Posted on 07/22/2020 9:57:02 AM PDT by rickmichaels
President Richard Nixon had a speech prepared in case the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing ended in tragedy. Thankfully, it was never broadcast. But now, thanks to a very convincing deepfake video lasting some seven minutes, we can see what might have been.
MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality launched their project, titled In the Event of Moon Disaster, on Monday to show the dangers of deepfake videos currently spreading all over the Internet. The project took about half a year to complete. It was previously shown at a physical art installation in the fall of 2019, as part of a recreation of a 1960s-era living room, but this is the first time it has been open to the wider public.
Deepfake videos rely on artificial intelligence to make a person’s facial movements and voice sound convincing — sometimes indistinguishable from the real person. In this case Nixon’s speech, which can be found in full at the National Archives, was read aloud by an actor.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace,” Nixon says in the speech, written by speechwriter William Safire, referring to astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Thankfully, of course, all astronauts did in fact return safe and sound.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
(Announcement starts at 4:40)
He wrote a speech for it. FDR had a speech for D-day failing. Ike had a resignation letter for D-day failing. Best to plan ahead sometimes.
“My fellow Americans,
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I saw them crash
and you saw it too.”
Saw William Saffire on one of the Sunday shows years ago talking about the what if. He had written the speech for Nixon if the worst had happened.
As with Photoshop and digital images, in a few years, the accuracy and reliability of surveillance video will always be suspect.
That deepfake could have helped making the cheap horror film, Apollo 18, appear even more historically authentic by putting deep fakes of the President in them.
Newt Gingrich wrote alternate reality novels about Lee winning at Gettysburg and the aftermath. I’m not personally fond of such, but that type of premise does have an audience.
The real danger of Deep Fakes is an October Surprise release of an “open mic comment” or other fake-but-compromising situation designed to sway voters.
The election eve release of Bush’s decades old DWI arrest cost him the 2000 “popular vote”. It was a measurable loss and Gore’s boasted “Popular vote victory” was only by a 0.51% margin (half of 1 percent).
Dan Rather and AP tried to steal the 2004 election with some forged “national guard” memos. Nobody went to prison over that and CBS affiliates did not lose their FCC licenses. The FEC didn’t even punish them.
If they had dropped their Waco bomb closer to the election they might have survived the backlash over the MS Word origins of the document.
After the Apollo 1 disaster, you would think it would be wise to have a speech ready if the worst did happen.
“was read aloud by an actor.”
Interesting that the technology to make authentic fake video look good has been around at least since the movie Forrest Gump, but we don’t have the tech yet to produce authentic-sounding synthesized voices.
Do you know where Krista McAuliffe went on her vacation?
All over Florida.
The ‘disaster video’ has been known for years and years. I saw the transcript of the video on the NASA channel, for goodness’ sake!.
These people are really sick, seriously!
There are lots of what-ifs I like to explore in history.
This is not one of them.
“What if” is happening to America as we live it.
The speech was written, but Nixon never read it on camera.
“The speech was written, but Nixon never read it on camera.”
I know that. In addition, I did not say that it was ever read on camera, only that the transcript of the video was known by everyone who wanted to know.
Um, it's not a transcript of a video if there was never any video to be transcribed.
If you want to be such a technical asinine I shall try to be more specific: There was a transcript of what would be read if there had been a would-be video.
Does that satisfy your highness?
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