The first deepfake election

The first deepfake election

It took four days for a forged letter to bring down a government in 1924. Today, the same thing could happen before breakfast. The Zinoviev Letter — a fabricated document purportedly inciting British communists to revolution — was fake. But by the time that became clear, the election was over and the damage was done. A century later, the mechanics of political manipulation have changed beyond recognition. Anyone with a laptop and freely available AI tools can now put any words into any politician's mouth, with their face, their voice and their mannerisms, and have it in front of millions of people within minutes. The question is whether the law — much of which dates to the nineteenth century — has any hope of keeping up. Georgina Godwin speaks with writer and policy thinker Frances Lasok, whose recent report on AI deepfakes and elections is one of the clearest-eyed assessments of this rapidly evolving threat. Lasok sets out the four categories of deepfake misuse now emerging — intimate image abuse, fraud, election misinformation and the monetisation of someone's face or voice without consent — and explains why existing legislation, however well-intentioned in its principles, was simply never written for this world. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

What makes a city creative?

NABA – the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti – has been shaping Italy's creative talent since 1980, first in Milan, then Rome. Now it has arrived at Here East in London, and the choice of location is anything but accidental. For Diego Mattiolo, Head of Education at NABA, London's density of cultures, institutions and creative energy made it the only logical first step for the school's international expansion. Georgina Godwin speaks with Diego about what the great creative cities of the world actually have in common – and what they risk losing. He reflects on growing up in Milan surrounded by design weeks and fashion shows, taking it all for granted until distance gave him perspective, and on what NABA's particular philosophy – that combination of rigorous thinking and hands-on making – produces in students that more conventional institutions do not. The goal, he explains, is not to teach students what to think, but to help them find their voice. The conversation ranges from the deep cultural roots of Italian style to the question of whether cities like Milan and London are in danger of becoming victims of their own polish – and why Diego thinks the next genuinely surprising creative hub is more likely to be found in Tokyo, Singapore or India. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

New York's Lincoln Center isn't afraid of tech

When Shanta Thake became Chief Artistic Officer at New York's Lincoln Center — home to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet — she inherited one of the most storied platforms in global culture. But she also inherited its assumptions: about which art forms deserve the grandest stages, which audiences are welcome and where the boundaries of a great institution should end. Georgina Godwin speaks with Shanta about the art and politics of curation at scale — and why the most urgent question facing the Lincoln Center right now isn't what to programme, but how to ensure that the work stays genuinely ahead of the world rather than just responsive to it. Shanta argues that artists are always ten steps ahead of the rest of us, and that a curator's job is less to follow the news than to trust the artists who are already living in tomorrow. The conversation ranges from the collision of salsa and symphony to the Lincoln Center's Collider programme — a remarkable cohort of artists working at the frontier of technology and performance, from 4D sound compositions to art that generates new forms when two people hold hands and complete a human circuit. And it ends with a question we're all asking: in an age of AI and humanoid machines, what is it that makes art uniquely human — and how do we hold onto it? ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Palantir's UK chief: London's already winning at AI

The country that accidentally incubated Google DeepMind, that draws one in five of Palantir's global workforce to its shores, that saw AI startups raise nearly eight billion pounds in a single quarter of 2026. Britain is already a major player in the AI race, but can we counter the familiar narrative of decline? In this special edition of Visionary, recorded live at the Margaret Thatcher Conference in London, Charlotte Crosswell chairs a sharp conversation with Tom Westgarth, Head of Growth at British AI chip designer Fractile, and Louis Moseley, Head of Palantir Technologies UK. Together they make the case that Britain sits at a rare and potentially fleeting intersection: world-class machine learning talent, a legal and cultural framework that global companies trust, and a geography compact enough to allow the kind of creative collision – technologist meets creative director, chip designer meets software engineer – that Silicon Valley has to take transcontinental flights to replicate. Visionary is brought to you by Here East, London's home of innovation and creativity. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Can movies survive AI?

There's an uncomfortable truth settling across the media industry. AI is already inside the production pipeline – generating imagery, animating characters, building virtual worlds, and doing it faster and cheaper than any human team. For some, that's the promise. For others, it's an existential threat.  But the more interesting question lives somewhere between those two positions. Because the history of entertainment has always been, at its core, a history of technology forcing change. From the Fleischer brothers to Disney to Pixar, every era has had its disruption – and every era has found that the human appetite for story, for wonder, for experiences that make us genuinely feel something, has survived it. Michael Stein was on the frontline of cinematic innovation during Pixar's early years. He's now the Chief Technology Officer at Journey, one of the world's most ambitious experience design agencies. And he's spent his career adapting – reading where technology is heading and figuring out what it means for the people making things. AI, he tells Georgina Godwin, isn't the end of creativity. It might just be the beginning of something we haven't had the imagination to picture yet. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.