Marvel’s Avengers play in Wizard of Oz thanks to brilliant deepfake

In the long run, the technology behind deepfakes is especially terrifying. Thanks to machine learning and smart algorithms, it is possible to make celebrities say anything you want.

The scary magic of deepfakes

The computer learns the face and movements of a person down to the smallest details, by analyzing many hours of videos and photos.

The result is an often bizarrely accurate model. All of a sudden, you can make the president of America say anything you want, and most viewers probably won’t even realize it’s fake.

That creates a scary picture of the future, in which deepfakes can be used to extort people, influence elections and for other sinister purposes.

The Avengers of Oz

In the meantime, however, we can mainly laugh at the technology. Deepfakes are often remarkably accurate, but far from perfect. YouTubers mainly use the technology to make hilarious creative videos.

For example, think of Barack Obama the sudden in Black Panther plays, or Tom Cruise the Iron Man plays. In that Marvel corner, another gem has now been added: The Avenges of Oz.

You guessed it: a YouTuber called NextFace has the Avengers in the iconic movie Wizard of Oz (1946).

Star cast

Apparently Tom Holland has a good face for deepfakes, because he already made an impression Back to the Future. To the point that they even started a petition for a reboot with the Spider-Man actor in the lead.

Anyway, back to The Avengers of Oz. This time Tom Holland plays Dorothy. Robert Downey Jr. plays the role of the Scarecrow, Chris Pratt is Tin Man and Chris Hemsworth plays the role of Cowardly Lion. Even Stan Lee and Thanos pass by.

The resulting video may not be the best example of what you can do with deepfakes. The illusion falls just too often to pieces for that. But that does not alter the fact that the result is a brilliant snack. Long live the creativity of the internet!