This paper explores the moral permissibility of aesthetically enjoying non-consensual deepfake art - synthetic, ultra-realistic audio, visual, and audio-visual media. Recent studies on deepfakes have focused on epistemic threats, manipulation, and misinformation; little attention has been given to their artistic use, specifically at the intersection of art and the infringement of a person's right to personal data. This project addresses that gap by asking whether it is morally permissible to aesthetically enjoy such representations. Drawing on No & euml;l Carroll's deflationary approach to aesthetic experience and Robert Sparrow's framework on representation, normalization, and character from his "Robots, Rape, and Representation," the paper argues that aesthetic enjoyment of non-consensual deepfake art is morally problematic. Such artworks not only violate individual rights but also risk normalizing nonconsensual practices and cultivating the vicious character of their audience. This study concludes that non-consensual deepfake art, no matter how aesthetically enjoyable, is not exempt from moral scrutiny and recommends safeguards in its creation and consumption.
The use of generative AI tools (also known as algorithmic epistemic outsourcing), such as ChatGPT, has become increasingly prevalent among college students. Much of this appeal stems from their promise of productivity and convenience, particularly in reducing the cognitive effort required for tasks such as essay writing. While these technologies can enhance efficiency, their unreflective use, characterized by a passive cognitive surrender, raises serious concerns about genuine learning, the development of relevant intellectual skills, and the cultivation of proper dispositions toward inquiry. More troublingly, habitual offloading of cognitive tasks to algorithmic artifacts runs the risk of fostering defective and undesirable characterological states, especially overreliance. By employing Ian James Kidd's language of epistemic corruption and his method called corruptionist criticism, I argue that the increasing practice of algorithmic epistemic outsourcing constitutes what might be called an epistemically corrupting condition that facilitates the acquisition of the epistemic vice of overreliance. I also argue that this form of epistemic corruption is not intrinsic. Rather, it emerges conditionally as a result of specific psychological and institutional factors. Finally, I explore possible ways to address the conditional nature of such a corrupting process by considering a pedagogical strategy (educating for intellectual virtues), ameliorative strategy (educating against intellectual vices), and a systemic strategy that involves adopting a more humanistic form of education that puts a premium on the individual student's growth as a thinker, learner, and human being.
