Chances are that by now you, kind reader, at some point in your life have seen the famous and controversial 1967 video known as The Tape. Patterson–Gimlinwhich shows what, supposedly, would be the only documented sighting of the mythical Bigfoot.
We still remember those days in 2012, when researchers from the University of Oxford and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology in Switzerland sought to prove the existence of this entityperforming genetic tests on a series of organic remains that would have belonged to the creature.
But what perhaps they never evaluated was the possibility of using modern technology to take advantage of the potential of Artificial Intelligence systems to verify once and for all what was behind the mythical video that is more than half a century old.
During the last few months we have seen how the Internet community has used this type of system to generate unimaginable pieces of art, or montages so realistic that they can easily become fake news, like all those fashionable outfits for the Pope.
But now we have witnessed an unexpected use of this platform, where its power has been harnessed to break the myth around one of the most controversial videos of the 20th century.
How an Artificial Intelligence ended up unmasking the Bigfoot video
The Patterson-Gimlin tapefilmed 56 years ago, precisely by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin claimed to show this mysterious creature, also known as Sasquatch, hiking through the Six Rivers National Forest in California.
At the time the pair claimed they had tracked down Bigfoot before starting the filming equipment to capture that grainy video of terrible resolution that for years was impossible for those who wanted to believe to disprove.
But now we have come to a curious moment in history, where someone had the idea to use a new Artificial Intelligence to restore the video and present a clearer image than ever before, laying bare the reality:
The Patterson-Gimlin tape has now stabilized and all the granulate has been removed, thanks to the intervention of Rowan Cheung, an enthusiastic specialist in these AI systems, whose Twitter account has already become a gallery of interesting varied examples of the application of this technology.
We now have the best example with this video, where we can verify that it was never about Bigfoot, but that all of this guy was actually watching a guy dressed as a gorilla.
Thus, that myth is dynamited once and for all.