I guess I can tell you all, that this question is partly inspired by the Star Trek: TNG episode Hollow Pursuits.
If you’ll remember, Barclay was recreating actual crew members in the holodeck. Commander Riker said crewmen shouldn’t be recreated on the holodeck. Geordi Laforge replied that there really is no actual rule that says they can’t.
Clearly in the distant or not-too-distant future, advanced virtual reality will be available. And this question will come up. Is it ethically permissible to recreate a real person without their permission? I mean, would it be an unethical invasion of their privacy? What about if they were famous? What if it was sexual? And lastly, what if, whoever they were, they never found out?
Disclaimer about this being professional or expert advice, but according to this page you have to worry about potential defamation, invasion of privacy, and misappropriation of the right of publicity. So the sick holo-porn or whatever they have on Star Trek may result in defamation lawsuits. The above blog mentions common tricks to reduce this risk, like changing the character’s name, life history, and physical characteristics; resorting to obvious parody; including disclaimers.
It does seem better to avoid gross invasions of privacy, utter libel, and that sort of thing, but there should be nothing wrong with mordant epigrams, etc.
IIRC the Star Trek episode in question featured some lame parodies of crew members, but in any case it was not meant for public consumption and was viewed by accident. A better Star Trek ethical question is whether it is permissible to create sentient holo-life for one’s personal amusement and debauchery, like on Westworld, which is obviously bad; in some episodes it was possible, but the writers are never consistent about that sort of thing.
You could argue that this is a real thing right now. With software + some hardware + some know how + some time it is possible to put faces of celebrities (or of people you know, if you have enough photos/footage) into existing porn. According to a radio interview about deep fakes, this has been done and released to the internet. It could also be done for one so own consumption.
I think this is very much like the Holodeck example.
BTW, not to hijack, BUT… IMHO until the Borg showed up, all the best NextGen episodes seemed to happen on the Holodeck. Made me wonder why they even built starships, why not just bays and bays of Holodecks.
Future? I recall this same ethical argument from high school 40 years ago. Is it okay to clip the faces of crushes from yearbooks and paste them on the bodies of Playboy models? (The intended use of these composites were obvious to any 15 year old boy) Everybody agreed it was creepy but nobody could demonstrate that the unaware crush was harmed in any way.
