“For about seventy years I have maintained the tradition of speaking to you on the occasion of Christmas. But on the BBC I haven't always had a chance to speak clearly and from the heart. For this I am grateful to Channel 4 for giving me the opportunity to say whatever I want, without anyone putting words in my mouth “. Thus begins the video deepfake most beautiful and worrying of 2020, a video that has as its protagonist (in spite of himself) nothing less than the Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
The video was made by the broadcaster Channel 4 to show British subjects, but also the rest of the world, the dangers of deepfakes, videos made thanks to complex algorithms artificial intelligence and machine learning that show famous people doing and saying things that, in reality, they never said or did. Like Queen Elizabeth, who in this video utters amazing things and also does amazing things, like dance on TikTok. The video, unlike other famous deepfakes like those that have seen protagonists Barack Obama e Vladimir Putin, at the end reveals the makeup and shows the set and the actress on whose figure the computer has projected the likeness of the Queen. The final message it's chilling: we can no longer trust our own eyes and our own ears.
Elizabeth II deepfake video
In the fake video published by Channel 4, the Queen utters hilarious phrases and concepts: “2020 has been a difficult year for all of us. A year in which many of you, finding yourself short of toilet paper, have finally understood what it feels like to be on a throne in a complex situation “.
There is no shortage of jabs to the current British Premier Boris Johnson: "2020 was also a year full of heroes, like our brave workers of the National Health System, many of whom were forced to take incredible risks, like treating Boris Johnson knowing that at any moment the result could have been that of getting pregnant “.
Then Queen Elizabeth's deepfake video goes live with the ballet for TikTok, complete with hints of twerking, swimming ed explosion of confetti finale. About twenty seconds, thanks to which the viewer has now clearly understood that the one on video is not the real Queen of England, which introduce the final part: the unveiling of the set and the actress. And the risks of deepfakes.
To spread the message further, Elizabeth II's deepfake video was also posted on Twitter.
Queen Elizabeth dancing on TikTok is the fake video of the year