(Newser)
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It may’t be all unhealthy to be born with a face like Tom Cruise. Neither is it an obstacle to be chosen by one’s friends to ship the Harvard graduation oration to your class. However as Miles Fisher tells it for Hollywood Reporter, these two issues clashed in spectacular trend when he was launched on commencement day as “the Tom Cruise man.” He remembers the panic of feeling laughed at by a luminous crowd of 32,000 as his speech vanished from his thoughts. He recovered, nonetheless, and determined to take his famous-looking face to Hollywood in 2006. For years, that face remained a “unusual burden and legal responsibility,” as strangers stopped him on the road every day to remind him and casting administrators couldn’t fairly deliver themselves at hand him main roles, although he landed bit components in numerous TV reveals.
Then got here “Run Tom Run,” a spoof video wherein Fisher impersonates Cruise saying a 2020 presidential marketing campaign. It was a average YouTube hit, sufficient to get the eye of Belgian visible results artist and “technologically sensible wunderkind” Chris Umé, who used AI “deep studying” to transpose Cruise’s face onto Fisher’s. The consequence was a convincing (if barely glitchy) “deepfake.” Fisher was impressed to begin a TikTok account, DeepTomCruise, which turned an in a single day sensation. Many TikTokkers believed they had been actually watching the world’s most well-known actor exploring life’s mundane pleasures. Fisher says he hasn’t made cash off the act, but it surely has given him a much-needed “artistic boon.” He additionally believes his meme “has executed a lot to lift world consciousness” about each the advantages and dangers of emergent AI know-how. Learn his essay here. (Learn extra deepfakes tales.)
