I like your pin shot

While we all await with dread what further harm Mudface Caligula will inflict on the country in connection with the midterm elections, here in Portland the news regarding voting season is being marked by some exquisite silliness. Reportedly, allegedly, the people behind the candidacy of that awful Shannon Singleton for Multnomah County chair have been busted for altering a photo of the second-worst candidate, Julia Brim-Edwards, using artificial intelligence. In some people's minds, this is a grave offense against democracy.

To me, it's not that big a deal. It's just the latest slip in a long slide down a slippery slope. The descent goes something like this:

1.  Is it okay to run ads attacking your opponent?

2.  In such ads, is it okay to use their photo or video?

3.  Is it okay to choose the least flattering photo or video of the person you can dig up?

4.  Is it okay to create an unflattering drawing or cartoon of the person, if it's clearly not a photo?

I think the First Amendment has something to say here, and the answer to all four of the foregoing questions is yes. In that case, we get to questions 5 and 6, which are raised by the current news stories:

5.  If you use what purports to be a photo or video, are you allowed to edit it at all?

6.  Which types of editing are okay, and which types are not okay? For example, is cropping or zooming less offensive than inserting material? What about adjusting hue and saturation?

Notice that so far, we haven't gotten to the issue that's grabbing today's headlines, which is that the challenged editing was done using artificial intelligence. To me, that's a relatively minor point.

I've been editing photos "manually" for years using Photoshop. If I'm editing in an unfair way, is it any worse that I'm using ChatGPT or Gemini to do it?