Robert Pattinson,the star of the Twilight saga andthis year’sThe Batman,toldThe New York Timesback in 2019 that he was too “old and boring” to have Instagram. “I only have abs,like,two weeks a year,” he said,implying that he wasn’t physically fit enough for the app.
In fact,Pattinson says he doesn’t have any social media accounts. Which is why fans were excited,if a little surprised,to see his face appear in TikTok videos over the past few weeks.
The TikTok account posting those videos,@iam_pattinson,purports to be run by Pattinson,and it has amassed more than 660,000 followers since posting its first video on March 24 this year.
But commenters on the TikTok account are questioning its authenticity and say the videos appear to be deepfakes.
Deepfakes are images,sound and video that are put together using complex software and look as if they are real,or created through traditional means. They’re mostly used to transplant the heads of celebritiesonto the bodies of other actors in pornographic videos to create convincing content of a person engaging in activities they may not actually have been part of.
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Siwei Lyu,a University at Buffalo professor who researches digital forgeries and machine learning,toldNBC Newsthere were signs that the videos of Pattinson were created using “high-quality deepfake technology.”
One of these is the difference in ear shapes between Pattinson and the person portrayed in the videos. That’s important because ear structures are unique and Lyu says “facial modelling software typically excludes the ears.”
If this account isn’t run by Pattison himself (and it seems like it isn’t),the actor joins a list of celebrities who have been impersonated on the platform.