60 Minutes - 7/31/2022: Deepfakes, Drawing Truth to Power, King of the Deep

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

On this edition of “60 Minutes,” Bill Whitaker investigates Deepfake technology which has come a long way in a short amount of time. Just how will it disrupt industries, society, and our perception of what’s real? Chinese dissident artist Badiucao talks with Jon Wertheim about criticizing the Chinese regime and his life in exile. Sharyn Alfonsi learned breathing techniques from free diving champion Alexey Molchanov. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You've got unlimited access to music, but time? Now that's limited. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard gets you unlimited PC Optima points, free grocery delivery, and time back for what matters. Save time and earn $1,100 in average value each year. The PC Insider's World's Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Value is for illustrative purposes only.

Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $5. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, English muffin sandwiches, value iced coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. That's where the magic happens. This is a deep fake. Hyper-realistic video and audio recordings that use artificial intelligence to create fake content.

The U.S. government has become increasingly concerned about the use of deep fakes. It poses a major threat to the United States. We wanted to know more about how they worked, so we asked one of the best in the business to train the technology on us. This is how I looked 30 years ago. If he's not public enemy number one in China, he's up there. Tonight, we'll introduce you to Badiatsal. Part guerrilla activist, part political cartoonist, he lives in exile, traveling the world using paint and wit online and on walls to draw truth to power, infuriating the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party.

I am an individual. I'm not controlled by any authority. Certainly not CCP. That scares them because all they want is total control. Imagine launching yourself hundreds of feet deep into the sea with little more than a mask, a heavy dose of bravery, and one deep breath. Welcome to Dean's Blue Hole. This is the king of the sport known as free diving.

And tonight, we will follow him 39 stories deep as he holds a single breath for nearly five minutes. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get

delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. You may never have heard the term synthetic media, more commonly known as deep fakes, but our military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies certainly have. They are hyper-realistic video and audio recordings that use artificial intelligence and deep learning to create fake content, or deep fakes. The U.S. government has grown increasingly concerned about their potential to be used to spread disinformation and commit crimes. That's because the creators of deep fakes have the power to make people say or do anything, at least on our screens.

As we first reported in October, most Americans have no idea how far the technology has come in just the last five years, or the danger, disruption, and opportunities that come with it. You know, I do all my own stunts, obviously. I also do my own music. This is not Tom Cruise. It's one of a series of hyper-realistic deep fakes of the movie star that began appearing on the video sharing app TikTok in February 2021. Hey, what's up, TikTok?

For days, people wondered if they were real, and if not, who had created them. It's important. Finally, a modest 32-year-old Belgian visual effects artist named Chris Umi stepped forward to claim credit. We believe as long as we're making clear this is a parody, we're not doing anything to harm his image. But after a few videos, we realized like this is blowing up. We're getting millions and millions and millions of views. Umi says his work is made easier because he teamed up with a Tom Cruise impersonator whose voice, gestures and hair are nearly identical to the real McCoy. Umi only deepfakes Cruise's face and stitches that onto the real video and sound of the impersonator.

That's where the magic happens. For technophiles, Deep Tom Cruise was a tipping point for deep fakes. Still got it. How do you make this so seamless? It begins with training a deep fake model, of course. I have all the face angles of Tom Cruise, all the expressions, all the emotions. It takes time to create a really good deep fake model. What do you mean training the model? How do you train your computer?

Training means it's going to analyze all the images of Tom Cruise, all his expressions, compared to my impersonator. So the computer is going to teach itself. When my impersonator is smiling, I'm going to recreate Tom Cruise smiling. And that's how you train it. Using video from the CBS News archives, Chris Umi was able to train his computer to learn every aspect of my face and wipe away the decades. This is how I looked 30 years ago.

He can even remove my mustache. The possibilities are endless and a little frightening. I see a lot of mistakes in my work, but I don't mind it actually because I don't want to fool people. I just want to show them what's possible. You don't want to fool people? No. I want to entertain people. I want to raise awareness and I want to show where it's all going. It is without a doubt one of the most important revolutions in the future of human communication and perception. I would say it's analogous to the birth of the internet. Political scientist and technology consultant Nina Schick wrote one of the first books on deep fakes.

She first came across them five years ago when she was advising European politicians on Russia's use of disinformation and social media to interfere in democratic elections. What was your reaction when you first realized this was possible and was going on? Well, given that I was coming at it from the perspective of disinformation and manipulation in the context of elections, the fact that AI can now be used to make images and video that are fake,

that look hyper-realistic, I thought, well, from a disinformation perspective, this is a game changer. So far, there's no evidence deepfakes have changed the game in a U.S. election. But in March 2021, the FBI put out a notification warning that Russian and Chinese actors are using synthetic profile images, creating deepfake journalists and media personalities to spread anti-American propaganda on social media. So how do you get deepfakes? The U.S. military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies have kept a wary eye on deepfakes for years. At this 2019 hearing, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska

asked if the U.S. is prepared for the onslaught of disinformation, fakery, and fraud. When you think about the catastrophic potential to public trust and to markets that could come from deepfake attacks, are we organized in a way that we could possibly respond fast enough?

We clearly need to be more agile. It poses a major threat to the United States and something that the intelligence community needs to be restructured to address. Since then, technology has continued moving at an exponential pace, while U.S. policy has not. Efforts by the government and big tech to detect synthetic media are competing with a community of deepfake artists who share their latest creations and techniques online.

Like the Internet, the first place deepfake technology took off was in pornography. The sad fact is the majority of deepfakes today consist of women's faces, mostly celebrities, superimposed onto pornographic videos. The first use case in pornography is just a harbinger of how deepfakes can be used maliciously in many different contexts, which are now starting to arise. And they're getting better all the time? Yes. The incredible thing about deepfakes and synthetic media is the pace of acceleration when it comes to the technology. And by five to seven years, we are basically looking at a trajectory

where any single creator, so a YouTuber, a TikToker, will be able to create the same level of visual effects that is only accessible to the most well-resourced Hollywood studio today. The technology behind deepfakes is artificial intelligence, which mimics the way humans learn. researchers for the first time used computers to create realistic looking faces using something called generative adversarial networks or GANs. So you set up an adversarial game where you have two AIs combating each other to try and create the best fake synthetic content and as these two networks combat each other one trying to generate the best image, the other trying to detect where it could be better, you basically end up with an output that is increasingly improving all the time. Schick says the power of generative adversarial

networks is on full display at a website called thispersondoesnotexist.com. Every time you refresh the page, there's a new image of a person who does not exist. Each is a one-of-a-kind, entirely AI-generated image of a human being who never has and never will walk this earth. You can see every pore on their face. You can see every hair on their head. But now imagine that technology being expanded out not only to human faces in still images, but also to video, to audio synthesis of people's voices. And that's really where we're heading right now. This is mind-blowing. Yes. What's the positive side of this? The technology itself is neutral. So just as bad actors are without a doubt going to be using deep fakes, it is also going to be used

by good actors. So first of all, I would say that there's a very compelling case to be made for the commercial use of deep fakes. Victor Riparbelli is CEO and co-founder of Synthesia, based in London, one of dozens of companies using deepfake technology to transform video and audio productions. The way Synthesia works is that we've essentially replaced cameras with code. And once you're working with software, you do a lot of things that you wouldn't be able to do with a normal camera. We're still very early, but this is going to be a fundamental change in how we create media.

This video was, of course, generated by Synthesia. Synthesia makes and sells digital avatars using the faces of paid actors to deliver personalized messages in 64 languages and allows corporate CEOs to address employees overseas. Synthesia has also helped entertainers like Snoop Dogg go forth and multiply. This elaborate TV commercial for European food delivery service Just Eat cost a fortune. Just Eat has a subsidiary in Australia, which is called MenuLog. So what we did with our technology was we switched out the word Just Eat for MenuLog.

And all of a sudden, they had a localized version for the Australian market without Snoop Dogg having to do anything. So he makes twice the money, huh? Yeah. All it took was eight minutes of me reading a script on camera for Synthesia to create my synthetic talking head, complete with my gestures, head and mouth movements. Another company, Descript, used AI to create a synthetic version of my voice. This is Bill Whitaker's synthetic voice with my cadence, tenor and syncopation. This is the result. The words you're hearing were never spoken by the real Bill into a microphone or to a camera.

He merely typed the words into a computer and they come out of my mouth. It may look and sound a little rough around the edges right now, but as the technology improves, the possibilities of spinning words and images out of thin air are endless. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Bill Whitaker. Wow. And the head, the eyebrows, the mouth, the way it moves. It's all synthetic. I could be lounging at the beach and say, folks, you know, I'm not going to come in today,

but you can use my avatar to do the work. Maybe in a few years. Don't tell me that. I'd be tempted. I think it'll have a big impact. The rapid advances in synthetic media have caused a virtual gold rush. Tom Graham, a London-based lawyer who made his fortune in cryptocurrency, recently started a company called Metaphysic with none other than Chris Umi, creator of Deep Tom Cruise. Their goal? Develop software to allow anyone to create Hollywood-caliber movies without lights, cameras, or even actors.

As the hardware scales and as the models become more efficient, we can scale up the size of that model to be an entire Tom Cruise, body, movement, and everything. Well, talk about disruptive. I mean, are you going to put actors out of jobs? I think that it's a great thing if you're a well-known actor today, because you may be able to let somebody collect data for you to create a version of yourself in the future where you could be acting in movies after you have deceased, or you could be the director directing your younger self in a movie or something like that. If you are wondering how all of this is legal, most deepfakes are considered protected free speech. Attempts at legislation are all over the map. In New York, commercial use of a performer's synthetic likeness

without consent is banned for 40 years after their death. California and Texas prohibit deceptive political deepfakes in the lead- up to an election. There are so many ethical, philosophical gray zones here that we really need to think about. So how do we as a society grapple with this? Just understanding what's going on. Because a lot of people still don't know what a deepfake is, what synthetic media is, that this is now possible. The counter to that is how do we inoculate ourselves

and understand that this kind of content is coming and exists without being completely cynical, right? How do we do it without losing trust in all authentic media? That's going to require all of us to figure out how to maneuver in a world we're seeing is not always believing. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Stay three nights this summer at Best Western and get $50 off a future stay. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

Meet Tim's new Oreo mocha ice caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side or B-side or bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. The Winter Olympics in Beijing were games wreathed in controversy. To many, China was a problematic host, given the country's human rights abuses and hard authoritarian turn. One of the loudest voices condemning China is not a voice at all, but rather a hand. Since self-exiling from China in 2009, the artist known simply as Bariatso

has used his work to take on the country's leader, Xi Jinping specifically, and the regime more generally. Like all the best political cartoonists, Bariatso is alternately angry and playful as he calls attention to what he sees as China's brutality. As we first reported in December, it's come at a steep price. Bariyatso may never go home again. But on he goes, traveling the world, using paint and wit, online and on walls, to draw truth to power. Had you been in Miami Beach last fall, you'd be forgiven for walking by this plaza and thinking you'd encountered promotional billboards for the Beijing Winter Olympics.

But a closer look revealed a provocative visual argument for why China was unfit to host the games. Here was a Chinese hockey player bloodying a Tibetan monk. A Chinese snowboarder atop a surveillance camera. A faceless Chinese biathlete poised to execute a member of the Uyghur minority, a curler representing China's delay in warning the world about COVID. This was the handiwork of Badietsao, a 35-year-old Chinese exile now based in Australia. I notice if you look closely, those aren't conventional Olympic rings. They're actually made of barbed wire.

That's exactly how China is going to use Olympics, not as a celebration for humanity, but actually use it as a platform to promoting its propaganda, which is fundamentally cracking down on people's basic rights. Baritzao had come to South Florida to accept the Human Rights Foundation's Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. What do you see as the purpose of your art? I sometimes just imagine I'm this kid who's holding a big rock and just throw the rock into the lake so that we see all the splash,

we see the change. You throw your rock in this lake, see the splash, see where the ripples ripple? Exactly. China does not tolerate ripples. Inside China, there are strict laws forbidding mocking and questioning leaders of the Communist Party, known as the CCP. Even outside China, dissent does not go over well. Do you feel in danger? Do you feel unsafe?

Well, this is actually my daily routine, that I will receive death threats in a daily basis online, on my social media, Twitter, Instagram, direct message. Badiatsao knows that as an artist poking the Chinese regime, he risks retaliation, both against himself and his family back in China. For years, he hid behind a mask in public, working incognito, guerrilla style, both in Australia and any time he traveled. He adopted a pseudonym, Baria Cao, a name that, purposely, he says, has no meaning. How many people know your real name?

If you know I'm Bariatso, then you don't know my real name. And if you know my real name, then you don't know I'm Bariatso. When the Chinese figured out his real identity three years ago, Bariatso initially went underground. But he took off his mask and has continued hurling darts at the regime. In this recent cartoon, tennis star Peng Shuai confronts the reality of accusing a former vice premier of sexual assault. I want to be an inspiring figure. I want my art to helping others, to collecting courage and join me. But if I'm giving up this, then what does it say to the rest of them? What is the relationship between your popularity and your security?

I do think it has a very close relationship. So almost the more popular you get, you're buying yourself an extra layer of security. Yeah, and that's the only way that you can do it. Maybe so, but being popular also means his work has been scrubbed by censors inside China. What is it about your work that drives this regime crazy? I guess it's this attitude that I don't care about how serious you are, how dangerous you are. I'm just going to be myself. I am an individual. I'm not controlled by any authority, certainly not CCP. That scares them because all they want is total control. It sounds like you know exactly what buttons to push, what levers to pull on that's

going to tweak them. I guess it's not me finding the button, it's them offering the button to me. One example among many. An internet meme surfaced comparing Xi Jinping and Barack Obama to Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. No big deal, right? China censored any mention or image linking Xi to Pooh. To Badiatow, this was irresistible. He created a series of cartoons, poking fun at Xi's hardline stance against an animated Disney character. What was it about Winnie the Pooh? Why was that so effective? Because Winnie the Pooh is so loved by the public, it's so recognized. And when it's combined with Xi Jinping's image, then you have people ask questions. Why do you want to delete that yellow bear?

You recognize the absurdity of this towering superpower being so offended by a benign yellow bear. Exactly. If you were in a democratic society, I think politicians will be thrilled if they can compare with Winnie the Pooh instead of some evil character. But we're talking about China. When Xi was re-elected by China's parliament, the margin was 2,970 votes to zero. And when Xi got rid of term limits, allowing him to rule indefinitely,

Badiatzao posted this Tangcheek creation online he called Xi Forever. When the Communist Party went to work on passing a resolution favorably equating Xi to the dictator Mao Zedong, Bariatso, armed with posters, homemade glue, and a full satchel of outrage, went to work in Manhattan. He compared Xi to a magician conjuring Chairman Mao's spirit. Xi Jinping has tried to portray himself as another Mao Zedong, another red sun of China. He wants to achieve what Mao has achieved. He wants to be celebrated as this godlike figure, like Mao enjoyed in his time. It was by accident that Badietsao became a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2007, he was a law student in his hometown of Shanghai,

watching a film online when the movie abruptly switched to footage someone had secretly embedded, depicting the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. And that is actually the very first time I know this exists. So wait, so you're in law school? You're in your 20s? I am. And the first time you're hearing about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, it was worldwide news, and the first time you're hearing about it is when randomly it's in a documentary you happen to see?

Yeah. Thanks to some, you know, clever dissident who made this happen. Your parents hadn't told you about this? Never. Teachers? Never. Discovering the truth about Tiananmen Square made Bajiecao want to leave China. It wasn't just what had happened, it was how easily the history was erased. In 2009, he resettled to Australia, gave up law, and started drawing, despite no formal training.

He eventually branched out, traveling and performing street art to highlight China's repression. In these scenes from the Australian documentary China's Artful Dissident, Badiatze, still masked, posed in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. He was honoring one of the most taboo subjects in China, Tank Man, the nameless pro-democracy protester who stood in front of the Chinese military in 1989. Tank Man is the ghost haunting CCP the most. What does Tank Man represent? 1989. Tankman is the ghost hunting CCP the most.

What does Tankman represent? It shows that any ordinary people or person could have the courage to stand in front of the most powerful object. I know the image of Tankman is always near you. Before the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen massacre, I just want something on my right arm, the arm that I used to draw, as a reminder that this ordinary Chinese guy

who just collected all the courage in the world and pushed himself in front of a tank, he's fearless. While in the U.S., Badietsao connected with students who marched for democracy in Tiananmen Square. They're now middle-aged, exiled, and still bear scars. Fang Zheng lost his legs to a tank during the massacre. Zhou Fengsuo was among the first to enter Tiananmen Square and one of the last to leave.

The former students see Bariyetsau keeping alive their ideals. It's important for the next generation to carry the torch on. And I see this hope on him. And he's so creative. That's how you feel? He's carrying the torch for what your generation started? Yes, definitely. As a protest leader, Zhou became the fifth most wanted man in China. He spent a year in jail, then fled to the U.S. in the mid-90s.

Zhou says China doesn't know how to handle Badi Ucao. Chinese influence over the world is so pervasive that they can control anything, for example, U.S. companies. But still, they cannot change example, U.S. companies, but still they cannot change Ba Diu Cao. This one single person who can always come out with endless arts challenging the authority. You're saying the Chinese Communist Party can pressure companies and other nations,

but they can't pressure this guy. Yeah, that's the spirit of tankman. The person versus totalitarian nation. He's definitely a thorn in their eye. Bar Yitzha may be a lone dissident, taking on the world's largest government. But he is convinced his is no exercise in futility. You said you admire the mythological figure Sisyphus. Right.

What do you mean by that? His mission seems like doomed, that he will never push the rock to the very top of the mountain. It's a bit like me when I'm creating artworks to challenge the Chinese regime. I don't know when it will be changed, or I don't know if my work will change it at all.

But even if that is a reality, does it mean my work has no meaning? I don't think so. In September, Bariatso brought out his paintbrush to convey his outrage for China's crackdown on Hong Kong. Fashioning Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam as a puppet of Xi Jinping, Bariatso melded their faces. Last November in northern Italy, a center of art,

that combined image greeted visitors as Bariatso held his first major solo exhibition in the city of Brescia. It almost didn't happen. At the last minute, China tried to flex its muscle. They're actually writing threatening letters. It's like a blackmailing, you know. If you do buy this house show, then maybe in the future, our collaboration will be problematic.

Specifically, the Chinese embassy in Rome demanded the show be canceled because the exhibition was full of anti-Chinese lies, would seriously wound the feelings of the Chinese people, and posed a threat to friendly relations between China and Italy. The Italian authorities held firm, and the show went on. There was a nod to what Baritzao sees as Xi's willfully slow response to COVID. And he paid homage to the Uyghur minority that China has imprisoned. To what extent are you representing the people

that can't express themselves inside China? I think this is the reality, that Chinese people do not have a sense of safety that they can speak freely. But I am in this very privileged position that I'm not in China. So I have every responsibility to make my voice to be heard, to become their voices. If you've never heard of freediving, imagine this.

Launching yourself hundreds of feet into the sea with little more than a mask, a heavy dose of bravery, and one deep breath. Spear fishermen and pearl divers have been free diving for thousands of years, but a growing number of people are now doing it for sport. There are hundreds of competitions around the world with athletes testing their limits and good sense by diving as deeply as they can without scuba gear. You may remember our Bob Simon gave us a first glimpse into that world nine years ago. Last September, we brought you the story of one man who is now dominating the sport, 35-year-old Russian freediver Alexey Molchanov.

He's known within the diving community as The Machine, the undisputed king of the deep. Off the turquoise coast of Long Island in the Bahamas, you'll see Dean's Blue Hole. From overhead, it looks like an inkwell. 663 feet deep, it is the perfect place for dozens of the world's elite freedivers to try and rewrite the sport's history. This is the annual Vertical Blue competition. We went there to meet Alexey Molchanov. To watch him glide through the water is to glimpse something otherworldly. He looks part golden Poseidon, part porpoise, kicking from the sparkling blue water into the dark. Molchanov can dive more than 39 stories deep while holding a single breath for nearly five minutes.

It doesn't seem like a good idea to dive that deep and to hold your breath that long. Right. For me, it does. It does. I enjoy finding new boundaries and pushing them further because I know I can. I know through all these years and like thousands of hours of training and diving, how well I can use my oxygen, how slow I can use it, and how efficient is my technique. What does it feel like? It feels very much like flying, actually. Very much like freedom. Just pure joy of flying, staying, and feeling no urge to breathe.

But you're enjoying it. Yeah. Yeah. Without joy, it doesn't work. We were given the sports equivalent of a sideline pass. Our photographers circled beneath the surface as freedivers tested themselves in four disciplines, with or without fins, with or without the use of a rope to pull them down.

Going into last year's competition, Molchanov held the world record in three of the four disciplines and wanted to break them all. We watched as he prepared for his most ambitious dive attempt, 430 feet, more than the length of a football field. Three, two, one, top time. With judges looking on, he takes in his final breaths. He looks like a goldfish desperate for water. He's packing his lungs with air, then slips beneath the water's surface, his whale-like monofin helping him fight buoyancy. Alexei Melchinov, Russia, constant weight, 131 meters, dive time is 4.10, world record attempt. At around 65 feet, he drops his arms to his side and enters free fall.

His lungs are now a third of their surface size, and he starts to sink. He's clipped to a dive line that can yank him back to safety. Once he reaches his designated depth, he grabs a tag to prove he's gone the distance. He's already been underwater for almost two and a half minutes. Then he begins the most dangerous part of the dive. With his last reserves of air and his lungs now a tenth of their normal size, he transfers air between his mouth and sinuses, equalizing the pressure in his body to prevent his ears from rupturing, and makes his way slowly towards the light. A team of safety divers circling along the way. But that's not it. He then has to prove he's alert, not disoriented by the water's crushing pressure, by giving the okay sign within 20 seconds of surfacing and then presenting his

tag. If he's unable to do this in this order, the dive is disqualified. Molchanov does it, diving 430 feet for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, setting a new world record with a single breath. In freediving, during the dive, it's very important to be zen, it's very important to be relaxed and not to think about the goal, how far deep you want to go, because that will damage your mind, stay in the current state where you need to stay, to be very focused, very still and relaxed. People think of freediving as this very extreme sport. How dangerous is the sport of freediving?

The most dangerous side of freediving, I would say, is if you go out to the sea and freedive alone, then that's very dangerous because there is a risk of blacking out underwater. Blackouts happen when divers push their limits too far and oxygen reserves are drained, a fate that claims the lives of about 60 recreational freedivers each year. That's something the world of competitive freediving has worked hard to prevent by adding safety divers, underwater monitoring and doctors at every event. There's only been one death during a competition in the last 20 years. Have you ever had a blackout?

I had. When I was a beginner freediver, I would be very stubborn and I would push it to the end. I wouldn't listen to the signals my body gives to me. And now I would have much better awareness of what's going on. When I was sitting out there watching you guys dive, and I was watching the competitors, a lot of them would come up. They would gasp for air. And you emerged from the water,

and you smiled. I think that's an essence of being able to do really deep dives and records. Like, it's very hard to do those deep dives being stressed. It would look from outside that it's really easy, but it's not. Of course, like by the time I finished my dive, it's hard, my muscles are tired, they're heavy,

they're sometimes burning, muscles will be burning. And like, I would feel that, but still I surface and I train this positive mindset. So I do a couple of recovery breaths. And then just this difference between a few seconds before and now, like when I got those couple of breaths, it's so big that it just gives so much joy. Alexey Molchanov's famously easy temperament

is how the machine earned his other nickname, the Golden Retriever. All right. What's it like to compete against him? For me it's like a dream. All the time he's laughing or smiling, all the time he enjoys life. And it's beautiful. Arnaud Girard and Camilla Geber are friends and competitors with Molchanov. Geber holds a national record for Mexico. And Jorall has French records to his name.

What makes him so good? That is a very good question. I think it's experience. He has a very sportsman mindset. So this confidence in himself, in his training, on what he believes, on growing the sport, he's also encouraging and pushing other athletes to become better. 26-year-old Gero was one of the only divers

to have beaten one of Molchanov's records. Do you push each other, do you think? Yeah, we push each other. Not too much because I'm less competitive to him. I prefer, I'm more romantic to Alexei. He's more competitive, you are more French. Exactly. Only a Russian might think this was a good idea.

In 2020, Alexei Molchanov swam beneath a frozen quarry outside of Moscow. Holes were cut in the ice in case he needed to surface, but he held his breath for nearly three minutes, swimming nearly 600 feet across. Last spring, he stepped into the ice in Siberia for a swim. It was 14 degrees outside when he broke another world record, the deepest dive under ice with fins. On a single breath, Molchanov swam to 262 feet deep in 37-degree water. That does not sound joyful to me. That was not. It wasn't as joyful as here, for sure. And does the cold add additional stresses to your body? It does.

It makes the face numb, and you lose heat very fast, and it gives you a very short period of time when I was able to dive, and I need to focus fast. Molchanov gets dive ready on land. He does daily stretches and deep breathing exercises, something he calls lung gymnastics, to build diaphragm, rib, and back mobility. I would just demonstrate. It is inhale, full inhale, and then it's relaxation.

And there is this portion in the neck and in the mouth, which I just grab and then I push it in the box. Researchers who studied Molchanov and the impact of freediving on his body estimate he takes in two gallons of air before a dive. It's a technique he learned from his mother, Natalia Molchanova, considered the greatest freediver of all time. She came to the sport at 40 years old after a successful swimming career in Russia. She was my coach in swimming and I was following her trainings, would go to get to the pool, she would do her training, I would do my training. So this transition to freediving and me following her trainings, would go to get to the pool. She would do her training, I would do my training.

So this transition to freediving and me following her as a freediver coach, that was very natural. She started to be like best very, very fast. And I was proud. I was very proud of her. What did she teach you about the sport? The main thing that she taught me about freediving is that I should enjoy it. It's not about records. Numbers come later.

Together, they took on the freediving world and commanded it. Alexei achieved his first world record at 21. By the age of 53, his mother Natalia held 42 world records and 24 gold medals. In 2015, she was teaching a freediving lesson off the coast of Spain when she disappeared. Her body was never found. At that point, you kept freediving. No one would have blamed you if you said, you know what, I'm done. Why did you keep going?

I felt that freediving is actually the best thing for me to do. It was the best therapy, being in the water. Really? Yeah. Because it just helped to be in peace and helped to just live through that. Molchanov seems most at peace underwater, chasing whales, not records.

And on land with his new son and wife Elena, a former Olympic swimmer. The family is expanding the freediving schools his mother started, certifying hundreds of instructors in 20 countries. And as the sport grows, Alexey Molchanov seems confident about his place in it. At 35, he holds two dozen world records. You don't think you've reached your limit to freedive as deeply as you could?

No, no, I don't think that. I know with all the skills I have, with all the mind control I have, I can go deeper. So because I can, then I will. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.