photos

They aren't photos. They're photorealistic drawings done by computer algorithms. This might seem like a tiny quibble to many, but as far as I can tell it is the crux of the entire issue.

There isn't any actual private information about the girls being disclosed. The algorithms, for example, do not and could not know about and produce an unseen birthmark, mole, tattoo, piercing, etc. A photograph would have that information. What is being shown is an approxomation of what similar looking girls in the training set look like, with the girls' faces stiched on top. That is categorically different than something like revenge porn which is purely private information specific to the individual.

I'm sure it doesn't feel all that different to the girls in the pics, or to the boys looking at it for that matter. There is some degree of harm here without question. But we must tread lightly because there is real danger in categorizing algorithmic guesswork as reliable which many authoritarian types are desperate to do.

https://www.wired.com/story/parabon-nanolabs-dna-face-models-police-facial-recognition/

This is the other side of the same coin. We cannot start treating the output of neural networks as facts. These are error prone black-boxes and that fact must be driven hard into the consciousness of every living person.

For some, I'm sure purely unrelated reason, I feel like reading Phillip K Dick again...