Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can¹ mag­a­zine pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary film, “To Make a Deep­fake,” on how an M.I.T.-led project, In Event of Moon Dis­as­ter, tells an alter­nate his­to­ry of the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion.

Back in the sum­mer of 1969, there was a back­up speech pre­pared for Nixon in case the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion failed. Three days before launch, Pres­i­dent Nixon’s speech writer, the leg­endary Bill Safire wrote:

To  :        H. R. Haldeman
From:        Bill Safire                               July 18, 1969.
IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:
        Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
        These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
        These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
        They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
        In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
        In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
        Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
        For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT:
        The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be. 
AFTER THE PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:
        A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to “the deepest of the deep.” concluding with the Lord's Prayer.

The team at M.I.T.² used this speech and avail­able deep learn­ing tech­nol­o­gy to syn­the­size an entire­ly fake news nar­ra­tive around this, until-now, unused speech. I think the results are con­vinc­ing, in a fas­ci­nat­ing and fright­en­ing way. The grainy look and feel one would expect from a news­reel from 1969 con­tributes to the con­vinc­ing nature of the syn­thet­ic ele­ments. But, wow, Nixon comes back to life in front of my eyes!

It reminds me of back in the mid-90s dis­cov­er­ing what Pho­to­shop 2.5 could do with an image. I mean, no lay­ers yet, which is real­ly hard to believe, but my ini­tial brush with Pho­to­shop was indeed pure mag­ic. I sup­pose this is the new ver­sion of that mag­i­cal feel­ing.

It’s easy to imag­ine many nefar­i­ous ways to weaponize deep­fake videos. One of the last­ing bits that made an impres­sion on me was a com­ment Boston Uni­ver­si­ty Law Pro­fes­sor Danielle Cit­ron made regard­ing the stance one takes on deep­fakes. How do we deal with them, do we ban them? She illus­trates with a metaphor—a kitchen knife.

A knife is real­ly safe and won­der­ful when you use it in the kitchen to cut up a chick­en you’re going to roast but it’s actu­al­ly a prob­lem when you use it to stab some­one.

—Danielle Cit­ron

A lot of these projects do a great job of illus­trat­ing new con­cepts and tech­nolo­gies, which isn’t always an easy task. I think the log­i­cal next step would be to bet­ter edu­cate read­ers on how deal with the incom­ing deep­fakes. How to we become more “media savvy,” for lack of a bet­ter term? Though all com­mu­ni­ca­tion demands a degree of crit­i­cal think­ing, video and film are arguably the most effec­tive in con­vey­ing a mes­sage. Maybe because it hits two of our sens­es, sight and sound, or pos­si­bly due to the pas­sive man­ner in which we con­sume it—it’s the lazi­est media to con­sume. Sure, there’s a pol­i­cy angle too, but cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments have thus far been incon­sis­tent, or neg­li­gent, in address­ing the mat­ter. In many cas­es, these bureau­cra­cies are the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors. I’d put more stock into empow­er­ing peo­ple with the tools to under­stand what’s going on in front of their eye­balls, I’m just won­der­ing where the tools are. Oh, wait, they’re here:

• Cen­ter for Media Lit­er­a­cy
• Com­mon Sense Media

To bring it back to a hap­py place, the project was exhib­it­ed in a few cities, includ­ing Ams­ter­dam. The press kit fea­tures an image of a re-cre­at­ed late-1960s liv­ing room which is dyn-o-mite!

***

1. DelVis­cio, Jef­fery. “A Nixon Deep­fake, a ‘Moon Dis­as­ter’ Speech and an Infor­ma­tion Ecosys­tem at Risk.” Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, 20 Feb. 2024, www.scientificamerican.com/video/a‑nixon-deepfake-a-moon-disaster-speech-and-an-information-ecosystem-at-risk1/. ↩︎
2. Bur­gund, Francesca Panet­ta and Halsey. “In Event of Moon Dis­as­ter — Home.” In Event of Moon Dis­as­ter, moondisaster.org. ↩︎