While many of us would be hard-pressed to imagine anyone else playing the role of Tony Stark aka Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, did you know that at one point in time, it was reported that Tom Cruise had actually wanted to play that character? Neither Cruise nor Marvel have confirmed if those reports are true, but in case you’re wondering how that will turn out, you’re in luck.
This is because in a very convincing and slightly disturbing video, deepfake AI has been used to replace Downey Jr.’s face with Cruise’s face in some scenes from the various Marvel movies that Iron Man appears in. This of course includes the Iron Man movies, along with Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the Avengers movies.
A voice actor was also hired to try and mimic Cruise’s voice and speech patterns, resulting in a scarily accurate video. Now, in some scenes, the deepfake doesn’t work so good and you can see the AI trying to catchup, but in other scenes, it looks spot on. While this video is nothing short of amazing, it also serves to remind us how the rise of deepfake videos could lead to people being manipulated without them knowing it.
It could be used to create videos of politicians, like a video of a president giving a speech. This has led to concern that the technology could be used for malicious purposes. However, companies such as Adobe have been working on creating tools to help spot images that have been manipulated using AI.