Los Angeles, California - What is Hollywood star Tom Cruise doing on TikTok?

In the four videos published so far on the profile deeptomcruise, the actor appears to play golf, stumble and fall down, make a coin disappear in a magic trick, and eat a lollipop with chewing gum inside.

The first clip alone has been viewed more than 10 million times, while the others have between 1.3 and 2 million views.

All fake! Tom Cruise (58) is not really in the videos. They are so-called deepfakes made with software that can create entire videos with the help of artificial intelligence.

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This is similar to the face-swap filter popular on Snapchat, where users appear to switch their faces.

But what's funny in private use can have fatal consequences.

In April 2018, an artist drew attention to the danger by creating a fake video on fake videos. In the clip, shared to YouTube, a fake Barack Obama (59) describes the harmful potential of deepfakes, saying someone could even create a fake version of himself that would call Donald Trump (74) a "total and complete dipsh*t."

In the case of Tom Cruise, the unusual TikTok account name was the first hint that something was not quite right. The voice also sounded different from the actor's.

But it wasn't until almost two weeks later that Belgian software programmer Chris Umé revealed he and actor Miles Fisher (37) were behind the videos.

The visual effects specialist wanted to alleviate some anxiety about the technology. It took Umé several weeks to create the deepfakes, he told The Verge, adding that he was only able to achieve such a high degree of authenticity because Fisher is a top-notch Tom Cruise impersonator.

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"You can’t do it by just pressing a button," Umé reportedly said. "That’s important, that’s a message I want to tell people," he urged.

"It’s like Photoshop 20 years ago, people didn’t know what photo editing was, and now they know about these fakes."

In the meantime, the real Tom Cruise has also signed up on TikTok.

He has not uploaded a video yet, but his profile is verified with a blue tick.

That's a good way to distinguish between the fake and the original.