It seems surprising and amusing that a well-known face appears in a very convincingly different body, or he does or says things we never expected from him. That’s why deepfake videos, produced by an increasing number of deepfake professionals, which seem real, are going viral and get tens of thousands of clicks on each share. However, when attempts to produce hyper-realistic deepfake videos turn from rating anxiety to the goal of disinformation based on social engineering, its impact on the masses will not be fun at all; on the contrary, it will have extremely devastating consequences.
We tried to compile the most convincing deepfake videos with their stories. Because when the malicious synthetic media, which is achieving perfection that makes it difficult to distinguish from the truth, gets out of control, they are the best at telling the extent to which it can blind our minds. Here are some worryingly perfect deepfake videos, some of which are likely to be on your online radar too, and perhaps only a fraction of them have been overlooked:
Tom Cruise TikTok deepfake videos
Last February a user who uses the name @deeptomcruise on TikTok posted amazing Tom Cruise videos. In the deepfake videos, Cruise looked both younger and taller. A total of 3 videos were released in this format. Tom Cruise was involved in one of them at a menswear store in Italy, the other at a golf course and the third when he was doing magic with a coin. Cruise was actually talking about deepfake when he was doing magic with a coin, and he was having a crazy laugh. The Deepfake videos made headlines in the world’s media after they were posted on the TikTok application. The account that posted the videos also tripled the number of followers and likes. His followers exceeded 1 million, and his number of likes exceeded 3 million.
After the deepfake controversy reignited with these videos, Belgian effects expert Chris Ume, who explained to the media as the person who produced these deepfake videos, was a source person and he argued that the person resembled to Tom Cruise and he used various digital effects and despite this, videos were not perfect and contained errors. Deepfaker Ume suggested that others could not easily prepare such deepfakes for the reasons he described, so the videos were not a harbinger of a disinformation threat. But, TikTok removed Tom Cruise’s deepfake videos.
Buzzfeed and Jordan Peele co-production, Barack Obama deepfake video
When even not yet a year passes after first appearance of Deepfake atReddit.com, the US actuality-tabloid news site Buzzfeed caused huge repercussions by publishing a deepfake video of former US President Barack Obama. In the deepfake video, released in April 2018, Obama was portrayed in the background by Jordan Peele, an actor, screenwriter, director, and comedian, one of the most versatile figures in the U.S. film industry. “We are entering an age where our enemies can make it look as if anyone at any time is saying something, even if they never say it,” Peele said, in an audio imitation superimposed on the former President’s face.
In the preparation of the Obama deepfake, artificial intelligence and deep learning-based FakeApp software was used to transfer the faces of celebrities to adult video content. It wasn’t hard for Buzzfeed’s video producer, Jared Sosa, to access Obama’s data and train the model. However, for the correct design of the model, the machine had to be trained for 56 hours.
Harrison Ford deepfake video; in reaction to “Han Solo: A Star Wars Story” movie
Han Solo, one of the memorable characters of Holywood sci-fi legend Star Wars, whose first film was released in 1977, was played by Oscar-winning actor Harrison Ford, who is 78 years old today. “Han Solo: A Star Wars Story”, a Western American film about the teenage years of Han Solo, one of the most important characters in Star Wars, made in 2018. For the character Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford in the original series, Alden Ehrenreich took the lead role in this film. The film’s $ 393 million box office revenue, however, was rated as disappointing. Many people felt that the character of Han Solo was not the same as in Star Wars, as it was not Harrison Ford.
“I wish Ford was still young for this character,” comments were made and on his YouTube account Shamook in August 2020, published Harrison Ford’s deepfake in Solo role. Although Harrison Ford deepfake, dressed as the film’s actor Ehrenreich, does not reflect the famous actor’s voice and acting in this role, seeing Ford as a young Solo with a 2-minute video was a great feeling for his fans.
Mark Zuckerberg deepfake videos targeting Facebook
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has inspired deepfake videos multiple times, especially in response to Facebook’s controversial policies toward synthetic media. During the summer of 2019 artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe, Sheter used deepfake video of Mark Zuckerberg as a part of conceptual art installation called Spectre, in an exhibition called, “alternative realities” in England. The Video, directed at the Big Data world with Mark Zuckerberg’s deepfake image, laid out his criticism of Information Security. Bill Posters and Daniel Howe posted the Zuckerberg deepfake video, which they co-produced with advertising company Canny, on Instagram in June 2019. The Video was edited as if it were part of a TV newscast organized as CBSN to evoke CBS, and was broadcast with the announcement tape “we increase transparency in advertisements.”
Again, in the “smiling Zuckerberg” deepfake video released in July 2019 where he looked like he was on a TV news live broadcast Facebook CEO’s testimony at the “technology competition” session of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee was satirized. In the Deepfake video, Zuckerberg appeared to connect to the committee meeting via video conference as he was having a barbecue in his garden.
Salvador Dali deepfake at Dali Museum kiosk
In an interview, the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí said, “I believe in death in general, but I absolutely do not believe in Dali’s death.” The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg Florida made the painter’s prophecy come true with a deepfake video. The Dalí Museum also brought a different breath into the marketing of art with its Salvador Dali deepfake. At the Dali Lives exhibition, Dali, who greets visitors from a kiosk screen when the bell is pressed, now tells them stories.
Using deepfake technology based on machine learning, the video that puts Dalí in front of a real-size audience was produced in collaboration with the advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P). Using interviews and archival footage, GS&P used 1,000 hours of machine learning to train Dalí’s artificial intelligence algorithm. Facial expressions were then imposed on a player with Dalí’s body proportions. Excerpts from letters and interviews, his French, Spanish and English as a voiceover artist that can mimic synchronized.
US President Nixon’s “Moon Disaster” deepfake video
37th US President Richard Nixon who made history from 1969 to 1974, when he was forced to resign during the second term of his presidency had witnessed another historic event during his tenure. As part of his country’s Space Works, humanity has set foot on the moon for the first time. No one could be sure what Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Buzz Aldrin would encounter. You had to be prepared for every eventuality. For this reason, two alternative texts of speeches have been prepared for the president of the United States. On the lunar surface, when a “Big step for Humanity” was successfully taken, there was no need to talk about disaster.
Nixon delivered the “Moon Disaster” speech prepared by William Safire, one of the speech’s authors, in 1969, exactly 26 years after his death. Nixon’s speech, which he did not need to do while he was alive, was carried out with today’s deepfake technology. “In event of Moon Disaster” was directed by Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The production, which was carried out with the ai model produced by Canny AI with the “changing video dialogue” technology developed and with the support of Respeecher’s voice cloning technology, was prepared in more than 6 months. The Film, half a century after its subject, allowed the viewer to experience an alternate history.
Elon Musk’s Zoombombing deepfake
Elon Musk, one of the leading leaders of tech entrepreneurship, also quickly became one of the most popular figures in deepfake videos, as did Mark Zuckerberg. Because of the pandemic process, the habit of meeting through video conferencing applications, especially Zoom, spread rapidly, while attempts to infiltrate meetings by cyber sabotage methods called Zoombombing began to emerge. Here in April 2020, Ali Aliev, the programmer who took on the image of Elon Musk in real time with the deepfake technology called Avatarify, which he developed, caused great surprise and excitement at a Zoom meeting in which he leaked.
Avatarify, of which programmer Ali Aliev is its developer and CEO, was offering ‘deeply fake’ filters to impersonate celebrities. Avatarify, which uses an algorithm to place the target’s face on the person’s face and move the mask’s eyes and mouth synchronously in real time, could be used in video conference calls on Zoom and Skype. Ali Aliev said that when he developed Avatarify, he used open source code for the “first-degree motion model for image animation”, a tracking algorithm first created at the University of Trento in Italy.
Robert De Niro’s “Irishman” deepfake
Netflix has unveiled its ambitious film The Irishman, which it spent $ 175 million on, to viewers ahead of Christmas 2019. The film, a 10-year project of famous director Martin Scorsese and combining living legends of cinema such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, was released to wipe out all the awards of the world of cinema, especially the Oscars.
A Youtuber named ifake user, who is named as a deepfake artist and has 24 thousand followers, enjoyed the pleasure of both the world-famous Oscar-winning director and Netflix, who invested millions of dollars in his project with the deepfake video he posted. The rejuvenation effect that Ifake applied to Robert De Niro in the Irishman with free deepfake software was found by all image and cinema authorities to be much more successful than Netflix’s expensive CGI effect. Ifake’s video, which features a rejuvenated De Niro scene in the Irishman, was watched by more than half a million people. Moreover, IFake achieved this with free deepfake software and only 1 Week of effort.
Al Pacino as deepfake, De Niro in “Taxi Driver”
Although Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are often compared to each other, they have starred together in only four films to date. The fact that Martin Scorsese, who is also the director of the Irishman, preferred De Niro rather than Al Pacino in the 1976 crime classic, “Taxi Driver,” was not an obstacle in terms of deepfake technology.
In key scenes, in which Travis Bickle, the fictional character of the film portrayed by De Niro, tests himself with a show of weapons and power, Al Pacino also gave a rather impressive performance of deepfake. The Al Pacino Taxi Driver deepfake video, released in September 2019, has had close to half a million views. YouTuber named “Ctrl Shift Face”, was one of the suppliers of AI-based artistic content platform that produced the video Patreon.com.
Deepfake video, an alternate version of the “Matrix”, was released before “Matrix 4”
The Matrix, which is among the Hollywood sci-fi classics with its first film released in 1999, is preparing to appear in front of the audience with its new film at the end of May. But The Matrix deepfake, a co-production of Ctrl Shift Face, which produces the Al Pacino Taxi Driver deepfake, and Chris Ume, maker of the Tom Cruise TikTok deepfakes, managed to excite the audience before Matrix 4.
The deepfake video, a new version of the matrix released on YouTube in February 2020, shows what can happen to one of the film’s main characters, Neo, when he chooses the blue pill. The deepfake video, derived from images of office Space movies with the Matrix, looks admirably realistic. One of the most important scenes in the minds of his first film, It was the moment Anderson decided to become Neo. Another important character in the film, Morpheus, with the red and blue pills he holds in both hands and asks Anderson to make a decision. Mr. Anderson chooses the red pill, choosing to stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. In the prepared deepfake video, Mr. Anderson prefers to go back to his ordinary life by choosing the blue pill. Mr. Anderson who chose the blue pill wakes up to replace the Peter Gibbons character in Office Space. Mr. Anderson displays excellent character as an office worker in the plaza world of office space. In the video of Peter Gibbons as Anderson, Agent Smith appears in Anderson’s office wearing black glasses.
In “Indiana Jones”, Chris Pratt is nominated for the role of Harrison Ford in deepfake video
Will Deepfake technology be a glimmer of hope for actors who face losing their legendary roles as they age, or a testament to the fact that young candidates can fill their place? Harrison Ford must be having this dilemma when it comes to his 70s. Because, like his Solo character in StarWars, his lead role in the Indiana Jones Adventure is under the threat of deepfake.
For the lead role of Indiana Jones 5, which is scheduled to be shot this year and released in the summer of next year, the name of American young film and TV star Chris Pratt was already among the nominees. YouTube channel Shamook has virtually eliminated the actor’s role with its new Indiana Jones deepfake video featuring Chris Pratt as Indy, just as Harrison Ford met his teenage character in StarWars with his Solo character. For the Indiana Jones deepfake video, a face profile was created by training the model with 5,000 HD photos of Chris Pratt. Using Deepfake technology and utilizing the actors’ similarities to each other, this profile was passed on to Harrison Ford.
Captain Marvel, “If it was Charlize Theron” deepfake video
Captain Marvel is a 2019 American superhero film based on the comic book character Carol Danvers. Published in many countries by Marvel publications, the comic book was again adapted for cinema under the production of Marvel Studios. At the film’s audition Brie Larson, who was supposed to be at 26th place, eventually got the lead role, there were quite a few people who were more interested in Charlize Theron for this role. It was said that Theron had not accepted the role because he was 15 years older than the character in the film. Here Patreon.com Shamook, one of the producers of deepfake, did not break the memory of Theron fans, and in Captain Marvel deepfake, he impressively proved how befitting his lead role would be.
Jim Carrey deepfake for Jack Nicholson’s “the Sherring” role
With Jack Nicholson’s manic fury, few actors can compete. So it wasn’t easy to imagine anyone else playing the role of Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “the Shining.” This 1980 horror film was one of Nicholson’s most iconic roles. An actor who was especially famous for his comedy films, perhaps no one would have thought of this role. Yet deepfake technology has stripped even Jack Nicholson of his role. The Film was remade in July 2019 using deepfake technology, with Jim Carrey in the lead role.
Jim Carrey, a veteran actor of comedy films, was so convincingly integrated into Kubrick’s “The Shining” that he appeared with Shelley Duvall in one of the film’s most famous scenes. Jim Carrey was one of the few actors whose facial contours could match Nicholson’s hysteria. That’s why his face looks pretty good on the character of Jack Torrance. The “The Shining” deepfake video, posted by Ctrl Shift face’s YouTube account, which is also the producer of many other famous deepfake videos, went viral with over a million views.