If you haven't seen The Mandalorian Season 2 by now, there are spoilers ahead, but also, watch it!
Deepfakes are both fascinating and highly problematic, but nonetheless, one particularly good one landed its creator a slam dunk of a job.
Lucasfilm has hired the YouTube creator who created a deepfake of one of the biggest moments in The Mandalorian Season 2, in which the studio dropped a chunk of budget de-ageing Mark Hamill to appear as Luke Skywalker in the final episode.
Following this surprise appearance (and Grogu rescue) from the Jedi master in the finale, YouTube creator Shamook created a deepfake of Skywalker using the same scenes. It was incredibly convincing, in fact, arguably surpassed the CGI rolled out in the actual episode, although the audio is just slightly off. And now, after making YouTube videos since 2018, the UK-based creator is working for Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects division of Lucasfilm.
Here's the clip released in December 2020, which has earned 2.1 million views to date:
Lucasfilm confirmed to Indiewire it had hired Shamook, with a representative telling the publisher it was "always on the lookout" for artists to recruit: "Over the past several years ILM has been investing in both machine learning and A.I. as a means to produce compelling visual effects work and it’s been terrific to see momentum building in this space as the technology advances."
Also spotted by the publisher, Shamook had commented on one of their other deepfake YouTube videos weeks ago, talking about being hired by ILM. The job title? Senior facial capture artist, they said. "As some of you may already know, I joined ILM/Lucasfilms a few months ago and haven't had the time to work on any new YouTube content," they wrote. "Now I've settled into my job, uploads should start increasing again. They'll still be slow, but hopefully not months apart."
So, while creating deepfakes is undeniably dicey territory, it's apparently good stuff for a visual film effects resume.
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