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This clip ratchets one of deepfakes’ most nauseating issues—faces that briefly glitch out of existence—up to 11, alternating between a series of dead-eyed robotic facial expressions all the while. It looks like something out of a horror movie and is, without a doubt, a telling herald of the grim, viscerally upsetting future just beyond the horizon of our grim, viscerally upsetting present.

It’s all pretty strange, given that game-derived video tools like Valve’s Source Filmmaker already have thriving porn communities surrounding them. You’d figure an engine that can basically recreate video game characters in most of their proper fidelity would be the logical endpoint of video game porn, rather than the Frankenstein disaster these video game deepfakes have given us. SFM videos, however, take hours upon hours of time and effort to make, not to mention a fair amount of know-how. Deepfakes might end up proving to be easier. On top of that, imagination is a large component of porn, and I’m sure some people have always wanted to see their favorite characters in the IRL flesh. I guess they don’t particularly mind if that flesh is technically somebody else’s.

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Deepfakes have also begun to worm their way into wider video game culture. I’ve come across clips purporting to depict people like Twitch streamer KittyPlays and cosplayer Jessica Nigri. It’s not entirely surprising, given that they’re both internet celebrities in their own rights, but they also present themselves as having more open, accessible personas than many traditional celebrities, making the practice of inserting their faces into porn feel even more invasive somehow.

At this point, video game deepfakes are still a small part of a niche (but rapidly growing) scene. Questions abound. What’s the legality of using real heads and bodies here? What about virtual ones attached to other people’s intellectual properties? What sort of impact will this have on things that aren’t porn, if anyone ever gets around to taking a break from making porn for more than two seconds? Only one thing is certain: it’s all really, really fucking weird.

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Update - 2:20 PM, 2/7/18: The Deepfakes subreddit has been shut down for violating Reddit’s policy against “involuntary pornography.” Given how much press the subreddit got for months, it’s a bit odd that it took this long for Reddit to put its foot down.