Despite initial reports, the deep-fake company Deepcake does not own the rights to Bruce Willis’s likeness (partially because that’s literally not possible, the company said). Willis appeared in recent advertisements through Deepcake, which managed to create a “digital twin†of Willis that can appear in new content despite the actual Willis retiring from acting as a result of his aphasia, a brain disorder that hinders cognition and speech abilities. “I liked the precision of my character,†Willis said of the process, according to a quote on the Deepcake website. “It’s a great opportunity for me to go back in time. The neural network was trained on content of Die Hard and Fifth Element, so my character is similar to the images of that time.†This led to reports on sites including The Telegraph that Willis had sold the rights to his likeness.
The Hollywood Reporter, however, confirmed on October 1 that Deepcake does not own Willis’s likeness. In fact, Willis has “has no partnership or agreement with this Deepcake company,†according to a representative for the star. According to Deepcake, the ads were created in partnership with Willis’s representatives at CAA, but Willis’s likeness could not be sold to the company, so Willis would still have to approve future uses of his digital twin. Wondering about the commercial in question? Apparently it’s this Russian cell-phone commercial in which fake Willis briefly speaks Russian. No matter what the legal situation is here, it is deeply weird.