In 2023, a remarkably convincing image of Pope Francis wearing an oversized, hypebeast-style white puffer jacket went viral. Millions of people, including seasoned journalists, believed it was real. They shared it, analyzed it, and praised the Pontiff’s unexpected drip.
It was, of course, entirely generated by Artificial Intelligence.
We have entered an era where seeing is no longer believing. The rapid advancement of generative AI (tools like Midjourney for images, ChatGPT for text, and deepfake technology for video and audio) has fundamentally destabilized our relationship with truth. But while politicians and ethicists panic over the implications for democracy and misinformation, comedians and satirists have found a powerful, albeit deeply dangerous, new toy.
The Evolution of the Impression
The foundation of political and social satire has always been the impression. A comedian studies a public figure's speech patterns, physical tics, and vocabulary, and then exaggerates them for comedic effect. Think of Tina Fey’s devastating portrayal of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, or Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump.
The humor in those impressions relies on the audience's understanding of the artifice. We know it's Tina Fey in a wig. The parody works because it highlights the absurdity of the real person's actual behavior by pushing it just past the boundary of reality.
Deepfakes and AI voice cloning obliterate that boundary. A comedian no longer needs to spend months perfecting a vocal cadence; they can simply train an AI model on five minutes of audio and generate a flawless vocal replica of a politician saying absolutely anything. They can digitally graft that politician's face onto the body of an actor doing the Macarena.
The artifice is gone. The parody is now indistinguishable from the subject.
The Viral Power of AI Absurdity
The immediate comedic application of AI has been a surge in hyper-realistic absurdity.
One of the most popular genres on TikTok and YouTube has been AI-generated audio of U.S. Presidents (usually Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama) seemingly playing cooperative video games together like Minecraft or Call of Duty. The AI perfectly captures Trump's rambling superlatives, Obama's measured pauses, and Biden's folksy colloquialisms, but applies them to arguments over who stole whose digital loot.
It is objectively hilarious. It takes the most powerful men in the world, strips them of their gravitas, and places them in the petty, infantile context of an Xbox Live chat lobby. The humor derives entirely from the cognitive dissonance of hearing recognizable voices of authority engage in deeply trivial internet arguments.
The Death of Plausible Deniability
While the Minecraft videos are clearly parodic, the technology presents an existential threat to traditional satire.
Historically, politicians have "saved face" when confronted with devastating parody by simply ignoring it, dismissing it as "just a joke." But what happens when the parody looks and sounds exactly like the reality?
If a comedian creates a hyper-realistic deepfake of a CEO admitting to a crime, or a politician making a deeply offensive statement, the immediate reaction of the public is to believe it. The joke doesn't function as a critique of reality; it replaces reality.
When the subject denies the video, the public response is no longer, "Oh, that was a funny joke." The response is, "Are they lying about it being fake, or is it actually fake?" Satire loses its sting when it requires a forensic analysis to determine if it is actually satire.
The New Arms Race
We are entering a strange comedic arms race. As creators use AI to generate increasingly absurd and realistic parody, the audience is being forced to develop a new kind of "media immune system."
The humor of the future might not rely on convincing the audience that the simulation is real, but rather on openly playing with the boundaries of the uncanny valley. Comedians will have to lean so heavily into the surreal (like the Pope in a puffer jacket, or Donald Trump speaking fluent Japanese) that the AI nature of the joke becomes obvious by its sheer absurdity.
AI has given satirists the ultimate weapon: the ability to literally puppet the powerful. The challenge over the next decade will be figuring out how to play with that puppet without accidentally setting the theater on fire.