If you’re watching Peacock’s Ted Season 2 right now, you may have been caught off guard by a surprise presidential presence in Episode 5, “The Sword in the Stoned”. After landing jobs at Dunkin’ Donuts, Matty (Scott Grimes) and Susan (Alanna Ubach) learned that their new workplace would be expecting a visit from President Bill Clinton upon his arrival in Framingham the next day. Matty prepares to confront Clinton with all of his pent-up aggression from his recent financial woes, saying, “This is gonna be the best f***ing day of my life, this is gonna be my chance to rip that f***ing s*** head a new ***hole with the whole world watching.”
To the audience’s surprise, Clinton actually walks into the Dunkin’ Donuts the next day, escorted by a full entourage of Secret Service guards and news cameras. Of course, the sheer bizarreness that we’ve come to expect from Ted ensues—Clinton and Matty engage in a heated exchange, ending with Clinton cussing Matty out and throwing a coffee at him.
If Clinton agreeing to take part in the non-PC show wasn’t enough to tip you off that his guest-acting appearance might be fake, then his looking like a thirty-year-younger version of himself with limited facial movement should do the trick. In an interview with AP, Seth MacFarlane, director and voice of Ted, disclosed the production’s use of AI to replicate President Clinton’s likeness for the scene. “We tried prosthetics, we tried traditional CGI, and everything just looked terrifying. So we just said to hell with it, let’s try AI. It was the only way I looked like Bill Clinton.”
While MacFarlane’s face was digitally altered to look like Clinton’s, he voices the former president himself without any technological manipulation, evoking the same impersonation we’ve heard used on Family Guy in Season 5, Episode 13, “Bill & Peter’s Bogus Journey,” in which MacFarlane voiced both Peter Griffin and President Clinton.
The use of AI to recreate Clinton’s likeness raises several ethical concerns. Deepfake technology, for one, has a historically bad reputation for its malicious use against high-profile figures. So, while production has been transparent about its use of the technology in the scene, did it also take into consideration whether it could be harmful to Clinton and his reputation? Did the former President consent to the use of his likeness to refer to a staple All-American institution like Dunkin’ Donuts as a “little s*** shop”?
With AI capabilities rapidly advancing, the scene also signals the direction in which AI’s role in the creation of art and the entertainment industry is moving. MacFarlane touched on the subject, saying, “It’s an interesting example of how AI can be used as a tool and not necessarily trample on the art that the rest of the industry is doing.”
Regardless of your position on the many ethical quandaries surrounding the use of AI technology, without it, we may have never gotten to experience the words “dog’s vagina” coming out of Bill Clinton’s smug face—and that may just be a good enough excuse as any.
All of Ted Season 2 is available now for streaming only on Peacock.
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