Salvador Dalí is back. Earlier this year, on the thirtieth anniversary of his death, the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, released a video teasing a new installation that would use artificial intelligence to reanimate the Spanish surrealist.
The technique is called "deepfake," a way to manipulate video so it looks like a real person is saying or doing basically whatever you want. It's a step beyond the holograms that Coachella used to make Tupac appear on stage. Dalí can talk to guests, take selfies with them, give instructions, all that jazz.
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"Dalí himself was at the forefront of technology and was always experimenting and trying new things," Dalí Museum marketing director Beth Bell told the Smithsonian Magazine. "We feel obligated to keep that legacy going. We think he would love these types of things. It’s in the spirit of Dalí himself."
Deepfake also has a more sinister side, especially in an era of gross misinformation to manipulate elections. Jordan Peele voiced a deepfake video of Barack Obama last year to show just how convincing the illusion could be. But there's also something profoundly upsetting about watching video of a man talk about how his thoughts on death have changed since he died in 1989. Dalí might actually be super proud of the fact that he's now fodder for actual nightmares.
