Deepfake technology nowadays are VERY convincing. The clip in question for today is Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland in a clip of Back to the Future.
It changes the perception of the person watching the deepfake and makes it seem that they are indeed watching the real person even when it's indeed. The one minute clip showcases the duo, Downey and Holland in one of the scenes in this nostalgic movie where they talk about Marty's mom having the hots for him. Just see it for yourself here:
The video is truly classic. The deception, very convincing if you haven't watched the movie or was born in that era. The deepfake was posted and presumably created by Youtube content creator,
EZRyderX47. Apparently he has posted about four clips in his channel like Keanu Reeves as Ghost Rider and Michael J. Fox as Spiderman. As interesting as that may sound the viral video he created has already been watched for about 2.2 million times as the time of writing.
As impressive as this technology is and the added wow factor of the faces and movie used. There is still so much to learn about the technology though and what it might mean for the future of media as a whole to entertain and or inform.
Read also: New Leaked Video of Blizzard's Starcraft: Ghost Project Surfaces Online Was Taken Down: Why???
Deepfake Technology
Deepfakes in a sense is a kind of synthetic media. It uses an existing image or most convincingly a video and is replaced with someone else's likeness. Deepfakes use powerful techniques from what you would call a machine learning and artificial intelligence to fool viewers with a high probability.
The term "deepfakes" was coined and used massively in the Reddit forums due to the user named "deepfakes". Origins of this as well as when other users in the forums swapped out popular celebrities to pornographic materials or mostly for memes where Nicolas Cage's face was used widespread.
What Doors Does it Open Up
The use of this kind of media is positive for sure, however, don't count out the negatives just yet.
Let's start with the positive side of the spectrum, it's more likely to be used as remakes or remastered with a cast that doesn't need to do the same shoots themselves. Rather just use existing clips and dub their voice as well as likeness needed for the scenes.
The negative side of the spectrum is that when people use the deepfake technology for something more sinister that it was originally used for that garnered it's popularity now. Which are but not limited to, celebrity pornographic materials, sexual content such as revenge porn, hoaxes, fake news and so on.
Where Do We Go From Here
As mentioned above that the technology is now as popular as ever there are a number of branches that can be used using this synthetic media if used properly. Probably to the point that media itself will change as a whole if used widespread.
As the ongoing popularity of this trend is rising. It's only a matter of time before we see the next trending deepfakes. Hopefully, it will be as fun as the clip above and more of Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Hollands mentor and apprentice approach and the like.
