In the audio clip below, you’ll hear WGN’s midday show host John Williams, widely known for his internationally popular “Speed Jokes,” say, “After much consideration, I have decided to stop doing Speed Jokes.” It’s part of a larger story about how deepfakes are fooling people worldwide. And as Dooley Tombras, president of the Tombras Advertising Agency in Knoxville, Tennessee, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander, it isn’t just world leaders and celebrities who are being targeted. The rest of us are susceptible to having the videos we post on social media used in deepfake videos. Tombras’s client, Steak-umm frozen meat, likes to call out online phoniness and misinformation. And to illustrate how deepfakes can quickly and easily be made, it invited 18 vegans into a focus group setting, gave them vegan sandwiches, and recorded their critiques. In another room, a video crew quickly turned their testimonials for the vegan sandwiches into praises for beef. Their responses to being deepfaked? Listen below.
Listen for yourself. John said it. Or, did he? It's part of a conversation about Deep Fakes and Deep Steaks.