Seeing is… disbelieving?
GQ South Africa|July - August 2021
We deep dive into deepfake, the unsettling technology with a high potential to deceive. Is this new frontier in artificial intelligence a feat of genius, a terrifying global disaster in the making, or simply the beginning of a never-ending real-life Black Mirror episode?
Shannon Manuel
Seeing is… disbelieving?

TOM CRUISE LOOKS AT THE CAMERA. ‘I’m going to show you some magic,’ he says, holding up a coin. ‘It’s the real thing,’ the Hollywood actor insists, giving his trademark laugh and making the coin disappear. ‘It’s all the real thing’

Earlier this year, a viral video series on social media app TikTok appearing to show the actor playing golf, telling jokes and performing magic tricks made headlines. Millions watched it, many of whom initially wondered if the 59-year-old Mission: Impossible star had joined the video-sharing platform, and the account gained hundreds of thousands of followers after posting just a few videos. Except it wasn’t Cruise but a deepfake– a video-generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Belgian visual effects artist Chris Ume had used a Tom Cruise impersonator combined with machine learning software to achieve a technological trickery that had experts impressed by its quality. While the clips may seem harmless, they sparked concerns about how far the technology has evolved in just a few years.

This story is from the July - August 2021 edition of GQ South Africa.

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This story is from the July - August 2021 edition of GQ South Africa.

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