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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Should one not be free to invoke the visages of Einstein, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ (whichever version - and there are so many!), Genghis Khan, Confucius, et al.?

What about when poking fun at Hitler, such as Kung Fury and Jojo Rabbit do? Off limits?

Can one paint Bob Ross in a sci-fi setting? Is that unethical? Is it okay so long as a "real" artist does it and not an "AI artist"? Or can we seriously never depict him again because someone might get angry?

"Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater"?

Come on!

And we can't animate Bruce Lee? Or put him on stickers? Or have him in new movies? (Nevermind how Quentin Tarantino did him wrong.)

When I grew up Elvis effigies were everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The people who liked this stuff are mostly dead or retired now so you don't see it as much, but it used to be a big deal. Really big deal.

So we can't do that anymore?

Abraham Lincoln hunts vampires for Christ's sake...

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I'm glad you're asking. If you notice no one has said, especially Zelda, that you can't do these things. Obviously you can. You have access to a computer. The question you should be asking is should you do these things?

Also, this a good list of false equivalences. Robin Williams, when public, was empathetic, emotional, and arguably humanist. His memory isn't a caricature from people who have never known him, as you would see from Star Trek holo-deck episodes featuring Leonardo Da Vanci. His memory is something that is deeply important to people who are living. Some of those people simply appreciated his art and his behavior. One of those people is his daughter. You don't get to say what is right or wrong here. No one's going to stop you if you want to make a video of Robin Williams taking the Siegfried Oath, but you should understand why it is wrong.

Doesn’t the should part just completely ignore how we all know the world actually works which is kind of its own form of insanity. We humans can’t be trusted to follow basic rules like traffic laws. Right and wrong cease to matter much when 1) I want to be selfish and do what I please and 2) there’s technically nobody being harmed, feelings aside. But even then, from a net perspective, there’s probably many more people getting enjoyment from these AI videos than the people who are saddened by them.

It sucks for Zelda this saddens her so much, but if I were in her shoes it’s something I know I can’t control and so I’d try to embrace or ignore it.

Haven't seen the videos, but she seems to complain of videos claiming to be authentic private videos of him stating a particular political message — and of these videos being forwarded to her (possibly for verification?).

This has nothing to do with impersonating a deceases person but about rewriting (personal) history she finds shameful.

> should you do these things?

Emphatically yes.

Just as freely as you use the words and language of dead people.

One day you won't even think about it. Well, your descendants won't. The aversion dies with you.

Squeamishness over thinking and speaking is pretty rare. Visual creation is just a new dimension of our conversation, and it'll be as accessible and common as writing words down.

You know the old generation called the world wide web satanic? They died and we stopped worrying about it.

I quite like truth, don't you? Or are you not a fan of it?

I mean I quite like jokes, metaphor, and libel, but one should probably have some restraint, details TBD.

Let's take speech away from people because they can't handle the freedom, then?

What should you not do here doesn't mean what will we stop you doing. It just means what's the wrong thing to do?

Maybe you're worrying about social pressure? I can see how general agreement that it's wrong to do XYZ can lead to forcibly preventing anybody at all from doing XYZ.

> Just as freely as you use the words and language of dead people.

I think you're the only person here who really gets it.

We already have dozens of methods commonly used for preserving/impersonating/representing people who aren't in the room, and who are possibly deceased. These mediums have evolved over time, from spoken word and song and music, to scribbles and drawings and painting and sculptures, to acting and plays, to writing and printing, to audio and video, to computerized media, to AI-generated computerized media.

Of course any medium can be used tastefully or distastefully. But what the people in this comment section are overwhelmingly reacting to (and attempting to moralize) is their distaste for the medium itself. Distaste for a new medium is extremely common throughout history, and if history is any indication, this distaste tends to disappear quickly as older generations die and are replaced by newer generations for whom this "newfangled contraption" feels like a natural part of the world.

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