Apart from art could this in theory also work for photos as well? Y'know to damage all the photorealistic generative garbage and deepfake stuff?

Yeah, it works by tricking the machines into reading the shapes wrong, so it doesn’t matter what type of image you protect with it. I’m very hyped because my fanart and cosplay photos will be protected by this far better than just Glaze, which is more for protecting artworks from style theft.