Skip to main content

How to easily make a deepfake

Deepfakes are equal parts fun and terrifying in their potential, but throwing out the societal impact of hard-to-spot video fakery, you can use deepfakes for all manner of silly and even nostalgic projects. If you're looking to play around making deepfakes of your own, the process can be rather complicated, with the best ones requiring high-powered hardware and a long process of iteration and tweaking.

But, if you want to learn how to easily make a deepfake, there is a versatile tool that can simplify the process.

Difficulty

Moderate

Duration

30 minutes

What You Need

  • Windows or Linux PC with an RTX 2070 or better

  • Source video(s) and images

Create a deepfake with SwapFace

There are a number of mobile applications that can swap your face into different GIFs and memes, but if you want to place yours or any face into an existing video, like a movie or TV scene, SwapFace is the quickest and easiest free application for the job.

You will need a relatively powerful PC to run it well, however. The developers suggest an Nvidia RTX 2070 graphics card or better. You can run the app with less, but the renders will take much longer.

Step 1: Download the SwapFace application from the website and install it as you would any other application.

Step 2: Run the application, then create an account. When the verification email comes through, verify, then log in.

Logging in to the SwapFace app.

Step 3: FaceSwap has a number of options for swapping faces during a livestream using your webcam, as well as static images. To easily make a video deepfake, however, you want to select Video Faceswap.

Video swap in SwapFace app.

Step 4: You can use your own video by dragging and dropping a video into the respective window, but for this example, we're going to use one of the built-in example videos: the iconic scene with Leonardo DiCaprio toasting Toby Maguire in The Great Gatsby. If you want to do the same, select it from the top bar of available videos.

Step 5: Next, you can choose one of the available model faces, or upload your own. We've uploaded a 4K restoration of trolling icon Rick Astley from his Never Gonna' Give you Up music video.

Choosing faces in SwapFace app.

Step 6: In the bottom pane of the window, select who you want to replace and with whom.

CHoosing a face to swap in the SwapFace app.

Step 7: Select Fast Mode, or Pro Mode. Pro Mode gives you a better quality deepfake, but it needs the latest generations of GPU to run — SwapFace recommends at least an RTX 30 graphics card.

Step 8: Select Start then wait for your deepfake to render. When it's done so, a new pane will pop up giving you quick access to the video's location. Select Open to go straight there.

Rendering a face swap in Swapface app.

You should now have a deepfake of whoever you put into the video. The results aren't as strong as you would see from some of the most realistic deepfakes out there, though SwapFace claims this is by design to avoid the tool being used for nefarious purposes.

If you're interested in creating more believable deepfakes or don't mind paying for additional help to do so, look into DeepFaceLab.

Editors' Recommendations

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…
Optical illusions could help us build the next generation of AI
Artificial intelligence digital eye closeup.

You look at an image of a black circle on a grid of circular dots. It resembles a hole burned into a piece of white mesh material, although it’s actually a flat, stationary image on a screen or piece of paper. But your brain doesn’t comprehend it like that. Like some low-level hallucinatory experience, your mind trips out; perceiving the static image as the mouth of a black tunnel that’s moving towards you.

Responding to the verisimilitude of the effect, the body starts to unconsciously react: the eye’s pupils dilate to let more light in, just as they would adjust if you were about to be plunged into darkness to ensure the best possible vision.

Read more
FBI: Deepfakes are being made using your data to apply for jobs
Facebook Deepfake Challenge

Forget scamming grandma with fake IRS calls. According to the FBI, hackers are now stealing personal information and using deepfakes to apply for remote jobs.

As spotted by Bleeping Computer, the warning was posted as a public service announcement on the Internet Crime Complaint Center, where the FBI explained how cybercriminals are stealing Americans' personal identifiable information (PII) and applying for remote jobs, and then using deepfake videos to pass online job interviews.

Read more
Lambda’s machine learning laptop is a Razer in disguise
The Tensorbook ships with an Nvidia RTX 3080 Max-Q GPU.

The new Tensorbook may look like a gaming laptop, but it's actually a notebook that's designed to supercharge machine learning work.

The laptop's similarity to popular gaming systems doesn't go unnoticed, and that's because it was designed by Lambda through a collaboration with Razer, a PC maker known for its line of sleek gaming laptops.

Read more