This Deepfake Exhibition Shows How Convincing the New Technology Can Be

The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, has a new exhibition that will put your skills to the test, according to Gothamist’s Jennifer Vanasco. “Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen” looks at the technology of deepfakes—deceptive videos created using artificial intelligence and machine learning—and how they’re used to manipulate viewers, reports Eileen Kinsella for ArtNet News.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the video In Event of Moon Disaster, a six-minute film produced by the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Media: Documentary this year, according to ArtDaily. Set in a 1960s-style living room replete with patterned wallpaper and two armchairs, the film plays on a vintage console TV, depicting the 1969 launch of Apollo 11, reports the Gothamist.

Walter Cronkite helms the program, and news clips depict excited crowds, waving astronauts and a blastoff countdown. But the program cuts to static post-launch, returning with the image of Richard Nixon sitting at his desk in front of an American flag.

Yeah, you can’t say “Pics or it didn’t happen” anymore, can you?

This is why I gave up watching TV and related (like nfx) a long time ago. I never was a dedicated TV watcher - the times in my life when I did spend more than an hour or so a week watching TV were times when I was under great stress or in great pain and needed a distraction. (Believe me, I’ve got plenty of distractions now! Does anybody want a few?)

But all TV is like this. Sometimes your perceptions are manipulated very subtly but usually it’s more like a punch in the face.

Some folks can’t get enough of this stuff. The spend their whole lives working on some hoax or another. They get a lot of practice and get pretty good at it.

It’s not that I’m afraid of having my perceptions drastically altered by a video - I just don’t like being lied to and having my time wasted. I have pretty much done the same with TV as I have with a lot of people: “If you keep lying to me, I will kick you out and lock you out of the house.”

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