The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, appeared briefly lost for words on Thursday when confronted with an AI-generated deepfake of himself.
The question prompted a rare hesitation from Putin, already in his fourth hour of taking questions at the marathon event.
“I see you may resemble me and speak with my voice. But I have thought about it and decided that only one person must be like me and speak with my voice, and that will be me,” he said.
“That is my first double, by the way,” Putin added as an afterthought.
There has been recurrent speculation, particularly in Western media, that Putin has one or more body doubles to cover for him in some public appearances because of alleged health problems. The Kremlin had denied that and said the president’s health is excellent.
Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark Trevelyan Editing by Gareth Jones
I’d have a lot more provocative questions than that, if I were Russian
But that’s exactly the point. They were provocative, but not too extreme. Believable to cause a shock and a belief of honesty, of intruders, but not as provocative as they could have gotten.
But you aren’t Russian and don’t know their conditioning, if any