Aaron, Jane, and Haz are the targets of a vicious deepfake prank on Neighbours next week, but who is pulling it off?
It’s unclear how many Ramsay Street locals are involved in the new deepfake plot that Neighbours has started.
Aaron (played by Matt Wilson) receives a call from David at the end of this week, which completely shocks him.
Nobody really needs to be reminded that David passed away in February after bleeding out following his tumble down a high slope with the scoundrel Eden (Costa D’Angelo).
After spending the last two months lamenting the passing of his “boo,” Aaron is left wondering if he is still alive as he engages in a full two-way discussion with him on Thursday, March 28.
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When Aaron tells them what happened, Nicolette (Hannah Monson) and Mackenzie (Georgie Stone) have to control their expectations. This will happen on Monday’s episode.
They try to explain it away as a grief reaction, but Aaron is upset that they don’t think he’s real and that his two-way chat with David wasn’t a dream or a hallucination.
Fortunately, Jane (Annie Jones) shows concern for Aaron and suggests that they work together to come up with a rational reason for the call. However, she is unaware that she is going to be subjected to a deepfake of her own.
With Mike’s (Guy Pearce) motorcycle tour of the UK showing no signs of stopping, Jane is becoming more and more irritated with her long-distance romance. Jane feels as though they are becoming less close because he was only supposed to be there for three months, but he recently extended it for another three.
This week, Nicolette gives her mother some counsel of her own when she suggests that a spicy video could be just what they need to maintain their relationship despite being separated by thousands of miles.
Jane’s conservative viewpoint is horrified by the suggestive idea. Therefore, either the school administrator had a change of heart or something really weird was going on when an explicit video of her having a romantic video chat with her fiancé Mike started making the rounds at Erinsborough High.
Jane is unaware that her students are sharing a video of her on Tuesday, April 2. When kids place bananas on her desk and mimic her peeling one, she becomes perplexed.
Jane is the one that Dex (Marley Williams) wants to notify about the situation since he feels awful about it, but JJ (Riley Bryant) says it has nothing to do with them and that telling her would only make them look bad.
But when the students keep making fun of Jane, Dex’s conscience finally gets the better of him and he shows Jane the video.
Nicolette lectures Jane about being more cautious with her “private content” because she can’t believe her mother was so careless with it, while Jane is horrified that her daughter believes the film to be authentic!
Jane, Aaron, and Nicolette eventually realise that the video and Aaron’s conversation with David were probably deep fakes, or audio and video produced by artificial intelligence.
Aaron is relieved to have an answer, but the harsh reality that David is indeed no longer with him only serves to deepen his sorrow.
Fans are questioning if Haz (Shiv Palekar), who received a film purporting to show him smashing up Harold’s Café, was also a victim of the deep fake villan, even though nothing has been confirmed by Neighbours management.
When Haz visited Harold’s last week, he appeared genuinely astonished and distressed to discover that the establishment had been broken into, that tables and chairs had been damaged, and that his favourite coffee maker had broken.
Something didn’t stack up, therefore, when he was later handed a video of himself doing the act and the phrase, “I know the truth about you.”
Who is making the deep fakes, and why are they targeting the Ramsay Street residents?
Next week, following Karl’s return to Ramsay Street, tensions arise between Melanie (Lucinda Cowden) and Karl (Alan Fletcher).
The already shaky marriage of Toadie and Terese (Rebekah Elmaloglou) was further strained when Melanie and Toadie (Ryan Moloney) spent the night together when Karl was in Sydney.
Melanie was worried that Karl would berate her when he got back to Erinsborough, but he has been remarkably silent, which has made her feel even more uneasy.
The following week, Melanie finds an apartment listing circled in a newspaper and gets suspicious that Karl is preparing her to move out of No. 28.
Majella Davis’s character Krista advises Melanie to counter this by being the ideal housemate, but when Mel goes on the offensive with a spring cleaning, it ironically makes matters worse.
When Melanie finally confides in Karl, he tells her that the newspaper didn’t belong to him and that he wasn’t circling apartments looking for a clue. Even though Karl is sad about the Toadie situation, he says he would never abandon either of them because they are family.
