Ume collected over 6,000 images of the Hollywood actor taken from different angles, with different facial expressions, to train the algorithm. 'For a deepfake, you start with the source data - I mean pictures and videos of the character you want to deepfake. Last year, after leaving Belgium, Ume got a break working alongside other handpicked deepfake wizards on a new TV series by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. 'If you compare the quality we could achieve for deepfakes a year ago and what we can achieve now, it's day-and-night difference,' Ume says. Some experts are predicting up to 90 per cent of online videos could be synthetically generated - deepfakes - by 2030. The number of professionally made deepfakes is now doubling every six months. Graphics and AI experts like Ume are expanding the possibilities of deepfakes into the entertainment and commercial realms.Ī deepfaked David Beckham has fronted a malaria eradication campaign, delivering the message in nine languages.Īpps and online tools have emerged offering users everything from a personalised video message from football legend Lionel Messi, to 'deep nostalgia', where photos of dead loved ones can be uploaded to recreate their likeness in a moving video. It's estimated 93 per cent of deepfakes currently produced are pornography, but the technology is rapidly emerging from the dark corners of the web into the mainstream. Ume is now working full time on deepfakes. Those 'crazy things' soon included a long-haired, preening Snoop Dogg. 'I did a few months of research, how to do it, and a half-year later I had my first deepfake,' he says. Where others were exploring the darker side of deepfakes, Ume saw the creative potential. Ume first got interested in deepfakes in late 2018 when he saw a news report about how the technology was being used for malicious ends. Their partnership would soon go on to produce some of the most convincing deepfakes ever made.

'People were amazed, like, 'How did he do this?'' Ume recalls. The resulting video, uploaded to social media, got the reaction the pair were after.

Fisher wanted Tom's 'concession' speech to use deepfake technology for the big reveal, where Tom Cruise would seem to emerge dripping wet from a swimming pool, laughing manically and draped in an American flag. When Fisher started planning the sequel, he turned to Ume for help. 'It was a funny video where Tom Cruise was running for president,' Ume says. But the man in the video is not Tom Cruise, it's Miles Fisher, an actor who created a spoof campaign clip called 'Run Tom Run' in the lead-up to the 2020 US presidential election.

Voice deepfake app