Deeptomcruise is a TikTok account showing what the movie star Tom Cruise does in his life when he's not acting on film. However, very rarely, you'll find that something's slightly off in his TikTok videos, and that is because the person seen on the camera is not really Tom Cruise, but an impersonator and the videos are all synthetic media (better known as deepfakes). Thus the name @deeptomcruise.
A Belgian visual effects artist named Chris Ume is the guy responsible for making these deepfake videos. But how does he make the videos believable? His secret is the impersonator who has the same hairstyle and mannerisms as the Hollywood actor. The rest of the job is left to the advanced AI system that will superimpose Tom Cruise's face to the impersonator. And voila! He has a hyperrealistic deepfake video.
Ume is aware that the deepfakes are far from perfect, but he does not mind them, as he does not want to fool people. "I just want to show them what's possible," he says to Bill Whitaker in a 60 Minutes interview.
Chris Ume is one of the world's leading artificial intelligence artists, and he, along with his brother Kevin and entrepreneur Thomas Graham, founded the synthetic media company Metaphysic.
(Image Credit: @deeptomcruise/ TikTok)
#SyntheticMedia #Deepfake #AI #TomCruise
@deeptomcruise Keep your hands clean.
♬ original sound - Tom - Tom