This Donald Trump-Alec Baldwin 'deepfake' video is beyond disturbing
Looking to enhance your nightmares? Allow us to recommend this video that swaps the face of Donald Trump seamlessly onto the body of Alec Baldwin doing his Donald Trump impression.
As the world continues to debate how best to deal with the evolution of "deepfake" face-swap videos, this is a prime example of why these things are so thorny. The video is the work of the Derp Fake community which seems to have focused mainly on more light-hearted fare, like putting Harrison Ford's face in the Solo trailer or putting Nicolas Cage in... a lot of things.
The video uses a clip from the October 1, 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live during which Baldwin skewered Trump's performance in the first general presidential debate.
The results? Well, given how far out there Trump has gone in a succession of speeches, rallies, debates, and tweets in the nearly 3 years since he announced his candidacy for president (as well as how effective Baldwin's imitation has been), you'd be forgiven for thinking it might be real.
Both Reddit and Twitter have banned various kinds of deepfake porn videos, particularly ones that feature nonconsensual faceswaps. There are plenty of concerns, though, about the dangers posed by politically-themed faceswap videos, especially in the era of Russian interference and the proliferation and weaponization of "fake news."
This video is also one that's tough to fight legally. As a few experts have previously told Mashable, if a video declares it's a fake (which can include running the original video side-by-side with the fake), the only path to removing it from the internet would be proving the makers are profiting off the images it contains or a copyright infringement filing.
As far as removing the video from your brain, though: that's up to you. Sorry.
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
