Every once in a while I'll listen back to the speeches given by key figures given during the second world war. Roosevelts "fear itself", Eisenhower before dday, Churchill's "darkest hour", and others from Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Tojo. I don't think it's historical bias which has me hearing grim righteousness and sober defiance from the allies, and megalomanical violence from the axis. I'm glad that this project allows me to add de Gaulle to the list.

> I have wanted to write a book about this since 2017 but issues with the health of a family member take up so much time I never got back into it.

I would love to read this if you ever put it into writing of some sort!

The Nile river flows south to north originating from lake Victoria. It empties into the Mediterranean sea. The "upper Egypt" simply refers to the highlands( south) as opposed to the delta (flatlands, which are to the north). It originates from their originally being 2 Egyptian kingdoms. Lower egypt(delta, but now northern Egypt on the map) and upper Egypt (the highlands, now part of Southern Egypt on modern maps). The first dynasty and pharaohs United both kingdoms and is thought to be depicted in the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer_Palette

They essentially took both kingdoms logo and combined it into one crown you see most pharaohs wearing. https://www.ees.ac.uk/the-royal-crowns-of-egypt

Incredible work. As an avid lover of history, the doors of opportunity this technology could open are nothing short of fascinating.

Running with that idea, my question is this - do you foresee this same methodology being applied to other potential examples of bringing dead historical figures to life? Are there other occasions wherein a historical figure's voice is able to be replicated, then used to bring things they said to life (as has been done here)?

I'm eager to know what the thoughts are on where this technology can go moving forward. Again, outstanding work with this!!!

As a historian, I would ask that the video only be released with superimposed text reading "computer recreation". Without that, you are likely to cause many people to believe the video is a genuine recording. That can really cause issues for those of us who do deep research on important historical events.

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It's amazing to see how that has changed the history of languages. We couldn't decipher anything from way back without this hunk of rock. I'm blown away!

Not a question, but a note. My English mother lives in SW France and her Mairie has an enamel plaque with the central text of De Gaulle’s speech on it. It always brings a lump to the throat…

Je vous souhaite une bonne continuation.

Effectivement, super travail. Merci.

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Hi What do you mean by "piece together" his speech? Is it based on interpretations of what De Gaulle MIGHT have said? What gives you the authority to say you recreated his speech? Thanks for your hard work, a fascinating notion, just one I wonder about.

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Not available using the way back machine? (Or whatever it’s called) Sounds like an interesting read

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I’m very sorry but I am a historian and I find it very hard to reconcile with the idea of re-creating someone’s voice. I understand piecing together the speech itself but what is the reason for manipulating his voice in this way? Why not simply have someone else read the speech? But I guess that would negate the point of this exercise, which is to completely re-create something in the authors original voice. I guess my question is - why? Who is this for?

The entire story is amazing. It really begins with the Battle of Rafa between the Selucids and Ptolomeys. The Selucids brought Indian elephants to battle and the Egyptians brought African elephants. The African elephants were freaked out but the Egyptians won anyway. Part of the reason they won is because for the first time since the Greeks ruled Egypt they allowed native Egyptians into the army. One theory is that these native Egyptians realized that killing Greeks wasn't that hard and this may have led to the revolt.

After several years of war, Horwennefer and part of his army was besieged for months in a fortress, I think he was banking on a high Nile to bring relief of the siege, but eventually his army surrendered or the fort was stormed and he was executed. The Greek Pharoahs thought this was the end of it but his son had his own coronation and kept the war going even longer.

The son, Anhkwennefer, fought for a long time and at one point the rebels took cities in the Delta, or Northern Egypt. The Greeks suspected the Nubians of aiding Anhkwennefer and the rebels but I don't think that was ever confirmed. In the end the Greek Pharoah offered an amnesty if the remainig fighters surrendered, and when they did he had them tortured and executed, Anhkwennefer too.

Another important aspect of this conflict is the control of the Ptolomiac government. The Ptolomeys had lots of court intrigues. When the Greek Pharoah that was in charge when the revolt began died with only a single heir, his close advisors murdered the mother and other advisors so they could control the child Pharoah. This is the time when the Macedonian King and Selucid King attacked and siezed parts of the Egyptian Kingdom. There was even more drama when a Greek general used a public appearance by the child Pharoah to publicly accuse the killer advisors of killing the Pharoah's mother. He got a crowd worked up and they attacked the royal procession and killed the advisors. The general then took the young Pharoah under his wing.

I have wanted to write a book about this since 2017 but issues with the health of a family member take up so much time I never got back into it.

> Any foreigner happening upon it would have to be able to both speak and write one of these two languages.

Only literate ones, and only those literate ones who knew one of those languages.

Scholars have estimated that at the high point of Greek civilization, fewer than one-third of the adult population could read or write. Even so, literacy was more widespread in the Greco-Roman world than it was in many other ancient civilizations, where the ability to read or write was limited to a small number of priests or scribes.

Very few people were literate in Egypt- almost all of them officials of state. Estimates are as low as 1% of the population as being literate in Egypt and up to 5% being the high end of the estimate.

Hi, thanks for sharing this!

Q:

How did you find the output differed from what you would have expected from a human re-enactor?

For example, do you feel that the integration of AI got you closer to the likeness of De Gaulle than a human actor might have done having studied him closely?

I created a very detailed timeline that included sources but it was online and the website is now dead, so I can't retrieve my work.

Bonjour!
Journalism may be one of the best professions where you can get paid to be curious, if that curiosity makes you discover new and important things. My dad collects old movie cameras, so I began filming with a small Super8 camera when I was 12. Around 25 I realized that I could try to bring together both of these cool worlds, and I dove into video journalism! Le Monde was not my first choice because I wanted to make documentaries, but in the past five years this newsroom has become one of the most innovative and impactful video media in France. There is no other French newsroom where you can work for one month on a single video, with the help of the best specialists and top-level motion designers.
P.S. “Diantre!” the General de Gaulle would have said ;)
-CH

Wow. This is amazing work. Truly fascinating.

Hi!
Thanks for your question.
We worked with researchers in ethics from the very beginning of the project to build the project framework. One of them is Nadia Guerouaou, who specializes in neuroethics and is one of the very few researchers worldwide working on how audio deepfakes can be useful medically (to recreate the voice of someone suffering from throat cancer for example). She advised us to be very transparent about what is based on historical documents (the text of the speech, for example) and what is an artistic or technological interpretation: the actor reading the text, and the supercomputer encoding the final voice. To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the enthusiasm of the researchers in ethics I contacted. Making dead people talk through deep learning is not a moral question in itself, they told me. Everything depends on why you want to do this: to help others learn, or to manipulate?
-CH

>The native Egyptians in Thebaid ("Upper Egypt", ironically now in the south of modern Egypt)

Isn't it Upper Egypt because the Nile flows "backwards" and this is upriver? Rivers generally flow "downward" based on elevation, so upper Egypt was the "higher" ground.

I always wanted to know more about this event, it's not mentioned a lot.

For anyone who's interested, I found an old article I read with more details about the revolt: https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/files/TheGreatRevoltoftheEgyptians.pdf

Bonjour. My question is a bit off topic:

How did you decide to go into journalism and why Le Monde of all places ?

Thank you for doing this, really interesting piece.

P.S You're very attractive.