The Download: hyperrealistic deepfakes, and clean energy's implications for mining

Until now, AI-generated videos of people have tended to have some stiffness, glitchiness, or other unnatural elements that make them pretty easy to differentiate from reality. For the past several years, AI video startup Synthesia has produced these kinds of AI-generated avatars. But today it launches a new generation, its first to take advantage of the latest advancements in generative AI, and they are more realistic and expressive than anything we've seen before. While today's release means almost anyone will now be able to make a digital double, before the technology went public, Synthesia agreed to make one of Melissa Heikkilä, our senior AI reporter. This technological progress signals a much larger shift.