Trey Parker and Matt Stone Could Tap AI to Reinvent South Park After Ambitious Deepfake Project

Let’s face it: after nearly three decades of deliberately poking every possible hornet’s nest, there’s pretty much nothing Matt Stone and Trey Parker won’t say or do if it gets a reaction. Which brings us to their latest adventure—and honestly, I’m not sure whether to be impressed, nervous, or both. After a wild and predictably divisive 28th season of South Park, the duo haven’t exactly taken their foot off the gas. If anything, they’ve found a bigger, shinier button to press: artificial intelligence.

From Broadway to Bots

In the middle of taking victory laps for The Book of Mormon’s 15th anniversary on Broadway (because apparently writing one of the most successful musicals ever wasn’t enough chaos for one career), Parker and Stone are doubling down on AI. The New York Times recently had Parker basically sum up their entire career in a single quote:

'All Matt and I have ever done since college is ride into what people are saying you can’t say, and we do it anyway and people throw money at us. That is our career.'

That’s not just for show—the two have been cheerfully collecting hate mail straight from the White House thanks to their latest season’s take on President Trump (and, uh, Satan), with the kind of plotlines that guarantee multiple Congressional complaints and think pieces. So, obviously, their next move is to get serious about technology everyone loves to hate: AI.

Deep Voodoo: The New Sandbox

Enter Deep Voodoo, the AI company Parker and Stone have been putting together quietly while everyone else argues about copyright and tech doom. This isn’t just another celebrity jumping on a trend. Disney literally pulled out of its AI partnership just as Parker and Stone are wading deeper in, which is about as on-brand as it gets.

The goal? Not to replace human workers with robots, but to do stuff human beings just physically can’t. Matt Stone put it pretty bluntly:

'I find that a lot of discussions about AI become tiresome. You know, "put your taxes in and it can do them." And it’s like, "cool, but a human can do your taxes." What we’re trying to do is something no amount of humans can do.'

Seen It Before? You Probably Have

Odds are you’ve already seen Deep Voodoo’s handiwork, even if you didn’t know it. The tech was used in Kendrick Lamar’s music video, got Bill Clinton looking oddly spry in Ted, and powered a full-on deepfake of Trump (in all his, uh, naked glory) in last summer’s South Park.

If you remember hearing about Parker and Stone’s abandoned project to make a Donald Trump deepfake movie where his face slowly descends into madness on a different body—yeah, blame the pandemic and the LA effects houses just not being able to pull it off fast enough. That’s part of why Deep Voodoo quietly started assembling a new team in 2022, stacking the deck with old South Park hands and Hollywood vets.

Who’s Running the Show?

• Jennifer Howell: Deep Voodoo’s Chief Content Officer, previously a producer on South Park
• Afshin Beyzaee: CEO, former Park County attorney. He’s made it clear: Deep Voodoo is playing by the rules when it comes to copyright and likenesses—no shady Open AI-style identity theft here.

What’s the Point?

So what are they actually doing with this? Stone thinks the real future of AI in comedy isn’t making a perfect copy of famous celebrities, but mixing things together in ways that are weird and surreal. Basically, combining faces and voices into nightmarish parodies that you’d only get away with on a Saturday night sketch show. For Stone, it’s always about the artistry, not just the tech:

'We’re not typing in a prompt. It’s all capturing actors doing what they do... The magical part of the production is the puppeteer, right? The puppet is one thing—and the tools can create a great puppet. But the magic is the performer. Without that it just becomes wallpaper.'

In other words: don’t expect South Park to become a series of AI-generated fever dreams with zero human input. This is about using tech to boost the jokes (and maybe the speed they can throw together a series), not erase their actual writers and actors.

Why Now?

If you know how brutal the South Park production process is (think marathon all-nighters and zero sleep), then the idea of tech speeding things up actually sounds like mercy. Some writers literally avoid working on more seasons just to have something resembling a family life. So, yeah—Deep Voodoo might save everyone a little sanity without sacrificing the weird, brilliant chaos that is South Park.

And in case it wasn’t obvious, these guys actually expect blowback. But after 28 seasons of offending pretty much everyone, Parker and Stone seem about as ready for the controversy as they’ve ever been.