Deepfakes are wrong even if they don't hurt anyone.
April 17, 2026
Original Paper
Deepfakes at Face Value: Image and Authority
arXiv · 2604.12490
The Takeaway
Most people argue that deepfakes are bad because they lead to fraud or reputation damage. This paper makes a much deeper claim: deepfakes are a violation of your 'right to authority' over your own identity. It’s not about the harm; it’s about the fact that someone else is simulating your agency without your permission. This shifts the debate from a 'harm-based' legal standard to a 'rights-based' one. It means that even a 'harmless' or 'funny' deepfake of you is an ethical violation because it steals your right to decide how you show up in the world.
From the abstract
Deepfakes are synthetic media that superimpose or generate someone's likeness on to pre-existing sound, images, or videos using deep learning methods. Existing accounts of the wrongs involved in creating and distributing deepfakes focus on the harms they cause or the non-normative interests they violate. However, these approaches do not explain how deepfakes can be wrongful even when they cause no harm or set back any other non-normative interest. To address this issue, this paper identifies a n