Like what kind of "bad actors" are they even talking about when they say they don't want their code to fall into the wrong hands?
Organised crime? If a big enough organised crime group wanted it you'd get stuffed into the back of a van.
CIA? MI6? You'd get stuffed into the back of a van. FSB? They'd invade the country to stuff you into the back of a van then bum 20 quid off you for diesel. Mossad? They'd break into your house and replace your computer with an identical fully-functional one made of polonium *while you were using it* and say they didn't do it, while showing AI-generated footage of a Russian doing it on TV and crediting you for the software they totally didn't steal.
As you say, the big bads have means regardless, and probably don't need it because they're often big enough to hire a lot of humans to do e.g. propaganda for them.
Now, imagine a conspiracy theorist. Not a harmless moon landing denier, but someone who is convinced that pizzagate was a real thing, and gets AI to fake mountains of "evidence" until the politicians that he or she is convinced did those things, are lynched, or at the very least become politically toxic.
Think it can't happen? Fake porn is already being used to harm random women, and real pictures from veterinary text books have been used as fake "evidence" of animal abuse.
AI is a tool that can make anyone more competent, but it doesn't make us better or wiser or kinder.
> ... real pictures from veterinary text books have been used as fake "evidence" of animal abuse.
I'll do you one better than that. Farms use a lot of seasonal workers and small farms in particular will hire people in for a week or so when things are busy. I know a farmer who hired in a bunch of folk to help over the shearing. It turns out that two of the people he hired wanted to film around the farm to capture some of the animal abuse that absolutely must be going on because farmers have nothing better to do, but they didn't find any. So figuring that they were never going to let themselves into the "inner secret animal abuse lair" or whatever the fuck was going through their stoned little minds, they decided to...
yup...
... film themselves kicking fuck out of some sheep, and pretend it was common practice among farm workers.
Organised crime? If a big enough organised crime group wanted it you'd get stuffed into the back of a van.
CIA? MI6? You'd get stuffed into the back of a van. FSB? They'd invade the country to stuff you into the back of a van then bum 20 quid off you for diesel. Mossad? They'd break into your house and replace your computer with an identical fully-functional one made of polonium *while you were using it* and say they didn't do it, while showing AI-generated footage of a Russian doing it on TV and crediting you for the software they totally didn't steal.