Tom Cruise

One of the earliest high-profile celebrity deepfakes involved incredibly lifelike TikTok videos of Tom Cruise playing golf and performing magic tricks. While the videos were created as a technical demonstration by visual effects artist Chris Umé rather than a malicious attack, the uncredited realism shocked the public. Umé himself addressed the tech's frightening potential, saying: "You can't use it to put words into people's mouths. It needs to be regulated."