> It was already viable to Photoshop someone's face into existing pornography. New tooling just lowers the barrier to execution. Consider libel laws. (Because,

> It was already viable to Photoshop someone's face into existing pornography. New tooling just lowers the barrier to execution. Consider libel laws. (Because, if you think about it, "explicit deepfakes" are essentially "visual libel" — scandalous claims made through visual rather than written "evidence.") For a statement to be considered libellous, it has to be false, known as false to the writer/distributor of the statement, and written/distributed with an intent to cause harm. But there's an implicit proposition there — that certain statements can cause harm. Which has its own requirements: for a statement to be potentially harmful, it has to make a claim that if believed would result in reputational damage; and it has to be convincing / be likely to be believed by the common man. A statement isn't libellous if it's prima-facie false — that is, if nobody is likely to believe it. Photoshopping someone's face onto some random person's body is easy enough to spot, that it has usually been considered (the visual equivalent of) a prima-facie false statement. A deepfake is only bad insofar as it becomes increasingly impossible to spot the problems with it, and so becomes (the visual equivalent of) a prima-facie true statement — actual libel.