Have You Seen This? Bill Hader's Arnold Schwarzenegger impression gets the deepfake treatment

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

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CONAN’S COUCH — I don’t know about you, but I think impressions are one of the most amazing, funniest form of comedy ever. I love impressions. In fact, you can ask any of my family members, friends or coworkers and they’ll tell you I have impressions of many of them (some don’t even know I can do an impression of them, tee-hee).

Great comedians are known for doing several impressions. One of the best impressionists out there is “Saturday Night Live” alum and Emmy Award winner Bill Hader. The “Barry” star is known for being able to do spot-on impressions of Al Pacino, John Malkovich and Keith Morrison of NBC’s “Dateline”.

Perhaps Hader’s best impression is of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, a young Hader was Arnold’s production assistant during the filming of the movie “Collateral Damage” back in 2002.

Hader is one of those comedians that when you hear him do an impression, it almost feels like he morphs into that celebrity he’s impersonating. Now, thanks to “deepfaking,” morphing into another person is a video reality — for better or worse.

In this video, YouTuber Ctrl Shift Face put together a Hader interview on Conan O’Brien’s show from a few years back with Schwarzenegger’s face. And the results are mind-blowing, funny, and — to an extent — a bit scary on how good these deepfakes can be.

The video starts with Hader and Conan talking. Just 10 seconds into the interview, the deepfake happens and Hader’s face is morphed into Arnold’s. The funny conversation with Conan continues, with Hader doing more of Arnold’s voice while, thanks to technology, wearing Arnold’s face.

I must admit, when Hader says “state of California” as Schwarzenegger (“Califonia”), I lost it! That’s so spot on! It’s so crazy to see this video and see how far artificial intelligence technology has come.

Ctrl Shift Face does a great job shifting Hader and Schwarzenegger’s faces back and forth. There are also other deepfake videos from Ctrl Shift Face that feature face swaps of Al Pacino, Jim Carrey, and Bruce Lee.

There is a part of me that is worried about how deepfaking can be used more often in the future. I’m not alone. Lawmakers are also worried this technology will be used to spread misinformation during the 2020 election.

While the Hader video is an example of deepfaking in good fun, let’s not forget that there could be people out there looking to use this incredible artificial intelligence technology for manipulation.

It’s just a reminder to not always believe what you see.