In the second season of the Kontakt series, which airs on the Premier platform owned by Gazprom-Media, Maxim Vitorgan’s face was replaced with a deepfake, an image generated by artificial intelligence.
First about it informed telegram channel “Russian cinema in the top”. The correspondent of Mediazona, who watched the released episodes, made sure that in the episode where the hero of Vitorgan appears, his facial expression does not actually change, and the movements of the lips do not always correspond to the spoken text.
Sam Witorgan wrote on Instagram that he hasn’t watched the show and can’t confirm or deny the use of the deepfake, but isn’t surprised by what happened.
I also heard rumors that the creators of the series were given the task of cutting me out of there completely (probably because I was very bad at acting, right?), but this turned out to be problematic. Quite a large and plot-forming role. But! We are not used to backing down and saving Gazprom’s money (this technologically advanced procedure is by no means cheap).
Vitorgan did not explain what the decision was also connected with. Mediazona, in turn, recalls that after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vitorgan spoke out against the war, and then supported artists on social networks, whom the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation declared “foreign agents.”
In April, the Muz-TV channel in a documentary about the participants in the Star Factory show blurred the face of singer Elena Temnikova, who opposed the war.
“Kinopoisk” wrotethat the creators of the series “Contact” used a deepfake to show the hero Pavel Maikov in his youth in the first season, released in 2021.
