, and using a fake police badge or fake gun to commit a crime. In the first scenario with Belle, nobody believes the nudes are real. They are a novelty. Johnny is being very mean and hurtful, but he's not crossed the line into slander. In the second scenario with Jane, the nudes are presented as real. They aren't novelties in this context, they are forgeries which have been created for the purpose of damaging Jane's reputation. I can come up with any number of other scenarios involving Johnny, Jane, and Fred that amount to the same thing that don't involve deep fakes or AI. I could also come up with tons of other ways to use generated images that are not sexual in nature as an element of committing crimes. Think about how we currently deal with fake things that are not new. If I pull a fake gun on you, presenting it to you as though it is real, and threaten you with it in order to compel you to hand over you wallet, then I have committed armed robbery, which is far more serious than regular unarmed robbery. That the gun is not real does not matter, it could be just my finger poking you in the back and I told you it's a gun. My expectation of your belief that it is real is enough to make it real in the criminal law sense. So yes, deep fakes can be and will be used in ways that lead to civil or even criminal liability, but so can gun shaped objects, costumes, powerpoint presentations, screenshots, handwritten letters, and countless other things. We aren't banning or restricting any of those things. So let's not be stupid and entertain this moral panic over generated images.