This past weekend, a video featuring President Donald Trump was released. It looked like POTUS but instead of him campaigning at non-socially-distant rallies, he sported a white wig, donned an ascot and spoke in a camp affectation. Named Fred Sassy, the journalist is the brainchild of Peter Serafinowicz (who came up with the Sassy Trump personae in 2016) and Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of South Park.
Originally, the concept of deepfake was supposed to be used in a planned feature film. Preliminary work on the film was done before it was cancelled when the pandemic occurred. Parker and Stone, having financed "millions" into the project themselves, created the Deep Voodoo studio filled with about 20 deepfake artists and techpeople.
Hoping to salvage their investment and seeing how they can use deepfake as an art form, the trio worked remotely from home (Parker in LA; Stone in New York and Serafinowicz in the UK) over several months and created the Sassy Justice video.
The 14-minute video has Fred Sassy (voiced by Serafinowicz) tackle the issue of deepfakes as he converses with Al Gore (voiced by Parker) and Sir Michael Caine (voiced by Serafinowicz). It is amazing to witness how convincing the deepfakes are. Given this general mistrust of the media, this also raises questions about the dangers and use of the deepfakes. Overall, Sassy Justice is entertaining but they really nailed the Dialysis King, Mark Zuckerburg's (voiced by Stone) not-making-eye-contact.
Sassy Justice is now showing on YouTube.
