What Is A 'Cursed Deepfake' And How Are They Made? The Humorous New AI-Powered Trend Explained

Not every meme is primarily funny. Sometimes, we go on the computer to purposefully look at things that will scare and unsettle us. Cursed content has a long history, and like many other types of memes, it has now entered the AI age.

Deepfakes, which many have cited as a potential threat to the stability of governments around the world, among other things, also happen to be potentially hilarious in memes.

So what makes a "cursed deepfake" and how is this AI technology revolutionizing memes? Let's explain.

What Is A 'Cursed Deepfake'?

A cursed deepfake is a meme that uses artificial intelligence to mash up two different people into one person (similar to a face swap but generally higher quality). Often, these memes will put one famous person's face and voice onto another person's body, creating an uncanny effect.

Unlike other deepfake memes, which are funny or interesting because they try to seem like real footage, the cursed deepfakes are purposefully unrealistic. Frequently odd or off-putting, they emphasize the uncanny aspects of what AI can do to our bodies and the reality we see.

Where Do They Come From?

There's a long history of deepfake memes, but some of the earliest examples of using the technology not to emulate reality but to morph it into something funnier or odder come from 2020, with a series of posts that modified clips from The Office to do things like make every character into Michael Scott.

These edits, however, happened before the era when sophisticated AI technology was readily available and people who weren't necessarily experts could use it.

In 2023, the right-wing meme account @C3PMeme, active across several platforms, posted edits of The Office and of other old sitcoms featuring American politicians. These memes made fun of the politicians by comparing them to foolish characters.

Why Do People Make Cursed Deepfakes?

An image is a powerful thing, especially for a political leader. Memes have always been concerned with turning images around for humorous or argumentative reasons. Refusing to take someone as seriously as they would like to be taken can be a way of criticizing both them and the way culture encourages us to view power.

In this sense, memes like the AI deepfakes that put Obama's head on Ice Spice's body might show us that the image we think of as "President Obama" is just as weird and invented by media as the AI hybrid looking out at us from the screen.

A less profound explanation might be that there's almost no way not to laugh at a video of Ice Spice with Barack Obama's face and voice.

How Do You Make A Cursed Deepfake?

The process still seems pretty complicated, but the maker of the Obama / Ice Spice cursed deepfakes, as well as some wonderful memes depicting Ron DeSantis as Grimes, told Know Your Meme during an exchange:

The workflow isn't too complicated on its face: I train an AI model for the voice, generally using a podcast recording I find online, using the program RVC. Then for the audio I generally use an AI program to strip away the background noise, sometimes dubbing in my own vocals or using vocal separation to deal with overlapping voices, which confuse the AI. When I have the clean audio I run it through RVC and it maps the timbre of, say, Obama's voice onto the audio I give it. At the same time, I use a face swapping program called Roop, now rebranded to FaceFusion iirc, to swap the face. Then I combine everything in Premiere and AfterEffects!

If you're keen to try it yourself, here's a link to RVC, the program they use and another link to an article explaining how to install and use FaceFusion, which is on a Github repository.

It should be noted that deepfakes, whether cursed or not, can also be used for more malicious purposes — like attempting to spawn misinformation or disinformation. This is, perhaps obviously, not encouraged.

It's pretty complicated to make one of these, but if you work hard and have a few hours, almost anybody can do it. With that in mind, it might be a good idea to be skeptical from now on about any video you see online of Obama saying wack stuff, especially when he has somebody else's body.

For the full history of Cursed Deepfakes, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.