The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and advance editing software have made it difficult to differentiate between real and fake content and it is enough to shatter the sense of reality.

Telephone scams, catfishing schemes and social media trolling campaigns can all be launched with such fakery, and they can create equally unexpected consequences.

People are taking fake content to the next level with this new technology. Recently, a TikToker used deepfake to mimic Tom Cruise, and it is shocking how well the video replicated his famous laugh.

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A few things can tell that it is not Tom Cruise. First, the voice is quite different; especially the lip-syncing is a bit off at some points as you can hear the real Tom Cruise in this video.

There are glitches in the movement tracking and lighting in the content, especially in the golf video where the sunglasses disappear, and his mouth morphs for a frame or two.

Even with small glitches of technical details, it is difficult to differentiate between fake and real.

Recently a genealogy site MyHeritage has launched a tool where you can upload any picture, especially old ones to animate faces with deepfake technology of dead relatives. They have acknowledged that some people might find this feature “creepy” but others might consider it “magical”.

We used deepfake technology on Gen. Ziaul Haq to test the feature

The company deliberately avoid using speech feature in the creation to avoid “deepfake people.” The government of the United Kingdom (UK) is planning to pass legislation on this technology.

The Law Commission is considering proposals to make it illegal to created deepfake videos without consent.