literally just some guy
Andy BaioJust found this browsing Twitch’s “AI” tag: a 24/7 livestream of deepfaked Twitch streamers and obnoxious personalities (e.g. Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro) answering questions from chat. It’s very uncanny valley: avatars move around, drink water, etc. https://www.twitch.tv/atheneaiheroes
Material for the deepfaked video/audio/dialogue is all crowdsourced in their Discord: video clips, voice clips, catch phrases, details on their personal opinions and biography…
Ughhh, just learned the guy behind this is a streamer turned manipulative/abusive cult leader and crypto scammer. People Make Games did a year-long exposé on him in 2019. (thx, @map) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgNXJQ88lfk
Investigating Athene, the Youtuber Who Started a Religion
Samantha Cole dug into the story behind the AI deepfake talk show. “The stream is the product of volunteers working commune-style for an organization called The Singularity Group… One of the Singularity Group’s goals is to pave the way to a Universal Basic Income through crypto-token-based play to earn mobile games.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmwym/twitch-stream-of-ai-generated-celebrities-athene
martin
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David ‮ yensiR
4am ❧
Amo Bishop Rodent
Jason Petersen (he)@andybaio wait what was your take on this thing you chose to share before finding out (quelle horror!) that this guy was an abuser?
I didn’t know what to take away from you posting it initially, and now I’m even more confused by the “ughhh”…
@jason The whole thing's a nightmare, aggressively labeled with "Parody" to subvert the ethical and legal issues, and I shared it because I've never seen anything like it. I'm not at all surprised to learn a livestream centered around deepfakes was created by a shitheel— but I wasn't expecting a cult leader!
ℹ️❤️🖥 aka Compy-chan
Josh Lewis!@andybaio @jason The cult side of things is definitely sad. But I'm OK with people streaming deepfakes as long as they're extremely clearly marked as parody and they're not encouraging harassment, violence, or engaging in those types of speech that are illegal in any context.
The fact that it is possible and it's as "good" as it is seems reason enough to poke around with it and have fun.
maxbittker@andybaio fascinating how much human work goes into making this so believable. thanks for sharing andy
Jonas@andybaio it feels like this is some kind of honey pot to train a tts model to call customer service and answer security questions
Matt Griffin@andybaio some real max headroom /virtuosity stuff going on there
Brian Boucheron@andybaio wow that is wild and also i am old and don't know who 99% of these people are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
John Brownlow@andybaio oh that's freaky. Musk is the best tho.
Bushido Squirrel@andybaio i do not like this future, can the DM let us roll for another?
(Matthew)=> 🏳️🌈🇿🇦🎮💻📖@andybaio my own personal hell is being made to watch a 24/7 deepfaked Elon Musk stream. I'll convert on the spot if I find out that's what's waiting for me.
mʌp ᯅ 
@andybaio oh. Looks like it's made by this guy: https://youtu.be/EgNXJQ88lfk
Investigating Athene, the Youtuber Who Started a Religion
Effy Elden@andybaio this is captivating
mDuo13 📖@andybaio That is definitely one of the more bizarre and surreal things I've seen lately. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the things that came up in my first few minutes of the stream is a leading question to get one of the female streamers' AIs to bounce her chest prominently… which was less uncanny-valley than the glitchy mouth movements of a lot of streamers, which I guess jives with what I've been hearing about deepfake porn these days. 😓
zeno's paradox speedrunner@andybaio this is amazing