OK, we just watched the most brilliant and, well, somewhat disturbing Deep Fake video so far. This one stars Tom Cruise taking over the lead role from Christian Bale as the New York executive turned serial killer in American Psycho.
One of the main reasons it’s so creepy is that it looks like Cruise was born to play this role and you could easily fool a non film fanatic into thinking this was him just based off this clip alone.
“But Cruise’s voice is different from Bale’s voice,” you might say. Well, the makers of the video, Ctrl Shift Face, actually got a voice actor to simulate the voice of Cruise and read the lines (with slight modification) from the film.
The result is that it not only looks like Cruise in the movie, it also sounds like him. This is staggering because it’s the first real proof of concept that Deep Fake tech will definitely be used to recast major films, and nothing can stop it.
The other reason this video will be incredibly troubling for Hollywood and celebrities alike is that the scene these Deep Fake creators picked is the most explicit sexual scene in the otherwise mainstream film, which, in effect, also demonstrates that it’s simply not hard at all to recast thousands of porn films with the faces mainstream, superstar actors.
The video clip shows brief nudity, so instead of embedding it as we usually do, we’re only linking to the YouTube video (and you’ll need to sign in to watch it). No, it’s not porn, but it’s probably not safe for work (NSFW), and definitely should only be viewed by adults. For various reasons, we wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube removes it soon.
Until then, for those who decide to watch it, you’re probably witnessing the end of Hollywood as we know it, because you haven’t seen a more disturbingly perfect Deep Fake movie recasting than this one.
Cover image & gifs via Ctrl Shift Face/YouTube
