The deepfake videos of Tom Cruise is stirring concerns about technology

Millions of TikTok users have been confused by a string of deepfake videos of Tom Cruise. Learn how this tool could be used to propagate propaganda by watching persuasive images.

On the social media site TikTok, deepfake videos have gone viral after one person posted screenshots of a computer-generated Tom Cruise talking to the camera and playing golf.

The CGI version of the Hollywood star is so realistic that people were asking whether or not the actor was really in the films.

Deepfake videos are animated videos that have people talking to the camera or doing other realistic acts. They can also have voices that are programmed to sound identical to those of real people.

Highly polished and evidently fake videos have been held up as an imminent danger to civilization by those who say their degree of complexity means that deep-fake technology is already at a stage where ordinary consumers will be able to dabble in armed deception, and people will be unable to tell what is true and what is false.

The Tom Cruise TikTok posts, which were shared by the @deeptomcruise account, have been watched over 11 million times on the app and millions others on other networks. The videos were abruptly removed from TikTok’s account on Wednesday morning, shortly after foreign media approached the creators.

See this video of Tom Cruise?

Well, it’s not Tom Cruise.

It’s AI generated synthetic media that portrays Tom Cruise onto a TikTok user using Deepfakes.

Seeing is no longer believing. pic.twitter.com/CRix0hD9OH

— Mckay Wrigley (@mckaywrigley) February 25, 2021

They show the doppelgänger playing tennis, falling over while sharing a story about former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and eventually doing a close-up coin magic trick.

This is not Tom Cruise

This is a deep fake

This probably isn't great news for Cameo pic.twitter.com/CqkzNOAFQp

— Damian Burns (@damianburns) February 26, 2021

“I’m going to show you some magic… It’s the actual thing,” says the fake Cruise. “This is all the real thing.”

The videos are without a doubt excellent. They escaped detection when scanned using some of the best commercially accessible deepfake detection methods. Many speculated that a new level of deepfake complexity has been achieved and that social media would soon be flooded with similar videos.

But this kind of study does not take into account the amount of time, money, and expertise it took to make these videos.

What is the origin of the word “deepfake”?

The term deepfake, according to Insider, is derived from AI technology dubbed “deep learning,” an algorithm that can teach itself how to grapple with data sets and swap faces in photos. deepfake was first seen in 2017.

Hollywood has used them for stars that are no longer alive or are the same age as they were in the original film, such as Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing in the recent Star Wars spin-off films Solo and Rogue One. Since these films were set in the same era as the originals in the 1970s, CGI was needed to maintain continuity.

How are they made?

Their use varies from the mundane to the sinister, from the cinema to the election campaigns. Amateurs will mess around with light-hearted deep-seated fakes on the FaceApp by swapping races, ages and other attributes.

Why are they so bad?

Deepfakes can be used for a variety of unethical purposes, such as revenge porn. According to a Deeptrace survey, porn was responsible for 96% of deepfakes in 2019. According to the New York Times, Emma Watson, Gal Gadot, and Ariana Grande are famous pornographic faces, raising concerns about consent.

They can potentially spread misleading and wrong information quite easily to mainstream audiences. Proceedings of this have been hurting around the Internet since they were revealed, such as this footage of what seems to be Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKjzxPCBwVl/?utm_source=ig_embed

It looks like he’s delivered an interview to the CBS news outlet about Facebook’s plan to report advertising sales that has not happened.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHXNkxnBreJ/?utm_source=ig_embed

A creepy portrayal of “Prince Charles” appears in another video, apologising for his care of his ex-wife Princess Diana, who died in a car accident in Paris in 1997. Since the early days of their relationship were shown on season four of Netflix’s The Crown, the actual Prince Charles was forced to censor their social media pages due to backlash.

One of the most troubling was the profound flaw generated by Donald Trump’s campaign in the run-up to the 2020 US election. His staff made a recording of what appears like Joe Biden’s declaration of support for the president. This video was debunked, but not until it was widely distributed.

More amusingly, President Barack Obama’s and model Kendall Jenner’s profound flaws clearly see them bumping together to a catchy banjo rhythm.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFmleGmnAck/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFmkn7NHZmG/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again

However innocent they might seem, technology still highlights the frightening potential of video manipulation technology, particularly in an age of disinformation. Apart from confidence problems, deep-fakes may also be used to create pornographic photographs without the consent of the subject.

This is kind of amazing;;

A group of female students at Ehwa University apparently developed a technology to counter the issue of deepfakes (including deepfake porn, of which women are the biggest victims) by detecting whether a video is deepfaked or not; pic.twitter.com/hQjCRxnBwq

— 디어 💌 (@dearhyunjaes) February 27, 2021

What do critics and social media outlets say?

2 years ago on stage I was asked “when will Deepfake video/audio impact trust & be believable in social engineering?” My response then was that we were 2 years away from undetectable Deepfakes. I wish my prediction then was wrong. We need synthetic media detection + labels ASAP. pic.twitter.com/yUUOTDepYY

— Rachel Tobac (@RachelTobac) February 26, 2021

Since the viral Tom Cruise videos did not violate their terms and conditions, TikTok and Instagram did not change or edit them. Some tech experts, such as Rachel Tobac, have called for labels to warn audiences that what they’re seeing isn’t legitimate.

Sandra Wachter, Professor of Ethics at Oxford University’s AI, told The Times, “If you find anything out there that is actually really dangerous to people or organisations that may pose a danger to national security, you certainly need to intervene.

What’s the future Deepfake videos?

We don’t know what the future holds for deepfakes, but we can honestly predict that they won’t go anywhere too soon.