Over the past two years or so, Justin Bieber has perpetuated a fake feud with Tom Cruise. Now, things have been taken to a new level, as he attempted to have a fake feud with a fake Tom Cruise.
There’s a popular TikTok account that shares deepfake videos of Tom Cruise, created by visual and AI effects artist Chris Umé and Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher. The account has been profiled by outlets like CNN and the videos routinely rack up tens of millions of views.
Anyway, Bieber recently stumbled across an August upload of the fake Cruise playing guitar and singing a song about social media. Bieber shared the clip on his Instagram Story and wrote (as The Daily Dot notes), “@tomcruise I’m impressed with your guitar skills, But you could still catch these hands my boy.” He then added, “ALL JOKES ASIDE @tomcruise your shredding on that guitar.” Bieber even went as far as performing a brief cover of the song.
📲 | Justin Bieber via Instagram stories:
“@TomCruise estou impressionado com suas habilidades com o violão, mas você ainda pode socar com essas mãos, meu cara.😂🥊 Enquanto você está tocando uma música sem se importar com nada, estou aqui pensando no nocaute no primeiro round.” pic.twitter.com/eFISREOXzw
— Suporte Justin Bieber Brasil | Fan Site (@jbsuportebr) October 7, 2021
Justin Bieber via Instagram stories: cover of @tomcruise new song pic.twitter.com/zoU9Rlaxxu
— Justin Bieber News (@jbiebertraacker) October 7, 2021
A couple hours later, Bieber realized he had been duped, as he deleted his posts and wrote, “That’s not really Tom Cruise? Lol, oh well, still hilarious.”
Umé previously noted that his intention with the Cruise videos isn’t to trick people, telling NBC News earlier this year, “The important thing is, we didn’t want to fool people at any moment. If I can help in creating awareness, or even work on detection in the future, I would love to.”
