Deepfakes are warping reality. This AI project turns them into a history lesson

AI-generated content is making it harder to trust what we see and hear. But at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a new installation is using the same tech to place people inside history’s most defining moments. “The Great Dictator,” which premiered this week in Austin, flips the script on what deepfakes have come to represent. Instead of using generative AI to create misinformation, it uses AI video and voice tools to blend participants into archival footage to experience history through their own voice and likeness.  It’s the latest project from filmmaker and artist Gabo Arora, who wanted to show how emerging tech can be used for something other than profit, warfare, or propaganda. “This is an exhibit that examines something that was as powerful 3,000 years ago with no technology, with the ancient Greeks,” Arora says. “It really shows you we might have all the technology we want, and humans don’t change. We have something hardwired in us