The internet made photos of trump and putin kissing shirtless.
And is that OK?
I’m going to jump in on this one and say yes - it’s mostly fine.
I look at these things through the lens of the harm they do and the benefits they deliver - consequentialism and act utilitarianism.
The benefits are artistic, comedic and political.
The “harm” is that Putin and or Trump might feel bad, maaaaaaybe enough that they’d kill themselves. All that gets put back up under benefits as far as I’m concerned - they’re both extremely powerful monsters that have done and will continue to do incredible harm.
The real harm is that such works risk normalising this treatment of regular folk, which is genuinely harmful. I think that’s unlikely, but it’s impossible to rule out.
Similarly, the dissemination of the kinds of AI fakes under discussion is a negative because they do serious,measurable harm.
He’s doin’ it for the 'gram.