It's not Keanu Reeves even if it seems like it: the success of celebrity deepfakes on Tiktok

[This piece corresponds to one of the shipments of Verne's fortnightly newsletter, by Anabel Bueno and Pablo Cantó.

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In Tiktok you can find everything.

The most successful viral video platform of recent times, and which has even become the Google of generation Z, has gained some mysterious users: celebrity

.

While

, suddenly a Hollywood actor comes out doing little dances.

At first glance, it seems that he is the celebrity in question.

But no, it's not him, it's just a

like the one by Lola Flores for an ad for the Cruzcampo brewery, starring a digital reconstruction of the singer.

One of them is Keanu Reeves, who has eight million followers on this social network.

It is not very clear who is behind it, but due to the similarity of the descriptions of the accounts, it seems that it is the same one that manages the unreal profile

,

English) of the Australian actress Margot Robbie (1.2 million), actor Jason Statham (10.3 million) and the actor who stars in the

saga , Robert Pattinson (930,000 followers).

It is known that behind the fictional account of Tom Cruise (3.7 million) is Chris Ume, a Belgian expert in

and visual effects, and Miles Fisher, impersonator of the actor.

With that combination, they make the video very credible.

Both are also founders of an artificial intelligence company and show in a video how they have managed to achieve imitation.

On her personal Instagram account, Ume shows how she is able to do more

with other personalities, like Justin Bieber.

Regarding the permission of the celebrities to create these videos, he assures that he contacted (without response) the team that represents Cruise and that, in case they were not approved, he would eliminate them without problems.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Ume (@vfxchrisume)

The idea behind

is to make fake videos look very realistic and that is achieved with the help of artificial intelligence.

The danger involved is, if instead of dancing, this type of technology is used to send certain messages or generate pornographic videos without the consent of their protagonists.

There is also concern that

could be used to rig elections through fake videos of politicians or celebrities.

Thanks to the democratization of artificial intelligence, the number of deepfakes on the Internet has doubled to every six months between 2018 and 2020. With applications

and increasingly user-friendly programs, anyone with access and a basic understanding of editing can manipulate or alter a photo or video.

There are tools, some even free, that allow you to generate them quickly and easily.

Although many are not professionals and it is clear that it is a manipulated video, experts believe that this can be used to deceive people who make basic and uncritical use of technology, such as the elderly or children.

The more realistic it looks, the greater the risk of deception.

According to the spokespersons of the Vicomtech Technological Center, it is not the videos,

, that pose a danger: “It is the use that is made of them that must be paid attention to”.

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