His Tom Cruise ‘Deepfake’ Videos Driven TikTok Crazy; you now have an Artificial Intelligence company
Print/DownloadChris Umé launched Metaphysic, a company that has already made announcements for Gillete and Euro 2020.
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This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.
Tom Cruise on TikTok ? Earlier this year, the Mission Impossible actor began appearing in social media videos shopping for clothes, singing Dave Matthews Band’s Crash Into Me and doing magic. These videos collected millions of followers, views and comments, not because the luminaire was sharing these aspects of his life, but precisely because it was not him.
The videos showed an artificial intelligence stuntman specifically designed to sound and move like Tom Cruise. It was an exercise in deepfakes , -a term derived from the combination of “deep learning” and “false” in English-, made by visual effects and artificial intelligence artist Chris Umé with the help of actor Miles Fisher , who served as Cruise’s body understudy.
According to CNN reports, the success of the “pirate Tom Cruise” videos inspired Umé to found the company Metaphysic in June along with his brother Kevin and Tom Graham. This company specializes in using artificial intelligence to create ads and restore old movies.
Despite being only a few weeks old, Metaphysic has already worked with large clients such as Gillette with whom it made an advertisement recreating a young Deion Sanders along with his look from the 1989 draft day and another for the Belgian Football Association. who revived two deceased famous coaches on the occasion of Euro 2020 .
The deepfakes and their controversy
Deepfakes have aroused the concern of various sectors as this technology could be used to impersonate people in compromising situations, (such as placing the faces of famous actors in porn movies ), or to help identity theft. According to the Bloomberg report, critics have already expressed concern that this technology could be used to superimpose someone’s face at a crime or protest scene.
In this regard, the co-founder of Metaphysic, Tom Graham, a technology entrepreneur based in London, told CNN Business “Technology is advancing, someone likes it, really.”
Umé, who resides in Bangkok, Thailand, worked on the pilot episode of the deepfake web series Sassy Justice from the creators of South Park .
