Thanks to a Deepfake, Harrison Ford Now Stars in “Solo: A Star Wars Story”

Well, someone was definitely not satisfied with Alden Ehrenreich’s portrayal of Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, since they decided to go that extra mile and cast a younger Harrison Ford in the movie.

How? By using our old friend, artificial intelligence, of course!

YouTube channel aptly titled derpfakes has been posting videos that showcase the abilities of artificial intelligence when it comes to image processing for a while now. By using deep learning, AI analyzes an entire collection of photos of someone and creates an entire database of them in any pose or position you can think of. Then, it uses the database to perform a face replacement on the source clip. That’s the entire process, in a nutshell.

The results are often not only good, but almost uncanny in how real they seem.

This technique was used to replace Aldren Ehrenreich’s face with a younger Harrison Ford in a few scenes from the latest Star Wars universe movie. As you can see in the video below, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference of where the machine begins and the real human ends, in more ways than one.

derpfakes / YouTube

The results in this case are not 100% on point, the two actors have different face shapes to begin with – that is not something even a deep learning software can fix, but there are instances where you could easily be fooled.

Deepfakes have mostly gained a reputation by being used to create fake pornographic clips involving celebrities. The technology has been subsequently introduced to the general public thanks to Jordan Peele, who manipulated President Obama’s features and body language in a deepfake clip where he posed as the former U.S President. 

Imagine if we’d put this technology to other, more fun and harmless uses that don’t involve pornography or basically trying to start another world war.

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