This Elon Musk deepfake baby video shattered my brain
Why, internet, why?!
Nope.
I can be an adult about this. I'm a mature, functioning human being. I can handle 59 seconds of baby footage with SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk's face superimposed onto the child's face. Oh god, who am I kidding? I'm broken.
I like babies. I like Elon Musk. But I also like garlic and chocolate, I just don't ever want to experience them together in one.
TheFakening, a YouTube channel dedicated to bizarro-world deepfakes where celebrities swap faces, posted an extra-weird video of Musk's mug attached to clips culled from a viral YouTube video called Cutest Baby Montage Ever.
The 2013 video from Andrew Schrock is pretty cute, but the Elon Musk version is not. It's just freaky.
Elon Musk deepfakes are all over YouTube. I've seen them before, including a pretty great Interstellar mashup. But Musk's grown-man face on a giggling, crawling baby is more than my sensitive soul can handle.
I was doing all right until the part where the bambino starts talking in Musk's adult voice, spewing a series of nearly incomprehensible Musk-isms.
Deepfake technology has gotten startlingly convincing in recent years. It can be used for fun, like with these Nicolas Cage videos, or it can have more malicious purposes.
Director Jordan Peele warned us about deepfakes a year ago. But he didn't warn me about the deep unease I would feel watching an Elon-faced baby.
I'm not looking forward to tonight, where I will be huddled in bed, holding my knees and mumbling, "Can't sleep. Elon Musk baby will eat me. Can't sleep. Elon Musk baby will eat me."
