Consent and Other People's Data

Imagine a friend takes a photo of you at a party looking silly and posts it online without asking. Now imagine an AI uses that photo to create a fake video of you saying things you never said. Both situations involve your image and identity being used without your permission. The first is rude. The second is potentially harmful and in many places illegal. Both involve the same core ethical problem: consent was not given.

What Consent Means

Consent means permission freely given, by someone with enough information to understand what they are agreeing to. Three parts of that definition matter. Freely given means not coerced or pressured. If someone only agreed because they felt they had no choice, that is not real consent. By someone with enough information means the person knows what they are consenting to — not a vague 'we may use your data in various ways' buried on page 47 of a terms of service document. With understanding means the person genuinely grasps what they approved. A 10-year-old clicking 'I agree' on a legal document does not constitute informed consent. In everyday life: if you want to post a photo of a friend online, ask first. That is consent. If you want to tag someone's location, ask first. If you want to train an AI on someone else's writing samples, you need their permission.

Facial Recognition and the Consent Problem

Facial recognition is an AI technology that identifies individuals from photos or video. It is used in phone unlocking, airport security, and law enforcement. It also raises one of the most acute consent problems in modern AI. When a tech company trains a facial recognition model, it needs millions of labeled photos. Many early systems trained on photos scraped from the internet — photos that people posted of themselves or their families without ever imagining they were contributing to a facial recognition database. Those people did not consent to their faces being used that way. Several cities have banned or restricted facial recognition in public spaces for this reason. The technology is capable. The consent question is unresolved.

Deepfakes and Digital Identity

A deepfake is a realistic AI-generated video or audio recording in which a real person appears to say or do something they never actually said or did. Early deepfakes required expert knowledge to create. Today, free apps can create convincing deepfakes from a handful of photos. The ethical problem is clear: a deepfake uses a real person's identity without consent and can spread false impressions of their words, actions, or character. Deepfakes have been used to create nonconsensual intimate images, spread political disinformation, and harass individuals. Using, sharing, or creating deepfakes of real people without their consent is a serious ethical violation, and in many jurisdictions it is increasingly illegal.