I created my own deepfake—it took two weeks and cost $552

Deepfake technology uses deep neural networks to convincingly replace one face with another in a video. The technology has obvious potential for abuse and is becoming ever more widely accessible. Many good articles have been written about the important social and political implications of this trend.

This isn't one of those articles. Instead, in classic Ars Technica fashion, I'm going to take a close look at the technology itself: how does deepfake software work? How hard is it to use—and how good are the results?

I thought the best way to answer these questions would be to create a deepfake of my own. My Ars overlords gave me a few days to play around with deepfake software and a $1,000 cloud computing budget. A couple of weeks later, I have my result, which you can see above. I started with a video of Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress and replaced his face with that of Lieutenant Commander Data (Brent Spiner) from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Total spent: $552.