Over the weekend, a TikTok went viral claiming that the user of a CGI-heavy account was actually an elaborate deepfake himself, played by an entirely different person. Sorry to say it, but it’s actually a fake and a joke (but it’s nice to pretend).
Let’s watch said TikTok now, from user @curt.skelton.
@curt.skelton♬ Mr. Roboto – Live – Styx
Again, “Curt Skelton” is a real person, despite this video. If you look at the other videos on the TikTok account, Skelton moves around too fluidly and seamlessly to be a deepfake (the technology still has a long way to go), although his content is very focused on CGI and animation. It’s all very good, actually, you should give it a watch.
LadBible was able to determine he’s a real guy who’s been active on the internet since at least 2017, so unless this deepfake has been going for five years now, I’m afraid it’s not real.
Also, not to be a spoilsport, but he always dresses differently in his TikToks (with his hair often slightly different), so unless the model animator is putting extra effort into the clothing options available, it’s a little unbelievable (that’s usually a lot of extra work, especially for a viral TikTok). Also, the shadowing and lighting effects are quite realistic, but that’s just because it’s real.
But let’s entertain it, shall we? The woman who appears in the video, pretending to be the person who made Skelton up this whole time, is actually TikTok user @Zarooza (Zahra), another CGI artist with her own library of pretty terrific content, which adds to how elaborate this bit is.
@zarooza #ad With great power…comes a lot of fun! Join SweeTARTS for their Film Fest with the Best Use of Video Tools! Enter 8/26-8/31. Make sure to include #SweeTARTSFilmEntry, tag and follow @SweeTARTSCandy ♬ original sound – Zahra
According to Zahra, Skelton’s face was created “Using the first release of DALL-E” (which we’ve written about), an AI tool that can create images using prompts. She wanted him to look “really funny looking and ugly”, she says.
Apparently, after rendering out hundreds of these photos, she fed them into a rendering application called Convert Skeleton (which is where she apparently got the name “Curt Skelton”, which is still a real person). Convert Skeleton does not exist.
Supposedly Deepmotion.com was then used to animate Skelton how she wanted, with facial expressions rendered using Deep Face Lab. Apparently, to pull off the voice, she just deepened her voice and added a tonne of effects.
But none of that matters, because although most of those apps are real, the video is, itself, fake! Effort absolutely went into making it, especially in creating “models” for Skelton so that the shots inside the software looked real (these were likely created using a green screen), but that’s probably about it.
Don’t feel bad if you fell for it. It’s not the first time CGI (or, the lack thereof) has fooled people and gone viral.
But still, well done, CGI masters of TikTok, you’ve successfully set the internet on fire.