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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 21 2020, @02:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the alternate-history dept.

A Nixon Deepfake, a 'Moon Disaster' Speech and an Information Ecosystem at Risk

What can former U.S. president Richard Nixon possibly teach us about artificial intelligence today and the future of misinformation online? Nothing. The real Nixon died 26 years ago.

But an AI-generated likeness of him shines new light on a quickly evolving technology with sizable implications, both creative and destructive, for our current digital information ecosystem. Starting in 2019, media artists Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up with two AI companies, Canny AI and Respeecher, to create a posthumous deepfake. The synthetic video shows Nixon giving a speech he never intended to deliver—half a century after the subject it addresses.

Here's the (real) backstory: In July 1969, as the Apollo 11 astronauts glided through space on their trajectory toward the moon, William Safire, then one of Nixon's speechwriters, wrote "In Event of Moon Disaster" as a contingency. The speech is a beautiful homage to Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the two astronauts who descended to the lunar surface—never to return in this version of history. It ends by saying, "For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."

The full deepfake speech can be viewed at https://moondisaster.org.


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 21 2020, @04:25PM (3 children)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday July 21 2020, @04:25PM (#1024624)

    We might laugh at it now, but what about in the future when we are not around to tell them we faked this just cause we could. The history as we know it might be come interesting.

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2020, @04:30PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2020, @04:30PM (#1024630)

    Like the speech Obama made about Obamacare? "You can keep your doctor, you can keep your healthcare, it will be affordable to everyone"
    The Nixon deepfake is the same "truth" as Obamacare.

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 21 2020, @10:01PM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday July 21 2020, @10:01PM (#1024758)

      The Nixon deepfake is the same "truth" as Obamacare.

      Of course A/C, because as we all know, the Earth is flat, so how could the Moon possibly orbit it?

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 21 2020, @10:54PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 21 2020, @10:54PM (#1024771) Journal

      I don't know about you, but I kept my doctor and my health care.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.