> How is it a “new problem” when painting has existed for a 1000 years and photo-realistic painted had existed for at least 100.
The effort involved matters. Machine guns present societal challenges slingshots do not, despite them being essentially the same "throw an object at someone fast" technology.
They didn’t change the morality or legality of hurling a blunt object at one’s head resulting in their death. Using a slingshot in that manner was just ad illegal and morally reprehensible as pulling the trigger on a machine gun pointed at someone’s head.
I’m focusing on the notion of legality and ethics.
It does change the morality and legality of providing the tool, though. Give a slingshot to a kid and no one will blink an eye; give them a machine gun and you're likely to meet a bit more resistance... even if they never shoot it at someone.
So are we in agreement that the author of these AI tools should be morally and legally free to make synthesized videos of Halle Berry having sex with Bill Cosby?
Effort is over-rated and with "mere" creativity and taste you can get very satisfying results by cutting and pasting fragments of magazines (or fragments of vanilla internet photos.) Halle and Bill included.
Effort is the core of the problem, as it affects speed and access. Most of the tech industry is built on scaling things and expanding access by making them cheaper.
A government could pay 500 people to watch 500 cameras and look for someone, but cheap cameras and cheap storage to save weeks of footage and AI facial recognition raise societal problems even though by your definition no new capabilities were created.
Effort is the core of SOME problems - like you describe - and not the core of others. There is an audience for personality porn. It's probably a medium audience for "real photos and videos" smuggled or hacked out. It's probably a small audience for fan fic style. I doubt it will keep many artists fed, with generative AI or not. There is a tiny market for revenge porn - and it's already highly illegal. Does it change things that anyone can now create revenge porn out of the blue? Yes, a little - you still need someone to want to use revenge porn. Does it shake the foundation of our civilization? No.
This is a problem that was raised at the beginning of anonymous remailers. Some people were very upset to be receiving death threats "enabled by that remailer" and seemed totally unconcerned that someone close to them was mad enough to send death threats. Talk about misplaced concern.
There is a big market for high-bandwidth porn: videos and streams. And for now it seems to crave volume and freshness. Even then, for now that market seems to crave humanness, real actual performers - all the better if you can message them. So even there, not much threat - for now.
The effort involved matters. Machine guns present societal challenges slingshots do not, despite them being essentially the same "throw an object at someone fast" technology.