In recent days a video has started circulating on social media. One after the other, several couples of people known for not having exactly a peaceful relationship arrive on the screen, such as Matteo Salvini and Ghali or Fedez and Selvaggia Lucarelli. They all have Christmas sweaters, hugging each other and smiling. The video is fake and was created by digital artist Eman Rus.
The first two are Elly Schlein and Giorgia Meloni. Christmas sweater, themed music, warm toned lights and a Christmas morning atmosphere. They look at each other, come closer and hug each other. A few seconds. There’s not much malice, they seem two sisters who meet to celebrate together. And then after them come all the other scenes of couples known for having recent and ancient disagreements.
There is Francesca Fagnani with Teo Mammucariveterans of a clash at the Belve show. There are Marco Travaglio And Silvio Berlusconiyears apart also marked by a historic television confrontation. And again Matteo Salvini And Ghali, Fedez And Selvaggia Lucarelli and then Marco Materazzi with Zinedine Zidane.
Everything is fake, everything is signed by an artist well known on social media: Eman Rus. Read it backwards. Not only that. Most of these materials have been built with artificial intelligence. Yet this time it is not the usual content created for test a new tool. Eman Rus was making photomontages long before generative artificial intelligence arrived.
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Photomontages and artificial intelligence
Eman Rus is an artist from covered face. He has a white mask, a pair of sunglasses and on TikTok he says he will reveal his face on December 1, 2091. Little is known about him, despite the 181,000 followers on Instagram. He comes from Olbia, has collaborated with Corriere Fiorentino and has been publishing photomontages for years. You may have seen some other viral work by him, like one gallery showing what Italian rappers would look like when they were old.
Fake news? In this case it’s more satire, as explained in an interview with Wired in 2022: “Sometimes I thought I was creating misinformation when I created fake newspaper articles or fake tweets, but I always sign them. I have limits because I have them in real life. I’m not going to slander or defame anyone, I try to respect everyone. Even online I reflect my personality.”
As he wrote in his Instagram stories these days artificial intelligence was only a means it allowed him to work better on his ideas: “At the basis of everything there is not artificial intelligence, there are ideas. Artificial intelligence applied to my field only serves as a tool.”
In his work Eman Rus is transparent, signs all contents and makes it clear that they do not represent reality. The effect of these contents, however, remains impressive. How long will it take before they end up in the hands of those who have the precise aim of spreading fake news and polluting the public debate? Just in recent days we have seen what can happen with Grok, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence.
