An AI-generated deepfake of the Stranger Things cast is going viral on social media.
In a video clip that’s been viewed more than 3.5 million times on X, a man was seen swapping a man's face with several cast members of the hit Netflix series.
With each character change, the creator of the video is able to make hyper-realistic versions of actors like Millie Bobby Brown and Noah Schnapp mimic everything from facial expressions, movements, and other hand gestures.
A similar clip in which a different man performs a real-time deepfake of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street has also reached 1 million views.
Stranger Things itself also recently fielded an AI-related controversy of their own.
In the Netflix documentary, One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, eagle-eyed fans spotted what appeared to show a ChatGPT tab open on a Duffer Brothers computer.
The documentary’s director, Martina Radwan, was recently asked about the moment in her film while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter.
“I mean, are we even sure they had ChatGPT open?” she responded, to which journalist Tony Maglio said he wasn’t sure despite the internet being convinced it was the AI writing tool. “There's a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, ‘We don’t really know, but we’re assuming.’ But to me it’s like, doesn’t everybody have it open, to just do quick research?”
She added, “How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I don’t even understand … Again, first of all, nobody has actually proved that it was open. That’s like having your iPhone next to your computer while you’re writing a story. We just use these tools … while multitasking. So there’s a lot going on all the time, every time. What I find heartbreaking is everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart.”
When pressed about whether she witnessed any “unethical use of generative-AI in the writers room,” Radwan said, “No, of course not. I witnessed creative exchanges. I witnessed conversation.
“People think ‘writers room’ means people are sitting there writing. No, it’s a creative exchange. It’s story development. And, of course, you go places in your creative mind and then you come back [to the script]. I think being in the writers room is such a privilege and such a gift to be able to witness that.”
Stranger Things’ fifth and final season is streaming now on Netflix.