It obviously differs from state to state and between countries, but deepfake is not illegal in the US (on a federal level). AI art is also not illegal, although there are some lawsuits pending that could set precedence on the issue.
You know what is illegal pretty much everywhere? Pirating. Yea. You did acknowledge this, but the irony is still pretty rich.
Leaving the legal issues aside, let's talk about the ethical aspect. The mechanics of how AI art works is extremely complicated, and I don't claim to understand it perfectly, but it's not storing a bunch of copyrighted images to mix and match. It's trained on an abstract level using publicly accessible data. So no, I don't find anything wrong with the AI doing something that humans have been doing forever, learning from their predecessors.
Deepfake porn is a bit more dubious on the ethical side. It certainly has the potential to be much more personally offensive to the individuals. I might be biased as a coomer who has fapped to celebrity fake pics, and then deepfakes, of their favorite celebs, but even I cannot truly justify celeb fakes on an ethical level, only a legal one.
This is a case of freedom of expression/parody vs defamation. This type of situation has to be litigated on a case by case basis. There are a lot of legal hurtles for celebrities because of their "public" status. They have a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher bar when it comes to defamation. Non-celebrities probably have a pretty good chance to win such a case though. But celebs have other avenues of legal recourse like the "right to protect one's image and likeness from commercial exploitation."
As for your claim that AI/deepfake will make the scene worse or something, that's just your doom and gloom. You could say the same thing about any tool that gets incorporated into the scene. Someone who hates HS can lament the proliferation of that tool to create lameass anime looking models. Someone who hates DAZ can lament the standardization of this program leading the the same models in every game. Someone who hates real-porn can complain about inconsistent images/scenes. Someone who hates RPGM can bitch about walking around simulators. Tools are just tools. What matters is how they use the tools.
