At the Margaritas of madness How Russia Today’s editor-in-chief embraced AI while writing a novel about Judgment Day
Margarita Simonyan is one of Russia’s best-known state propagandists. Since 2005, she has been the first and only editor-in-chief of the Kremlin’s most infamous global media outlet, Russia Today (now known simply as RT). She’s also held the same role at the media group Rossiya Segodnya since 2013 when the Kremlin eviscerated RIA Novosti and merged it with the radio service Voice of Russia. In a recent interview, Simonyan discussed her forthcoming apocalypse novel and RT’s full-throated embrace of artificial intelligence.
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, governments in Europe and the United States have imposed sanctions against Simonyan for her leading role in Russian state propaganda and alleged election interference.
Besides helming the pillars of the Kremlin’s global propaganda machine, Simonyan is a regular fixture on Russian talk television, where she reliably dunks on the hypocrisy of Western democracies, mocks progressive values, and does her damnedest to convince viewers that Moscow’s adversaries are no better than the Mordor they make Russia out to be.
On Thursday, November 14, Simonyan granted an interview to the newspaper Vedomosti, where she offered her trademark condemnations of American double standards and Russophobic bigotry, insisting that Washington persecutes RT as a “foreign agent” just as intensely — no, even more aggressively, and unfairly, of course — as the Russian authorities have pursued anti-Kremlin news outlets at home.
More interestingly, Simonyan also briefly discussed a novel she just wrote and described how Russia Today implements artificial intelligence technologies.
It’s the end of times, but you’re still not rid of Elon Musk
Simonyan: It’s about how the End of Times, the Apocalypse, Judgment Day, the rising of the dead, and the afterlife, with some in Heaven and others in Hell, will unfold in reality. It’s like an eschatological utopia.
The main character is a young scientist named Alpha-Omega, who’s building this outland, this extraordinary place to live where you can flip a switch and see the sunrise, thumb through the constellations, befriend an Australopithecus, or chat with a beluga. It’s all about bioengineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.
They’re building this place because the literal end of the world is approaching. After a nuclear war and global warming, Earth’s resources have run out, and there’s no longer a way to generate power except by human exertion. The outland the young scientist is building is where everyone is supposed to relocate once [the rest of] Earth becomes completely and utterly uninhabitable, which could happen at any moment.
Everything on Earth is controlled by an artificial intelligence called “Iya” [“And Me”]. People interact with it via a chip embedded in their hands, and it replaces their memory, education, and even ability to read.
By this point, almost everyone has been resurrected — humanity figured out how to bring people back to life using DNA. I put them all in the novel: Shakespeare, Einstein, Socrates, Nero. Even Elon Musk.
Gradually, the young scientist comes to odds with the AI and begins to realize what’s really going on — who the AI is and who he really is. I won’t reveal any more — that would be a spoiler.
AI news anchors can work at RT without crying
Simonyan: Many of our anchors [at Russia Today] are artificial personalities with fabricated appearances and voices. We don’t keep this a secret. It’s much cheaper than hiring a real person, and it allows us to launch so many projects. These anchors don’t need a salary or insurance. You don’t have to give AI a pep talk to get it to work. They won’t call you in the middle of the night, crying that they’re fed up. They won’t get arrested, and the police won’t raid their homes. It’s both wonderful and terrifying at the same time.
Initially, we used Western neural networks, but we started actively developing our own after the [full-scale invasion of Ukraine]. It turns out it’s not so hard. Well, it’s hard for me personally since I don’t understand any of it, but it’s a cinch for our IT team. Generally speaking, we love experimenting with it.
I’m interested in the history of the Great Patriotic War [the Soviet front of World War II] and decided to make a film for the 80th anniversary of the [USSR’s] victory. Stalin and other key figures will be giving interviews themselves, and [Soviet war poet Konstantin] Simonov will read his own poems.
And you won’t be able to tell the difference; they’ll all look and sound like the real thing.
We also did a project where Putin delivers his iconic speeches, including the one in Munich, in his own voice in English. And again, you can’t tell — it’s a perfect match. There are about 100 of these landmark speeches.
Vedomosti: Did [Putin] approve that?
Simonyan: I didn’t brief him on it.
Text and translations by Kevin Rothrock