Then Ume and Fisher released their creations into the wilds of the internet. The reaction was completely unexpected, as online viewers debated whether the real Tom Cruise had in fact joined TikTok. It still took over two months to build the computer model, then dozens more hours ironing out the glitches frame by frame using digital graphics software. Ume collected over 6,000 images of the Hollywood actor taken from different angles, with different facial expressions, to train the algorithm. "For a deepfake, you start with the source data - I mean pictures and videos of the character you want to deepfake.
"I did a few months of research, how to do it, and a half-year later I had my first deepfake," he says. Where others were exploring the darker side of deepfakes, Ume saw the creative potential.
Ume first got interested in deepfakes in late 2018 when he saw a news report about how the technology was being used for malicious ends. Their partnership would soon go on to produce some of the most convincing deepfakes ever made.
"People were amazed, like, 'How did he do this?'" Ume recalls. The resulting video, uploaded to social media, got the reaction the pair were after. Fisher wanted Tom's "concession" speech to use deepfake technology for the big reveal, where Tom Cruise would seem to emerge dripping wet from a swimming pool, laughing manically and draped in an American flag. When Fisher started planning the sequel, he turned to Ume for help. "It was a funny video where Tom Cruise was running for president," Ume says. But the man in the video is not Tom Cruise, it's Miles Fisher, an actor who created a spoof campaign clip called "Run Tom Run" in the lead-up to the 2020 US presidential election.