A Belgian 'deepfake artist', Chris Umé, and his company Metaphysic made it into the final of the United States' popular "America's Got Talent" talent show, by using three good singers and advanced AI technology.
Umé impressed both the jury and the audience with a live deepfake act, in which the male judges and presenter of the show – Simon Cowell, Howie Mandell and Terry Crews – seemingly performed an opera number through artificial intelligence.
The act, which aired on Tuesday in the US, saw three opera singers perform the classic 'Nessun Dorma' in front of a camera, but on the big screen behind them, Cowell, Mandell and Crews are the ones seemingly giving the best of themselves.
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What Umé and his company do is give someone a different face in a video recording, through artificial intelligence, which means they can let anyone do just about anything.
On America's Got Talent, the optical illusion was so well-engineered that Cowell called it "the best act ever on this show." On Wednesday night, it was up to viewers to decide which acts would advance to the final, and Umé was among the selected ones.
"The fact that we now have the opportunity to show what we can do in the final is unbelievable. That is what we do it for. I am extremely grateful to my team," Umé told VRT.
Now, he has two weeks to work out a new act with his team. "We are going to do something that has never happened before, and we will bring back a legendary artist to give an unprecedented stage performance."
