Technology seems to be advancing faster and faster every day and while some new gadgets are fascinating, others can be terrifying. When deepfakes first emerged in the public eye, they were met with numerous concerns over their usage. As deepfakes were mostly used to create explicit content with celebrities and spread various hoaxes, a debate was started regarding how it would affect the world. The industry, as well as the government, had to think of ways to detect such usage and limit it to prevent damage.
Though despite many questionable applications of deepfake technology, the internet has found some ingenious ways to create humorous content. From putting Nicolas Cage's expressions on dozens of movies to fixing Sonic's highly-criticized design, internet users keep producing highly entertaining content that we had no idea we even needed in our lives.
This time, one Youtube user created a short video by taking a beloved classic and giving it a new twist. This time, deepfake technology was used to put Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland into Back to the Future and the result is pretty impressive.
Someone's idea to put Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland into the classic was pretty genius!
Many people enjoyed the chemistry between the two actors after they appeared together in the Marvel movies. Tony Stark (portrayed by Downey Jr.) became a father figure to Holland's Peter Parker throughout the series of movies. Perhaps that's what inspired the Youtuber to put his skills to work and produce the video.
The deepfake puts Robert Downey Jr. into the role of Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown, a "student of all sciences" and brilliant inventor (a quality the character shares with Downey's Tony Stark). Meanwhile, Tom Holland's face is given to none other than Marty McFly, the world's second time traveler (after Brown's dog Einstein).
As Back to the Future came out all the way back in 1985, many people, naturally, got an idea for a reboot where Holland and Downey Jr. would replace Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd in the iconic roles. Some fans had their reservations, considering some recent movie reboots weren't as successful as expected and, for some, even ruined the originals. Despite that, the idea for the reboot could introduce the younger audience to a beloved franchise.
Deepfake is a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake" as it is based on deep learning and involves training generative neural network architectures to create content that is not real. According to Wikipedia, it is synthetic media "in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness."
You can see the video for yourself!
Here's how people reacted to the video
