Three years after his death, the figure of the Queen Elizabeth II comes back to life on social networks thanks to the artificial intelligence (IA) and the hyperrealistic videos in which she appears rapping, wrestling or working as a cashier in a supermarket, which have quickly gone viral.
Behind the sudden digital renaissance of the long-lived British monarch – and other historical figures – there is someone responsible: Sora 2, the most advanced version of the company’s video generation tool OpenAIowner of ChatGPT.
That new version was launched on September 30 and is only available in seven countries around the world (Canada, Korea, United States, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan).
“I never thought that what would catapult the Sora application would be Queen Elizabeth II”wrote Huw Prosser, ‘youtuber’ and founder of the British AI company Carter Chat, on the social network X on November 5.
Although the monarch’s humorous videos are initially generated by users within the Sora 2 platform – as indicated by its watermark -, they end up being exported to other social networks such as Instagram, TikTok or X, which allow them to reach a much larger audience.
From rapper to video game streamer
In one of the most popular, with more than 5 million views on Instagram, you can see the late queen with a microphone in her hand and rapping in English: “The crown is heavy, but I carry it askew. The jewels in my pocket, the teapot locked. I left the palace, straight to the neighborhood”to the euphoria of a group of young people around her.
During her more than 70-year reign, Elizabeth II displayed her particular sense of humor on numerous occasions, something that the AI also tries to emulate, even with her traditional outfits and tone of voice, but taking it to the extreme and sometimes bordering on the eschatological and the violent.
In one of the most repeated – and controversial – trends in videos, the mother of the current King Charles III appears in a wrestling ring in which she fights with her ex-daughter-in-law, the late Diana of Wales, and famous people such as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Gandhi.
The AI also allows us to imagine Elizabeth II as a DJ, a footballer for the English national team or even as a streamer who, while playing a video game, asks to block her son Andrew from her followers, from whom Charles III has recently removed the title of prince due to his links with the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In the comments on the videos there is a division of opinion. While some users claim that they are hilarious and addictive, others believe that it is a “deeply unethical” practice that distorts the posthumous image of the longest-serving monarch in the history of the United Kingdom.
A “massive violation” of rights
Beyond Elizabeth II, the representation of historical figures in Sora 2 videos is being debated, to the point that Martin Luther King Jr.’s family issued a petition to OpenAI on October 17 for the platform to stop videos with “disrespectful representations” of the activist, setting a precedent.
“While there is a strong interest in freedom of expression to depict historical figures, OpenAI believes that public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their image is used,” the Sam Altman-led company responded on its X account.
The American human rights organization Public Citizen has gone further. This November 11, he published an open letter urging OpenAI to remove Sora 2 from all its platforms, considering that it is not yet suitable for the public.
Among the reasons given, Public Citizen highlighted the “massive violation” of the name, image and likeness rights of people who have not given consent through the ‘deepfakes’ generated by the platform’s users, and gave as an example the complaints received from heirs of deceased celebrities, such as Luther King.
He also indicated that Sora 2 poses a danger in the political context, as it could be used to spread false propaganda for future elections.
Seeing Elizabeth II turned into a humorous meme after her death is just one example of a newcomer phenomenon that highlights how AI advances faster than regulations, while the limits of ethics blur at the click of a button.