deepfake
Explanation
The Joke
A woman walks in on a man (Steve) at his computer and gasps, "Oh my God, Steve! Are you doing a deepfake of your ex-wife? That is NOT cool!" But Steve clarifies that the image isn't sexual at all -- it's just his ex-wife Susan, fully clothed. The deepfake video simply shows Susan saying, "Steve, I still love you." The woman stares in horror and declares, "This is the saddest thing conceivable." Steve, oblivious to how pathetic this is, asks, "Doesn't everybody do this?"
The Humor
The joke subverts expectations about deepfakes. When deepfake technology entered public awareness around 2018, the primary concern was about people using it to create non-consensual pornographic content. The comic sets up this expectation with the woman's horrified reaction, then reveals something arguably even more disturbing: Steve isn't using the technology for anything sexual -- he's using it to fabricate emotional intimacy, creating a fake video of his ex-wife saying she still loves him. The punchline works because it replaces the expected "creepy" with something profoundly sad, and Steve's genuine confusion about whether this is normal behavior makes it even more poignant. The comic suggests that loneliness and emotional neediness can be more unsettling than the lurid applications of technology that we usually worry about.
References
Deepfake technology, which uses machine learning to create realistic fake videos of real people, became widely known in late 2017 and was a major topic of public concern in 2018 when this comic was published. The technology was primarily associated with non-consensual pornography, which is the expectation the comic deliberately sets up before subverting it.