Performer Jim Meskimen collaborated with a deepfake artist, Sham00k (wise decision to use a pseudonym, with deepfake you don't know if you end up on TV, in jail or both) to make his imitations even more realistic.
What did he do? Meskimen and Sham00k showed it in a deepfake video on Youtube, and the result is crazy.
While the performer manages to imitate the actors in his voice and words, the software applied to his face transforms him from time to time.
And so the imitator gradually transforms into 20 Hollywood stars including George Clooney, Nicholas Cage, Colin Firth, Robert De Niro, Arnold Schwartzenegger and Robin Williams.
The effect leaves you breathless. The video shows all of Meskimen's ability to imitate actors, but also the ability of deepfake software.
It is yet another recent proof that this technology can now easily cross the border between what is perceived as real and what is not.
Of course, the deepfake took quite a bit of work
According to Sham00k, the entire video involved 250 hours of work, 2500 hours of footage, 300.000 images and almost a terabyte of data. Technology giants and lawyers are taking notes.
Latest from the front of the world's most false war
The exploit of Meskimen and Sham00k is only the latest of the demonstrations that follow one another at incredible speed: deepfakes are increasing, the tools to detect them are evolving (for now they are chasing).
Google has produced 3.000 deepfakes in an effort to understand how they are built: another company has made available as many as 100.000 faces of non-existent people created by an AI.
Facebook, MIT and Microsoft are also working to counter the phenomenon. Social Reddit has banned all erotic deepfakes. The state of California has given its citizens the opportunity to legally prosecute those who use their images to create porn deepfakes.
