A deepfake version of Back To The Future starring Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland is doing the rounds on the internet – and it’s actually pretty incredible.
The clip features a scene from the hit 1985 movie, which actually starred Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd as Marty McFly and over-the-top scientist Doc Brown.
YouTuber EZRyderX47 has recreated a scene from the iconic film, deepfaking Holland as McFly and Downey Jr. as Doc.
Check it out here:
If I didn’t know any better, I’d genuinely think that film was the real deal.
The video was first shared on Friday, February 14, and has since amassed an impressive 2.7 million views and more than 36,000 likes at the time of writing.
People are obviously super impressed with the remake, with one Twitter user hailing it ‘by far the best deepfake video I’ve ever seen’.
‘Gets so close up on their faces and you’d never be able to tell,’ another fan said, adding, ‘Amazed how far this has come so quickly.’
Others were so impressed with how realistic the deepfake was, they suggested that one day we’ll be able to match movies where our faces play the lead. Now, there’s a very strange thought.
Another added:
Me: HOLLYWOOD DON’T EVER TOUCH BACK TO THE FUTURE AGAIN LEAVE IT BE.
Sees this.
Me: Sh*t this looks good!
Writing on Twitter, EZRyderX47 explained exactly how he mastered the piece of art, telling his followers:
The training time is important. The more you train the model and the more accurate it will be. The most important thing is the source images.
You need top notch quality and you need all angles from the face. After that you have to learn how deepfacelab works, do a lot of tests and have a lot of patience.
While deepfaking is clearly so impressive, it does have a dark side – Pornhub was forced to ban deepfake adult videos that appear to show celebrities in compromising situations.
Obviously, it is non-consensual to put the face of someone who has not consented onto the body of someone else who has not consented to it. But the broad defence of the practice is that it’s not real. It’s fabricated from thousands of photos of each person’s face.
In 2018, Corey Price, vice-president at Pornhub, told UNILAD:
Regarding deepfakes, users have started to flag content like this and we are taking it down as soon as we encounter the flags. We encourage anyone who encounters this issue to visit our content removal page so they can officially make a request.
Content that is flagged on Pornhub that directly violates our Terms of Service is removed as soon as we are made aware of it; this includes non-consensual content.
To further ensure the safety of all our fans, we officially took a hard stance against revenge porn, which we believe is a form of sexual assault, and introduced a submission form for the easy removal of non-consensual content.
Come on guys, let’s keep it PG.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.