So it wasn’t necessarily surprising to see Tom Cruise on the app, sharing videos of himself playing golf and pratfalling around the house.
I don’t intend to use it in any way where I would upset people – I just want to show them what’s possible in a few years.”
Or creators, rather, because DeepTomCruise is the product of a collaboration between the Belgian visual effects artist Christopher Ume and the Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher.
Whether or not the New Zealand director takes Ume up on his offer, at least one person in Hollywood appears to have learned something from his and Fisher’s stunt: while Tom Cruise has refused to comment on the videos, the actor now has a verified account on TikTok – although with zero videos posted, and just 20,000 fans, he is apparently less popular than his deepfake counterpart.