Tom Hanks has issued a warning to fans on social media after being left unsettled by his own "appearance" in a dental advert.
The 67-year-old Forest Gump actor's followers might have been shocked to see him in a video advertising a new dental plan, however, no one was more stunned than Hanks himself.
On Saturday (October 1), the Oscar-winning icon took to his Instagram to warn folks that the promotional clip circulating on social media was created with artificial intelligence and that he had no involvement with its creation.
"BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it," Hanks wrote over the photo of his AI counterpart.
He has since disabled comments on the post.
Check out Hanks' post below:Deepfakes are realistic yet simulated videos made by AI algorithms, often using celebrities and industry figureheads to make moving images of fake events.
While the Hollywood icon did not give his consent for his likeness to be utilized in the dental video, he will get the computer-generated treatment in a new project from director Robert Zemeckis.
Next year, Hanks will star alongside Robin Wright in the movie Here, which is about a small space and the people who come into it over several decades.
It was reported by The Hollywood Reporter that artificial intelligence company Metaphysic would be used "extensively" to de-age both Hanks and Wright.
Zemeckis explained in a statement that he has "always been attracted to technology that helps me to tell a story," adding: "With Here, the film simply wouldn’t work without our actors seamlessly transforming into younger versions of themselves."
"Metaphysic’s AI tools do exactly that, in ways that were previously impossible," he concluded.
Despite giving his permission to be "de-aged" in his forthcoming project, the Cast Away star opened up about his concerns about the unstoppable march of AI technology on The Adam Buxton Podcast earlier this year.
Hanks shared that the capability of manipulating human likenesses "inside a computer" had now "grown a billionfold," adding that now "we see it everywhere," as cited by Sky News.
"Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are, by way of AI or deep fake technology… I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but my performances can go on and on and on," he continued.
"Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there'll be nothing to tell you that it's not me and me alone. And it's going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That's certainly an artistic challenge, but it's also a legal one," he added.
In other news, Robin Williams’s daughter, Zelda, spoke out about AI recreations of her father, claiming they have left her "disturbed".
She shared a statement on her Instagram stories which read: "I've witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/ recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad."
"This isn't theoretical, it is very very real. I've already heard AI used to get his 'voice' to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings.
"Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance," she continued.
"These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for," she concluded.