Wed 17 July 2019:
A perfectly natural, ultra-realistic 3D version of Donald Trump’s face hybridized with that of Vladimir Putin has made its debut online. A kind warning for US collusionists – don’t check it out unless you’re in a neutral mood. Nightmarish for Russiagaters and astonishing for all other netizens, the staggering video – produced by 3D artist and motion designer Alexander Court – shows the ‘Trumputin’ delivering a heated diatribe against the EU’s cruel economic policy. The stunning hybrid, which bears recognizable features of Putin, is heard passionately defending American interests and threatening sweeping tariffs on European cars. His voice is nonetheless markedly Trump-ish, as are the iconic crimson tie and the US banner behind his back.
The ‘Trumputin’ looks amazingly realistic, with no distortions or side-effects visible. To achieve that degree of realism, Court used a neural network which was trained on one data set 240,000 times. The video was then processed through the notorious DeepFaceLab – the one that’s been used to create fake celebrity pornographic videos or revenge porn. Anticipating difficult questions, the artist himself insists that the 3D masterpiece was an experiment and not a political statement.
It’s not the first time the world has tried to merge Putin and Trump into one. Time magazine once published an unsettling, horror-movie-like picture of the two presidents on its front page. Germany’s Spiegel did the same back in 2017, but the aesthetic of the morphed image was neutrally charged. Last year, a Finnish restaurant came out with the ‘Trumputin’ fusion meal that combined salted blini, smoked salmon, Russian sour cream with American pancakes, berries and vanilla ice cream.
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