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Bruce Willis Deepfake Used For Russian Phone Commercial

Bruce Willis is starring in adverts for Russian Phone company MegaFon through the use of deepfake technology.

As reported by IGN, MegaFon used deepfake technology to digitally insert Bruce Willis' face onto another actors body for the series of adverts. Russia Beyond reports that Willis received an "unannounced fee for the licensing of his facial features and the use of his Die Hard character in the marketing campaign". It's estimated by Russian advertising market experts that the payment could be anywhere between $1 and $2 million.

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The adverts are said to have 15 different episodes, with the first available to watch on YouTube. It shows "Bruce Willis" tied up on a boat with a bomb ready to detonate beside him and another actor before the two chat to someone on the phone to figure out the bomb's password. The deepfake is pretty uncanny and would easily go over people's heads if they didn't already know that it was a deepfake.

Vasili Bolshakov, Director for Brand and Marketing Communications at MegaFon, said, "The image of [Bruce Willis’] ‘Die Hard’ character in the series will be created with the help of face generation technology, which is based on neural network algorithms. To make this happen, the engineers of the Deepcake studio selected a large volume of photos and videos featuring the celebrity. They had 34,000 units of content which were used by the neural network to create the image of Bruce Willis’ character.

"We realized that we can deliver high-quality content without becoming hostages of restrictions the pandemic put on movement around the world. The use of technology allows to shoot content faster and cheaper compared to when there is an involvement of celebrities on the set. We openly declare the technology we use and do not mislead anyone. On the contrary, we believe that seeing Bruce as from ‘Die Hard’ and ‘The Fifth Element’ in a new role is a great opportunity for all of us".

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