True, but I think your caveat is covered by my assertion regarding the intent of the tool.
The intent of deepfake software is clearly either fraud or development of deepfake detection tools. If you're a vendor and your intent is the latter, it would be morally commendable to do your best to sell to reputable customers only... but with security tools like this the authorial intent almost doesn't (and shouldn't) factor in. Unfortunately, if you try to go soft so it won't "hurt someone" then the fraud detection R&D can't be as robust.
Regarding guns, they're either for killing people, killing varmints/animals, or defending oneself against bad guys. As a salesperson, you can reserve the right to refuse sales to known crooks -- that would be morally commendable (as far as it's possible). But it's your decision based on your own judgment. As far as the gun itself is concerned, if as a manufacturer your intent is defense against bad guys (or legal hunting/varmint control) and your product reflects that intent, then you're morally in the clear.
Incidentally, I'm strongly against sales of surplus military gear to police departments, because of the mixing of intentions that are at-odds. The intent of military gear is to fight foreign armies commanded by bad guys -- which is an intent that police departments should never have, as they're dealing with civilians. That's why in the US, we have the National Guard if an army of bad guys ever appears within our borders--it's different from the police, with different training and different intent.
"The intent of deepfake software is clearly either fraud or development of deepfake detection tools. "
I think there are a ton of positive, creative uses of it. For instance de-aging an actor for a flashback sequence, with their permission. Deepfake software can potentially do this way cheaper than the state of the art, such as the young Tony Stark / Peter Quill's dad / Leia. And eventually, it should be able to do it better. When the technology is truly indetectable, it will be used all over the place in filmmaking and even video games.
Maybe I'm older than you, but I remember being worried about those newfangled bulldozers making us ditchdiggers obsolete. :)
Or how about movies making stage actors (and set builders, etc) obsolete? I mean, when you only have to act it out once and millions can see your performance, as opposed to actors performing shows every night in small venues in towns all over the country, it puts a lot of people out of work. There are pretty few people today making a living as actors.
And of course photography put portrait painters out of work. And high quality cameras in cell phones probably put a lot of photographers out of work.
What might happen is that there will still be actors, but all they have to do is act, not be beautiful. They can use a model for the beautiful part. And then you can have talented people on computers merging it all together.
I do like the idea of bedroom production of movies, which can happen if you don't need actors. Previously, if you want to be a film director, you needed to be born into a rich family, and then after extremely expensive film school, you needed to get big money to finance your movies. So there's that.
The intent of deepfake software is clearly either fraud or development of deepfake detection tools. If you're a vendor and your intent is the latter, it would be morally commendable to do your best to sell to reputable customers only... but with security tools like this the authorial intent almost doesn't (and shouldn't) factor in. Unfortunately, if you try to go soft so it won't "hurt someone" then the fraud detection R&D can't be as robust.
Regarding guns, they're either for killing people, killing varmints/animals, or defending oneself against bad guys. As a salesperson, you can reserve the right to refuse sales to known crooks -- that would be morally commendable (as far as it's possible). But it's your decision based on your own judgment. As far as the gun itself is concerned, if as a manufacturer your intent is defense against bad guys (or legal hunting/varmint control) and your product reflects that intent, then you're morally in the clear.
Incidentally, I'm strongly against sales of surplus military gear to police departments, because of the mixing of intentions that are at-odds. The intent of military gear is to fight foreign armies commanded by bad guys -- which is an intent that police departments should never have, as they're dealing with civilians. That's why in the US, we have the National Guard if an army of bad guys ever appears within our borders--it's different from the police, with different training and different intent.