June 4, 2023
When the Joke Is Synthetic: Political Satire’s Deepfake Problem
A late-night writers’ room spent an entire afternoon this year debating something that would have taken thirty seconds a decade ago: whether a bit was actually funny, or whether it was just going to get mistaken for real. That second question now comes before the first one, and it is changing what satire is willing to risk. Political satire has always lived close to a line: exaggerate enough to make the point, but stay far enough from reality that nobody mistakes the joke for the news. Synthetic video and audio have made that line much harder to see, for creators
