The Artist
Mind Wank is an "artist" who uses "A.I."

The Mint
Tribute Labs is pleased to present Deepfake Prophets, a collection of 284 AI-generated video artworks by Mind Wank. The series explores the quasi-religious aura that public intellectuals have acquired in today's increasingly social-media driven world. Using his characteristically grotesque humor, the artist asks us to imagine how this influence might shift as AI-generated videos increasingly distort, redefine, and outcompete their likenesses. Focusing on three strikingly different yet equally iconic figures—Noam Chomsky, Jordan Peterson, and Vitalik Buterin—the series portrays this ‘trinity’ in both everyday situations and surreal, if not bizarre scenarios. Through absurd digital manipulations, the artist offers a striking counternarrative to mainstream histrionics over malicious AI deepfakes. Their proliferation may turn out to be neither apocalyptic nor revolutionary, but rather mundane, irreverent, and above all else, weird—a gradual deflation of digital authority through absurdist repetition. While the style of the tools used deliberately reveals their artificial nature, the replication of the figures’ voices is hauntingly close to the original. The recognition of the voice, paired with the absurdity of the dialogue, lends these works their particular style of grotesque humor. The result is an uncanny valley of intellectual discourse, where digital prophets preach nonsense. These works are evidently not intended to convince the viewer of their authenticity. Instead, they acknowledge the potential of deepfakes to alter society while simultaneously mocking their own supposed power and status. They are "prophetic" in the way they capture the cult-like status of these figures, while gesturing toward a future where the meaning of authority, authenticity, and prophecy itself may be radically altered. The project can be minted for free by attendees of the Tribute Labs event in Marfa, Texas, during Art Blocks 2024.