Awesome Deepfakes

This impressive yet creepy AI tech can take a single still image and make it appear to speak or sing any audio. Developed by researchers from Alibaba’s Institute for Intelligent Computing, EMO: Emote Portrait Alive’s model was trained on more than 150 million images to work its magic. The video is peppered with examples of the convincing deepfakery.

The Auralnauts used some editing and visual effects trickery to make it look like the characters in The Matrix movies (and Wilford Brimley) are reciting the lyrics to the Vanilla Ice hit Ice Ice Baby. Take the red pill, and it’s really Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure.

(PG-13) Deepfake expert Ctrl Shift Face pulled out all the stops for this video that reimagines James Cameron’s The Terminator with Sylvester Stallone taking Schwarzenegger’s place, along with cameos from Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, Kanye West, Bill Hader, George Clooney, Mark Zuckerberg, Willem Dafoe, and more.

This short fan film by Alessandro Costanzo envisions what might have happened after the end of Spider-Man No Way Home, and that Andrew Garfield’s Peter 3 met up with Emma Stone’s Spider-Gwen. They pulled off the trickery using deepfake tech, applying the original actors’ faces onto new actors and dubbing new voices. (Thanks, Rob!)

Artificial intelligence technology is getting really good at certain things, especially things like writing and replicating voices. This video from Speaking of AI combines both of those skills to create a convincing Jerry Seinfeld standup routine that he neither wrote nor performed in real life.

(PG-13) What would happen if the scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci questions being called “funny” took place during a game of Scrabble? DelBay Pictures answers that question with their hilarious deepfake video with Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, and a special cameo by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

(Gore) Since the 1950s, James Bond has been portrayed by eight different actors. Unlike Doctor Who, there’s no regeneration sequence to explain the change. The VFX experts from Corridor Crew fixed that by doctoring scenes of 007, showing him die and rise from the grave to serve His Majesty’s Secret Service once more.

This insane commercial takes us inside the imaginary grocery store “Omega Mart,” where a deepfaked Willie Nelson will try to sell you products. The trippy ad was created by art collective Meow Wolf to help promote their Las Vegas-based combination theme park, art exhibit, VR game, and shop.

After watching every episode of The Office, is there a limit to how much Michael Scott you can take? Jessie Richards thinks there wasn’t enough of Dunder Mifflin’s blowhard boss, so he deepfaked the faces of most of the other character’s onto Michael’s head. We’re guessing that Stanley, Kelly, Oscar, and Darryl wouldn’t have worked so well.

2020 was a very strange year. So why not end it with a very strange video? For apparently no other reason than to prove it could be done, ljameswalters and VFX artist Chris Ume made it look like Lord of the Rings’ slimy Gollum is singing the Sinead O’Connor / Prince track Nothing Compares 2 U – with slightly revised lyrics.

Cryo115 came up with this crazy AI-powered lipsync of The Lord of the Rings’ loathsome little character Gollum, and the ridiculous 1990s song The Scatman. The result is like peanut butter and chocolate coming together, except it’s two strange tastes that taste stranger together.

Well the years keep coming and they don’t stop coming. With the help of a piece of deepfake lip-syncing software called Wav2Lip, YouTuber ontyj managed to edit together scenes from various movies and make them look like they’re singing along to the Smash Mouth track “All Star.”