Deepfakes and Viking Runestones: The surprising connection between the two скачать в хорошем качестве

Deepfakes and Viking Runestones: The surprising connection between the two

Six months ago I thought this was going to be a simple episode. Go to Alexandria. Look at a rock. Ask a historian if it’s fake. Roll credits. Instead, I spent weeks arguing about a slab of sandstone pulled out of a farm field in 1898 — the Kensington Runestone — that claims Vikings were in Minnesota in 1362 . Some people will tell you, flat out, it’s a hoax. Some people will tell you, flat out, it’s real. And in Alexandria, just about everyone is very kind while disagreeing with you. We went to the Minnesota Historical Society archives. We stood in front of the actual stone. We talked to true believers. We talked to skeptics. We talked to a forensic geologist who has dedicated a large portion of his life to defending it. And somewhere along the way, this stopped being about Vikings. It became about belief. About Scandinavian immigrants who wanted to belong. About small towns that build identity around a story. About how hard it is to move someone once they’ve decided something is true. So we tried something. If a farmer in the 1890s could carve a narrative into stone and have it ripple for a century, what could we do in 2026 with AI? We worked with deepfake tools. We experimented with a fake speech from Governor Tim Walz. We talked to lawyers and AI experts about what’s legal, what’s ethical, and what’s just reckless. We ultimately chose not to release the political deepfake. But we did include something in this episode that isn’t authentic. Earlier in the video, several clips were altered . See if you can find them. I’m not trying to trick you for sport. I genuinely want you to feel the same unsettled feeling I did while making this. Because the tools we used were free. And fast. And easy. The runestone might be a hoax. It might be the most impressive fake in Minnesota history. Or it might be real. I still don’t know. What I do know is that belief is powerful, language is powerful, and we are entering a moment where both can be manufactured at scale. And if that doesn’t make you a little uneasy, I’m not sure what will.