Sure, Tom Cruise may have wrapped filming on his latest Mission Impossible film, but that doesn’t mean he joined TikTok. Visual effects extraordinaire Chris Ume from Belgium teamed up with Miles Fisher, a Cruise impersonator, to create the most convincing deepfake videos that most have ever seen. However, these clips weren’t created to fool people, but rather inform them of the technical possibilities of artificial intelligence.
Released in 1999, “The Matrix” is a science fiction film directed and written by the Wachowskis. It starred Keanu Reeves as Neo and takes place in a dystopian future with most of the population locked away in a virtual reality created by artificial being to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. One thing you may not have known is that Will Smith was originally the first choice to play Neo, but had to turn down the role to make “Wild Wild West”. Thanks to deepfake technology, we can now see what he would have looked like in the film.