Free time is no doubt a rare commodity for South Park masterminds Matt Stone and Trey Parker, given that the the series’ coveted twenty fourth season is presumably still in production. But that hasn’t stopped the duo from embarking on a new project. Sassy Justice has premiered this week with the first episode appearing online and if you were looking for a show that sat in between Tim & Eric and Intergalactic Cable, well, have we got news for you.
Teaming up with British comedian Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians Of The Galaxy, Star Wars) Stone and Parker have ditched their penchant for cutout animation, replacing it with the largely untapped and fertile ground of deepfake technology. The results are equal parts hilarious, and terrifying.
We’ll start with the hilarious. Presented by host Fred Sassy, a deepfake Donald Trump reporter character, Sassy Justice explores in a very meta way the risk that deepfake technology poses to democracy.
Now onto the terrifying: Presented by host Fred Sassy, a deepfake Donald Trump reporter character, Sassy Justice explores in a very meta way, the risk that deepfake technology poses to democracy.
The series deploys deepfake technology with startling effect, featuring the aforementioned incredibly sassy “Donald Trump”, “Al Gore” who is warning the world of the dangerous technology as though it were ManbearPig itself, “Ivanka Trump” theorising why Russia is “the worst country in, like, all of Europe”, “Mark Zuckerberg” hocking medical facilities, a widdle baby “Jared Kushner” and another “Donald Trump” who’s come to terms with his blackened soul.
“Deepfake” refers to the newly developed, and even more recently finessed technology of using AI software to digitally embed an image, say for example a person’s face, into a video. The technology is startlingly effective at making people say and do things they never said or did and for that reason, poses an existential threat to social discourse.
The satire has been billed as a weekly series, though no release schedule is available – so we’ll have to take their word on that. For now, you can get your head around the first ep, which is fifteen minutes of Stone and Parker’s specific brand of headtrip.
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