Tom Cruise Goes Viral On TikTok In Impressive Deepfake Videos

27/02/2021

Tom Cruise is an American actor and producer. Having received numerous awards, he is one of the highest-paid actors in the world, and one of the most bankable A-list Hollywood celebrities.

Piggybacking the superstar's popularity, a TikTok account that goes by the name @deeptomcruise, began posting video clips of the actor doing things like playing golf, telling viewers about an encounter with former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, after tripping in what seems to be a men's clothing store in Europe, to performing a magic trick using a coin.

In the three videos, everything looks Tom Cruise.

From his athletic figure but relatively short height, his famous middle "monotooth" and all, including his signature manic laugh.

Only, the person in the videos isn't Tom Cruise.

All of which, are fake.


The account in question, which quickly amassed more than a hundred thousand followers in just a few days, used deepfake to create this Tom Cruise.

What the person behind the account did, was taking Cruise's photos, and fed them to an AI-powered deep learning technology.

The AI was trained with the images and the faces, so it can replace each and every video frame inside the videos showing a face, with a Cruise's face on someone else's body.

Deepfake was first known to the public through Reddit back in 2017.

Quickly, the technology was then used to create a number of fake videos, most notably for swapping celebrities' faces with porn stars' bodies.

The very first, was Gal Gadot. And in fact, most deepfakes on the web are porn. Others include high-profile figures saying and doing what they aren't supposed to say/do.


There are too many deepfakes of famous people being shared on the web, And this Tom Cruise is just one out of the many.

But what makes this deepfaked Tom Cruise unique is the way it shows how far (and fast) the progress of deepfake.

Back when it first made public appearance, results made by this technology were very raw and very fake. There were glitches, eyes not focused, mouths that seemed out of place, head orientation that should not happen in normal human beings, bad lip syncing and so forth.

This Tom Cruise took things to a whole new level.

While the videos aren't the highest of quality for a deepfake at this time, the videos being shared on social media, which clearly compresses the videos thus reducing quality a bit, clearly show how someone with just an internet connection and the technology, could create such convincing depiction of the Hollywood actor.

Albeit the deepfaked Tom Cruise looks younger that the real Tom Cruise, a bit taller, has a more scratchy voice, and the lip syncing that is a bit off, the likeness alarmingly accurate.

The TikToks managed to bewilder and horrify a number of people, as the videos went viral on the platform and beyond.


The good thing about this @deeptomcruise account is that, is tries to share a relatively harmless fun of the deepfake technology.

The account clearly indicates that it's sharing fakes by using the word "deep" in its name, trying to tell that posts aren't what they may seem. This suggests the account has no intention of misleading or cause any harm.

But still, and as previously said, deepfakes on the web are too many to mention, with the next one can be more convincing that the previous one.

And many of them, don't clearly depict that they are fake.

While the technology has only been a few years old, its usage has grown large enough to be considered concerning.

This deepfaked Tom Cruise is yet another alarm of the potential of deepfake.

On the other side of the ring, people are also trying to create a technology to counter deepfakes. In a cat-and-mouse games, tech companies are already scrambling for solutions.