Tom Cruise Deepfakes on Tiktok points to bigger issues with realistic bogus videos



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A compelling deepfake by the actor is entertaining but has serious implications.

To the casual observer, Tom Cruise’s recent deepfake videos on TikTok – which garnered over 11 million views on Tuesday – of golfing, doing magic tricks and telling Mikhail Gorbachev jokes seem believable.

But take a closer look and you can see tiny imperfections in recreating her voice, exaggerated mannerisms, a slightly different body type, and other small anomalies.

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The problem is, to know that Tom Cruise’s videos are not real, most people would have to be warned in advance or get to the video through the TikTok deeptomcruise account, where the videos first appeared.

The biggest danger is that this is a small leap between a Tom Cruise deepfake and an unflattering revenge video of a former spouse. And as deepfake technology improves, the likelihood that more people will believe it increases.

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Deepfakes are described by Microsoft as “photos, videos or audio files manipulated by artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that are difficult to detect”.

In a report, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the technology behind deepfakes “can replace faces, manipulate facial expressions, synthesize faces and synthesize speech.”

The most common deepfakes – a word that combines deep learning and fake – replace the real person in a video with someone else. And they can be used very effectively to make it look like someone, usually a famous person, is saying and doing something they’ve never said or done. Or used as blackmail in a pattern of deepfake pornography.

One of the most notorious deepfakes is that Barack Obama called Donald Trump a “total and complete hollow —“. Again, that’s pretty compelling, except the president’s voice isn’t exactly perfect.

The GAO “Science and Tech Spotlight” goes on to say that deepfakes have positive applications, but they are generally not used that way.

“Although deepfakes have benign and legitimate applications in areas such as entertainment and commerce, they are commonly used for operational purposes,” says GAO.

And the best deepfakes are now realistic enough that it takes sophisticated craftsmanship to spot one.

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“Deepfake technology has reached the point where the authenticity of a video is almost impossible to confirm as genuine,” Brandon Hoffman, chief information security officer at Netenrich, a cybersecurity firm, told Fox News.

“The media don’t want to be the unwitting participants in the widespread panic … With deepfakes, they are in a position where they have to decide, with no technology to help them confirm the authenticity, whether or not to broadcast a piece with it. video that could be fake, ”Hoffman said.

The TikTok account left no clue as to who was behind the videos, but several reports identified it as the work of a Belgian visual effects expert who hired a Tom Cruise impersonator. Fox News has reached out to TikTok for comment.

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