Creepily Accurate Cinematic “Deepfakes” Are Proliferating on YouTube

Most of our pop cultural knowledge of the emerging phenomena of “deepfake” videos tends to come as a result of frightening headlines of a sociopolitical nature. The thought that AI and machine learning can be used to create borderline photo-realistic images of political figures—such as President Obama, in a few prominent examples—saying or doing something they never said or did is a terrifying one, given the already existing American disregard for reality in so many scenarios. In a world where deepfakes are a possibility, does it not give the intentionally ignorant an excuse to call literally any video they don’t want to acknowledge “fake”?

And yet, there are also more weirdly esoteric, if theoretically harmless uses for the same technology cropping up on YouTube at an accelerated rate. One that you may have seen recently is the phenomenon of using deepfakes to swap out or replace the faces of actors in various roles. Sometimes this is used for strictly comedic effect, in a way that highlights the unreality of the technology, such as this bit of sticking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face onto Bill Hader’s body during a Conan interview.