Dr Dominic Lees: Deepfaking Margaret Thatcher

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Dr Dominic Lees is an award-winning filmmaker and director. He is also Associate Professor of Filmmaking at the University of Reading, with a research specialism in deepfakes.  In 2019, "Virtual Maggie" was among his projects, exploring how AI technology could be used to resurrect Margaret Thatcher for a contemporary drama called  "Rebel Bus".Dr Lees joined us for an in-depth discussion of the practical and ethical questions raised by digital deepfakes.  How far has AI come since 2019? What creative tensions can result from using technology that's still in development? And why, of all the people one could "resurrect", did he choose Margaret Thatcher?