Lil Yachty turns into The Joker in viral AI deepfake that can “replace anyone”

A viral deepfake video circulating online has replaced rapper Lil Yachty with The Joker, thanks to a user who used a new AI tool named Viggle AI.

AI tools are all the rage. Companies like Google and OpenAI developing tools such as Sora, which can not only generate images and video but also produce viral deepfakes, which most recently embroiled Microsoft in controversy.

Now, a viral video has surfaced that replaces a live performance by rapper Lil Yachty with Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of The Joker. As shared by AI advocate Barsee on social media, the expert claims that the AI tool used to create the deepfake “will replace anyone from a video”.

But, the reality of the video’s production runs a little bit deeper than the use of a single AI tool.

The deepfake was created by a user named A.I Warper. They used a tool named Viggle AI, several additional AI models, and Adobe After Effects to produce the final video. Viggle AI is powered by “the first video-3d foundation model with actual physics understanding” according to its official website.

A.I Warper explains the methodology behind the deepfake, explaining that they first rotoscoped Lil Yachty to create a mask, and then fed an image of The Joker into Viggle AI to replace Lil Yachty with The Joker. Then, the output was composited onto the original mask, and run through an additional “AnimateDiff” motion model, alongside several other AI tools, trained on Joaquin Phoenix’s iconic Joker to achieve the final result.

The video allegedly took “less than 5 mins” to create, but the tools and knowledge required to make such a video remain much more complicated than it may appear on the surface. Viggle AI alone isn’t a magic bullet, as the rotoscoped output had to then be composited back into the original video, and then refined for the final video. But, the results are undeniably impressive for such quick work.