Is it possible to generate this kind of funny image with your own face already? I know that there's all the deepfake type stuff people do but I assume with an image generator you get better quality.
This might be obvious but I'm very out of the loop on image generation
I've been using gocryptfs now for a few years and it works fine as you describe.
You initiate the encrypted folder, set up automatic backups for it. Then whenever you want to access it you mount it into another folder.
There is a distinction here between the permanently encrypted folder that you can upload backup whatever, and your temporary mount, unencrypted folder.
If you're alright with the rare conflicts to fix yourself something like syncthing works well for this setup even across computers.