[procedural_love]

> We assume, too, that face swapping is the end game, but it’s clearly just the beginning.

Isn't the end game an endless stream of personalized content for everyone? Wherein the entire corpus of human-created media becomes a training set for our fantasies.

It is interesting how entertainment is again pushing the boundary of technology. Soon enough this push to make face editing tools for porn more accessible to everyone will allow anyone to:

1) Replace their ex-husband's face in their old family videos with their new husband's face.

2) Create a viral video of Donald Trump murdering someone.

3) Be the star of their favourite movie, porn or otherwise. (What's the effect this would have on people's memories, when they actively see themselves doing everything James Bond does, for instance? Shooting people, being generally powerful, and "getting the girl"?)

[toomanybeersies]

Speaking of the effect this would have on peoples memories, there's also the potential to use these tools to gaslight [1] someone.

An abuser could make images where a person was at an event they were never at, or with a person they never met.

> "You've totally met Steve before, here's a photo of you with him, how do you not remember?"

An abuser could even more effectively tear down someones reality than ever before. If they were having an affair with someone they just met, they could claim to be old school friends catching up, just insert them into an old photo.

Obviously, it's not all bad. There is the potential for this to be used for good as well, but I'm a pessimist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

[Bartweiss]

I mean, there's presumably a very short window for that before photo evidence becomes unconvincing to people. The first time a Senator gets "exposed" for some misdeed but proves the evidence is fake, "there's a photo of this" loses its punch. The surrealism of seeing a fake recreation of oneself might have some impact, but we handled ultra-realistic paintings alright.

It does touch on an interesting point, though: we've had roughly 100 years in which photo and audio recreations of events constitute "hard evidence" beyond our ability to fully falsify. It appears that within the next ~20 years we'll lose that reliability - footage of a politician making a dirty deal or a businessman engaging in conspiracy will become deniable not just as a misleading edit, but as outright fabrication.

What do we do at that point? Do smartphone videos get automatically hashed and uploaded to a blockchain somewhere, so that we can prove when the video came into being? Do we return to an 1850s sense of news, where claims effectively cease to be falsifiable except via personal experience? Are we ready for any of this?

[psyc]

Don't shoot the messenger, but here are a couple more techno-morality scenarios:

* A browser extension that detects if the social media profile you're viewing face-matches any revenge-porn that's out there, and serves it to you

* A phone app that undresses people, or [woman < AGE], or whoever, in real-time via AI-guided compositing. Will this be considered as offensive as putting a mirror on your shoe?

* Digital VR girl/boy-friends ala the movie "Her", except with the face, body, and voice of anyone you choose

Suddenly all these things seem very close at hand.

[Y_Y]

I think it'd probably be safer putting a _lower_ limit on the age for your undressing app.

[Swizec]

I think we’re going to come to consider these things normal and mundane.

Anyone can see you fake naked at any time. Meh who cares.

Anyone can put you in any random video. Meh who cares.

Anyone can ... meh

We used to think it scandalous/offensive for someone to take photos of us. Now it’s just part of being outside. We don’t even think about the fact that everyone walka around with a camera.

[touristtam]

Well there was an app named "NameTag" back in 2014 that promised to find pictures online from a potential match [1], and some russian dude was matching pictures of strangers in the Moscow metropolitan train with online available pictures (I cannot find the article anymore unfortunately)

[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/nametag-facial-recognition-app-checks...

[antisthenes]

You should contact the Black Mirror writers and give them your ideas.

[IntronExon]

Things are going to get very weird in porn, when you don’t have convince a human to actually do it. I have to assume that early adopters will also be people with predilections which are unserved, or illegal. If people worry about their kids seeing disturbing porn now, imagine when it’s AI generated, photorealistic rape, snuff, child porn. Illegal or not, if it’s purely virtual law enforcement is going to focus on the subset of crimes which involve actual human victims.

[dragonwriter]

> If people worry about their kids seeing disturbing porn now, imagine when it’s AI generated, photorealistic rape, snuff, child porn.

There was a time when it was quite easy to find (without even trying for that specific content) photorealistic rape, snuff, bestiality, and child porn on the public web, without any AI involved.

> Illegal or not, if it’s purely virtual law enforcement is going to focus on the subset of crimes which involve actual human victims.

Actual prosecutions for virtual (generally not photorealistic) child porn in various jurisdictions demonstrate that this is not a hard and fast rule.

[scandox]

I think this progression will do no more than force an existing moral question into the open. What is the moral quality of a thought?

Personally I believe that even unspoken thoughts can have a strong moral dimension for the individual, though of course I see no legal dimension.

One aspect of this will be does our indulgence of our own negative fantasies weaken our capability to act rightly when presented with a real world moral choice and does that make us culpable...or more culpable if we make a wrong choice.

[jstarfish]

> imagine when it’s AI generated, photorealistic rape, snuff, child porn. Illegal or not, if it’s purely virtual law enforcement is going to focus on the subset of crimes which involve actual human victims.

In the US, all of that is already illegal. If you put yourself in a position where what you possess is indistinguishable from the real thing, the courts err on the side of the potential victim.

Law enforcement's priorities are not going to change; they don't distinguish between what's virtual or not. If it looks like CP, you can't point to a producer with valid 2257 documentation and it isn't obviously a cartoon, you're cooked.

[DanBC]

>Illegal or not, if it’s purely virtual law enforcement is going to focus on the subset of crimes which involve actual human victims.

I'm not convinced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Handley

[hndamien]

Will they really? There are already several thought crimes.

[djsumdog]

If we really had the Holodeck from Star Trek TNG, one of the first five uses would most likely be porn and/or a brothel.

[petercooper]

Isn't the end game an endless stream of personalized content for everyone?

We can keep going. Why would that be desirable? It hits the right chemical buttons in the brain. Drag it out far enough and we're really aiming at being blissed out brains in jars being fed shots of endorphins at the right intervals.

[psyc]

I think I'm partial to a variant of wireheading that sort of linearly shifts our perception of pain and pleasure. Getting an arm hacked off is like a bad headache, normal undesirable things are like a minor ache, normal day-to-day is like a fun night out, and orgasm is like ... I don't know, heroin I guess.

[ball_of_lint]

https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3662

[monksy]

> ex-husband's face in their old family videos with their new husband's face

Calm down Charlie Brooker.

[willejs]

Shut up Nathan Barley.

[opportune]

The technology for all of these exists, it's just a matter of motivation.

see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttGUiwfTYvg

[icc97]

People have been able to put celebrity faces on porn photos for decades.

I don't see how this is significantly different.

We could create a viral picture of Trump killing someone now.

[zodPod]

Number 3 is really exciting to me. Think about every movie making you the star of the action. That'd be insane!

[JetSpiegel]

Play any blockbuster FPS from the last decades to get a taste of this "future".