That could be dialog in another language. magic” to tweak existing source video showing a person speaking so that their lips and associated facial expressions match dubbed words. This process, which could one day conceivably replace subtitles in movies, allows video makers to use “A.I.
To create the visual side of the project, MIT partnered with an Israeli company called Canny A.I., which carries out what it calls video dialog replacement. We wanted to make the most convincing pieces of synthetic media that we could and so decided to do both visual and audio deep fakes.” Creating the illusion “We did not do a quick face swap like most deep fakes. “Synthetic media is not easy to do,” co-director Francesca Panetta, XR Creative Director at the Center for Advanced Virtuality, told Digital Trends. Creating it took several months, a hired actor, a studio shoot, and an international team of researchers. bmeH2JQrqnįew homebrew deepfakes have been quite as convincing as MIT’s creation, however. We’ve covered no shortage of compelling deepfakes at Digital Trends, whether it’s the ominous message from 2019 in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to gloat about “ millions of people’s stolen data” or the hilarious video, created especially for us, depicting Ryan Reynolds as Willy Wonka (which was retweeted by the Deadpool actor himself). It’s accompanied by a website that provides plenty of alternate history documentation on the parallel history that never was - along with a 30-minute documentary titled “To Make a Deepfake.”įor those unfamiliar with the term, deepfakes use artificial intelligence to edit video or audio to make it sound as though a person is saying or doing things that they’ve never done. Launched Monday, MIT’s “ In Event of Moon Disaster” project shines a light on the power of deepfake video and audio by doctoring authentic video of Nixon’s real 1969 broadcast about the successful moon landing to show him reading the contingency speech. We all know how it went - unless you’re one of the people convinced it was faked and the actual landing footage was directed in a studio by Stanley Kubrick.īut researchers from the Center for Advanced Virtuality at MIT are offering a glimpse into an alternate version of history in which this speech was given. The Apollo 11 mission was, well, the Apollo 11 mission. Of course, in reality, Nixon never had to deliver the speech. It notes that humanity must always remember that “there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”
Written by Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire, who passed away in 2009, the July 18, 1969, contingency speech was how America’s 37th president would have publicly addressed a national (and, really, international) tragedy. Such are the words of what historians often refer to as the “contingency speech” - the backup address written prior to the 1969 moon landing in case the Apollo 11 mission went terribly, terribly wrong. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.” These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. “Fate has ordained,” said President Nixon, staring solemnly into the enormous television camera lens from his seat in the White House’s Oval Office, “that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.