On the left, the Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher. On the right, a deepfake image of actor Tom cruise. (Video images from De Persgroep Video, courtesy of Chris Ume)
Last week a trio of deepfake videos on TikTok depicting an imitation of Tom Cruise playing golf, falling over, and doing a magic trick went viral. The videos inspired a raft of warnings that a flood of similar videos were about to overwhelm our social media feeds, and no one would ever believe anything they see online again.But just how easy is it to make a viral deepfake TikTok video featuring Tom Cruise? Advertisem*nt
That’s why it’s pretty safe to say we won’t be seeing a glut of high-quality deepfakes on TikTok any time soon, according to Chris Ume, the Belgian visual effects artist and deepfake expert who created the Cruise videos.Ume spoke to VICE News this week after his experiment became a viral sensation. And while the rest of the world was captivated by just how realistic the videos looked,Ume only saw the errors.“Even after all that work, you can still see a few glitches,” he said.In a new video posted on his YouTube channel Friday morning, Ume showcases the process of creating the videos, highlighting the amount of time and effort that went into them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq-kmFCrF5QDeepfakes are videos where one person’s face—usually a celebrity’s — is swapped onto the body of someone else.To do this, deepfake creators like Ume feed a database of images and videos of the target—Tom Cruise, in this case—into a computer running a machine-learning algorithm. Advertisem*nt
On the left, the Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher. On the right, a deepfake image of actor Tom cruise. (Video images from De Persgroep Video, courtesy of Chris Ume)
But that was just the first step. Next came the painstaking process of going through each video frame-by-frame to correct errors.“It took me about 24 hours of pure post-production work to fix each of them up. That's how much work I put into these videos,” Ume said.
On the left, the Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher. On the right, a deepfake image of actor Tom cruise. (Video images from De Persgroep Video, courtesy of Chris Ume)
But for all of his technical skill, one of the most important elements for the success of these videos was the presence of Miles Fisher, a well-known Tom Cruise impersonator.“I also want to emphasize that the actor is phenomenal,” Kevin Ume, who manages communications for VFX Chris Ume studio, and is Chris’ brother, told VICE News. “What the actor does in terms of the movements he makes like Tom Cruise, the likeness his face has, his mannerism. It has a lot to do with these videos being as realistic as they are.” Watching Ume’s breakdown video, it’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re watching Fisher and when you’re watching the deepfake version of Tom Cruise. Advertisem*nt
Get the latest from VICE News in your inbox. Sign up right here.
By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisem*nts and sponsored content.