Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Person Replacement in Everyday Video Editing Tools

Abstract

Digital video has become a primary medium for everyday communication, entertainment, and informal documentation, and its production is increasingly shaped by consumer-friendly editing tools embedded into mobile applications and web platforms. A notable development within this ecosystem is person replacement, where the visible identity of an individual in a video is substituted with another person while preserving the surrounding context and motion. What was once the domain of professional visual effects and specialized deepfake workflows now appears as a selectable effect or template alongside filters and transitions. This integration into ordinary tools changes the conditions under which people appear, or seem to appear, in videos, and complicates long-standing assumptions about consent, authenticity, and responsibility. This paper examines the ethical, legal, and societal implications of person replacement when it functions as a routine, low-friction capability available to non-expert users. It treats person replacement as a socio-technical practice shaped by technical architectures, interface design, platform governance, and existing cultural norms. The discussion addresses how identity and self-presentation are negotiated when people can be inserted into or removed from scenes with minimal effort, how existing legal frameworks such as privacy and personality rights intersect with mass access to synthetic identity manipulation, and how trust, power, and inequality are affected at scale. The paper also considers design and governance strategies for everyday tools, including consent mechanisms, labeling practices, and accountability structures, with attention to trade-offs rather than prescriptions.