VTM: Deepfaking the Masked Singer

As a beloved tradition, registered VTM viewers receive a personalized birthday email. This year, VTM wanted to push the limits and bring a high-tech makeover to this tradition. Together with Hotel Hungaria, we created a unique and personalized clip of The Masked Singer for the birthday person, where Kurt Rogiers would reveal them as the party animal (”Feestvarken”).

The clip starts with a point-of-view camera perspective, where the party animal (you) appears to put on The Masker Singer costume and gaze in the mirror. Throughout the clip, your age and various personal hints are unveiled. As the anticipation escalates, you step on stage, delivering the performance of your lifetime. And then, the moment suprême: beneath the mask, who could it be? The jury tries to guess, and finally, Kurt Rogiers reveals your name as the party animal.

Capturing Kurt Rogiers uttering over 2000 names would have been a time-consuming task. That’s why we used Wav2Lip and GFPGAN — advanced deepfake technologies — to transport the viewer right into the heart of the action. We synchronized the audio files of all the names with an accurate deepfake of Kurt Rogiers and got a spectacular end result.

To top off this experience, Jens Dendoncker and the party animal capture a selfie which can be shared on social media to celebrate their birthday.

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The first of these personalized birthday emails was sent out on May 26, 2023. What’s more, if the party animal logs on to VTM GO during their birthday week, they receive a personal message guiding them to their birthday wishes. By the end of the campaign, we expect to surprise nearly 2 million viewers.

This project shows the extraordinary possibilities of combining deepfake technologies with an immersive experience to engage audiences on a personal level. And as we continue to explore and push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI and deepfake technologies, we look forward to creating even more immersive, personalized, and interactive experiences in the future.

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