These Tom Cruise Deepfakes on TikTok Are Here to Change Your Whole Concept of Reality

Unless I'm missing something, @deeptomcruise has been in existence for four days. It has posted a total of three videos. And is already produced almost 770,000 likes and over 230,000 followers. And it's not hard to see why. 

This is surreal. An almost exact simulation of Tom Cruise, who may himself be, as far as anyone knows, a simulation of a real flesh and blood person. The science is not as yet settled on that. 

We are clearly standing on the precipice of a world where we can simulate anything. I mean, if a TikTok account can create a nearly perfectly believable rendering of the perfect being, where you can't be sure if you're looking at advanced graphics or the luminous, ageless essence of our greatest celebrity, what can we believe every again?

The answer is, you won't be able to. When videos are capable of creating anything, nothing will be believable. We won't know fact from fiction. The truth from your lying eyes. Do you have a neighbor you can't stand? Post a deepfake on Facebook that looks like he's beating his dog. Suspect someone you like has a crush on someone else? Send them a video of that other third of the triangle in bed with a prostitute. Running for office? A couple of campaign ads with you're opponent dressed as a Gestapo officer at a playground trying to lure kids into his windowless, primered van while dumping toxic waste into the ground will save you months of tedious campaigning and boring town halls. 

I mean, if someone can make a spot on Tom Cruise doing magic tricks, there's no limit to what we can do. 

Surreal. But all too real. And creepy in the way predicted by the Uncanny Valley hypothesis. That's the one that says if a simulation or a robot is too lifelike, seems too much like an actual human being, it triggers an emotional reaction in your cerebral cortex. From revulsion to, in extreme cases, even a innate fear of death. What exactly existed in our evolutionary past that we would need a mechanism like that in our subconscious is a fascinating question. But also unnerving as hell to consider. Maybe we just needed it so that when we developed the ability to create Tom Cruise deepfakes in 2021, the primitive parts of our brains would know it's not him. Darwin would approve.