Is this ethical?

[dablenparty]

The simple fact that even the examples show this tech being used with famous and political figures is deeply disturbing. I have already searched through the discussions with no results found for ethics. I have also read the statement in the README and I understand that you are taking “precautions” to prevent misuse, but I don’t think it’s enough. Your statement doesn’t even mention the misinformation or scam potential, which is also disturbing, especially after tech nearly identical to this was used in a $25M scam in Feb 2024. This repo has, essentially, taken technology that was previously only accessible to the most skilled and resourceful scammers and placed it in the hands of script kiddies. I fail to see how a repo like this has ANY ethical application whatsoever and I believe that even open sourcing this application was unethical.

[RUdiamondFF]

I am not connected to the deep-live-cam project. Your concerns are valid and you might be interested in following the $500,000 NEH grant (United States) to study these issues, announced the day after you wrote your comment.

https://chass.ncsu.edu/news/2024/08/28/nc-state-secures-500k-neh-grant-to-launch-ai-center-in-chass/

The only benefit I see with this deepfake technology is to continue to ensure females of all ages look "perfect" online, as in Jane Jetson's "morning mask" (e g., link below). You know this type of live face swapping software will bring in a lot of money, not just be used to screw up elections, wreck relationships, and incite wars. All the big make-up companies will have their own app! Of course there will be more screwed up kids, but who cares. (BTW I'm being facetious.)

https://youtu.be/EwOcT3sK8Eg?feature=shared

Good luck. This post will likely be removed so I hope you get this.

[dablenparty]

If you’re right and the authors are deleting discussions about ethicality (which is WILDLY unethical) then we should stop discussing it and start taking action to have this repo removed, just as a start.

[hacksider]

I never deleted any threads about ethics on this. And I am very aware you started this 2 days ago. ☺️

[dablenparty]

I’m relieved to hear you’re not deleting posts; however, you still haven’t addressed any of my concerns despite being aware of them since I made the post.

[hacksider]

The reason this was publicly made is for the awareness of everyone that this is possible. About the use cases, there are tons especially on the entertainment industry as well as discriminations and others as well.

This has been available for more than a year but only gained traction just this month.

I really don't want to answer this since you already put a conclusion so I leave the answer for the community who use this. Since ethics all ends up to the user and not the application itself. It's like saying torrent is bad, as well as tor and other tools being used maliciously aside from their proposed use case.

Either way, hoping you learn something from this tool. And hoping other experts learn from this tool as well (knowing this exist) and create a tool to prevent abuse on this kind of software.

[dablenparty]

Others have already replied to my concerns directly while you continue to dodge them. Trying to shirk responsibility by saying “ethics all ends up on the user” is irresponsible; ethics should be a concern at every step of the process, a process that heavily involves the author, i.e. you. With that said, I will ask one more time: I’ve read already about your steps to combat porn and gore and other explicit media, but what about misinformation? What steps have been taken to combat that? Why are you willing to mitigate some misuse, but not all of it? Following up, you’ve given me the use cases outlined in the readme, which again, I’ve already read, yet still have not commented on the ethicality of those cases either. For example, when Disney used deep fakes for Mark Hamill and CGI’d Carrie Fisher after her death, it brought up a lot of discourse on the entertainment industry about “immortalizing” someone for profit, especially since there really aren’t any laws surrounding this. Could you give me an example of this being used ethically?

As for your point on why you released this, I understand that it’s important to make the world aware that this is possible; however, you have also made it accessible, which is very different. Awareness can be raised in so many other ways like papers, articles, social media posts, or even getting in touch with security or AI researchers directly and letting them deal with it.

[J-Broadway]

There is no doubt this technology will perpetually be used for unethical purposes, perhaps the most disturbing of these being pornography.
I do not know whether or not the ease of access to deep fake technology will be a net positive or negative over the centuries to come. But I am biased in-favor of these technologies being publicly available for the sake of knowing that it's possible to do, since NOT knowing makes you particularly susceptible to deception.

In other words, if you don't know how easy it is to create deep fakes you are more vulnerable to its influence, which makes its use as a psychological weapon of control much more effective.

So I think it's a good thing to know that it is possible to do!
Not only is it possible, but it is relatively EASY! Especially if you are computer literate!
And by the time you read this comment it will be much easier!

That being said, it will take copious discussion, mountains of research, and many brave heroes to combat the monstrous egregore of pornography this technology will most certainly invigorate...

I cannot lie though that I am very happy I spent half of my day head scratching over errors, figuring out how to install this thing. I am happy because I was able to get it working!

I think what makes it acceptable to use though, is that I do not wish to use this tool to engross myself in a delusion of self-desires. Like many others, I will wield this as a tool for art—to express the uncanny and zany memes of our modern era, which is very much driven by these novel technologies becoming easily accessible to everyday people.

We are playing with a Promethean fire, and should fire cease to exist for the fact that it burns the ignorant?

[dablenparty]

Since it’s been two weeks and @hacksider still has not addressed my points, I’m going to assume he does not have the examples I asked for and would like to reiterate for anyone else who sees this: what are the ethical use cases for this repo?