If you haven’t seen Season 2 of The Mandalorian yet, I’d be wary of the spoilers in this article – but be sure to check out the series!
Deepfakes are both fascinating and very problematic, but the creator of a particularly good deepfake happens to be a slam dunk of a job delivered.
Lucasfilm has hired the YouTuber who escalated the deepfakes of one of the most epic moments in Season 2 of The Mandalorian. For the shot, the studio spent a large portion of its budget getting Mark Hamill to re-appear as everyone else. (my) all-time favorite Jedi: Luke Skywalker.
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After his surprise appearance (and Grogu’s rescue) from the Jedi Master in the finale, YouTube creator Shamuk created a deepfake of Skywalker using the same visuals. It was incredibly compelling and surpassed the CGI seen in the actual episodes. The UK-based YouTuber has been making videos related to deepfakes since 2018 and is now going to work for Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm’s visual effects division.
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Here’s a video released in December 2020 in response to the scene from The Mandalorian, which has garnered 2.1 million views so far:
More in the future?
Lucasfilm confirmed to IndieWire that it hired Shamuk, with a representative saying it was “always looking” for talent to recruit: “Over the years, ILM has developed immersive visuals in both machine learning and AI. I have invested as a means of creating impact work… and it’s great to see momentum building as technological advances in this area.”
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IndieWire also joked that Shamuk commented on an old deepfake video of him, in which he talks about how he ended up at ILM. Program? Senior face capture artist, he said. “As some of you may already know, I joined ILM/Lucasfilm a few months ago and didn’t have time to work on new YouTube content,” he wrote. “Now that I’m more used to my new job, uploads should increase again. They still won’t come online every few days, but hopefully months apart.”