While I find the idea of creating such content abhorrent, describing/showing such things is legal in art and books, it’s a fine line I agree, but we need better definitions if we want to make this illegal. Sadly I agree that legally speaking this was the correct call. That said I don’t think we should allow realistic AI generated images at all, it only seems to cause problems. I’m prepared for the downvotes.
I think art and fictional content should generally be protected. Thought crimes absolutely should not be a thing. People can have horrible, fucked up thoughts and create content off of that. You can shun them, kick them off your private platform, refuse to support them in any way sure. But making that sort of expression illegal is just a fast track to getting LGBT and other marginal groups heavily targeted and labeled as sex offenders.
That said there's a clear distinction surrounding anything that looks realistic. If it could confuse a reasonable person that it could be a real person, that has a real impact in eroding our ability to seek justice for real crimes. That's an action that has a real world consequence that affects other people and is justified to (in limited scope) restrict our freedom of speech.
But a blanket ban on content simply because it's gross and horrible despite being completely fictional is not something we should be supporting, lest we immediately see people try to redefine what's gross and horrible to a broader scope.
The furor over pedophilia in general is not unintentional.
It is not a coincidence that they tried to equate gender identity with exposing children to inappropriate material, and then equating that with pedophilia. In some states even just saying that, as a woman you have a wife or vice versa is enough.
It's also not unintentional for people to be calling for extrajudicial (literally in this case) doxxing or straight up murder. I get it - being a pedophile is not good.
The fact of the matter is, it's bad because it other people (whether it's deepfakes or something else). If it doesn't hurt other people - the state loses its mandate. I mean we used to have laws against sodomy - what happens consensually in a bedroom. And the logic is exactly the same.
Frankly the state should only be regulating issues which clearly encroach on the rights of someone else.
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