Cinematic Deepfakes

Everyone knows that Jack Nicholson starred in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. What this deepfake by YouTube user Ctrl Shift Face presupposes is… maybe it was actually Jim Carrey. (Via)

The above video is Ctrl Shift Face’s second Jim Carrey/Shining deepfake; you can watch all of them here. They’ve also done deepfakes that put Bill Murray in Full Metal Jacket and Sylvester Stallone in Terminator 2.

While there are some visual glitches where the software can’t quite keep up, overall, these deepfakes are incredibly realistic and well-done. If you knew nothing about The Shining, Nicholson, and Carrey, there’s very little that would clue you in to the fact that Ctrl Shift Face’s videos are not actual movie footage.

On the surface, we can laugh at these deepfake videos even as we make them go viral on social media. (Bill Murray as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman?! Hilarious!) But if you really stop and think about them, the ramifications can get pretty disturbing, if not downright dystopian.

Already, there are doctored and manipulated videos that put politicians and celebrities in embarrassing and scandalous scenarios. Given the relative ease with which deepfakes can be created these days, it’s only a matter of time before regular citizens may find themselves in similar videos; this stuff takes the concept of “revenge porn” to a whole ‘nother level. And if you thought that “fake news” on Facebook was bad news for democracy in 2016, just imagine the impact that politically-motivated deepfakes could have in future elections.