Russian TV launches AI‑generated satire show featuring Trump and world leaders

A Russian state TV channel run by the ministry of defense has launched a satire TV show that features Donald Trump and other world leaders.

The TV station announced on 16 August that the program is fully AI-generated and is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. 

It features world leaders such as Donald Trump talking about golden toilets, French President Emmanuel Macron in hair curlers and a pink robe, as well as EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen singing a Soviet-era pop song while working in a factory.

AI in entertainment

The show was discovered by a data scientist Kalev Leetaru while curating TV broadcasts from around the world. Translated as “PolitStacker” in English, “PolitUkladchik” airs every Friday on Zvezda, a television station owned by Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

Commenting on the show, Leetaru said:

“If you just look at the show and you didn’t know it had AI associated with it, you would never guess that. It looks like a traditional propaganda show on Russian television. If they are using AI to the degree that they say they are, even if it’s just to pick topics, they mastered that formula in a way that others have not.”

However, those who have seen the show say it features “silly political commentary, jokes, and sloppy AI deepfakes that look like they were pulled from a five-year-old Instagram reel.”

One AI-generated Trump interview showed the U.S. president talking about how he would build a casino in Moscow with golden toilets to end the war in Ukraine.

The deepfake Trump said:

 “And all the Russian oligarchs, they would all be inside. All their money would be inside. Problem solved. They would just play poker and forget about this whole war. A very bad deal for them, very distracting.” 

While deepfake leaders are all over the internet, “PolitStacker” differs in that it runs on a government-backed TV channel, and there’s more coming.

Leetaru says the Russian government is experimenting with more serious avatars of world leaders since the current show is just a parody.