That deepfake video of the mayor near Detroit last month had me fooled for a solid 20 minutes

I was scrolling through Facebook around 2 AM after a rough shift and saw this video of our mayor announcing some emergency water shutoff. Looked totally real, same hair, same nervous hand gestures he always does. I was about to text my buddy about it when I noticed the timestamp was off and the city hall logo in the corner was slightly crooked. By the time I checked the official city page, the video had already been shared 3,000 times. The mayor's office put out a statement an hour later calling it a fabrication. What really bugs me is how good the audio was, it matched his speech patterns perfectly. Has anyone else here seen one of these deepfakes that targeted your own town or a local politician you actually recognize?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_phoenix1mo ago

Our mayor's voice has this weird habit of dragging out the word "infrastructure" like "infra-struck-chur" and the deepfake got that exactly right. How close did that Detroit one get to nailing the little quirks that make you think it's real? Because that's what spooks me the most, not the obvious stuff like lighting or background, but the tiny vocal tics that a casual scroll wouldn't notice. Did it get his breathing pauses between sentences right or did it feel just a little robotic?

simontorres1mo ago

Man, if the deepfake catches the mayor's weird word stretches AND his breathing rhythm, we're all doomed to live in a world where even our pauses aren't our own. Guess I should start practicing my "um" now before they clone it too.