Trey Parker and Matt Stone's deepfake production company just got a $20 million investment
As the world debates the ethics of deepfake and AI art technology, the South Park creators are making money
The art community is currently debating the ethics and artistic merit of AI-generated imagery, along with whether or not there’s a difference between someone who actually creates something and someone who types “art” into a search engine and pretends like they made whatever comes out (there is), but South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are finding a surprising amount of success with their deepfake video business—which, at the risk of oversimplifying it, just uses AI to put different faces on different bodies.
We’ve heard from the company—Deep Voodoo—a few times over the last few years, most notably in October of 2020 when Parker and Stone launched a web series called Sassy Justice that replaced star Peter Serafinowicz’s face with that of… a certain former president. Parker and Stone had plans to use Deep Voodoo for a whole feature film in which wacky, humiliating stuff happened to… that same former president, but earlier this year they admitted that the timeliness of that gag had passed and that there wasn’t really much point in keeping it going.
The implication seemed to be that the Deep Voodoo experiment had run its course, which was hardly surprising since we were under the impression that everyone had agreed that deepfake technology is Bad and Dangerous, but apparently none of that is true. It’s so untrue, in fact, that The Hollywood Reporter says Deep Voodoo is now spinning out from Parker and Stone’s Park County company to become a “new platform for artists, creators, producers, and others in the industry to incorporate deepfake technology into their work”—and it just got a $20 million investment to help make that happen.
On the one hand, we can see some logic in getting in on the ground floor of these technologies that are so controversial. If AI art and deepfakes are banished from the Earth, Parker and Stone will have made their money. If not, and this technology takes over the world so thoroughly that we’re all someday starring in deepfake movies against our wishes, Parker and Stone will have made more money. It’s win-win!