Deepfake danger: what a viral clip of Bill Hader morphing into Tom Cruise tells us

You've heard of deepfakes – doctored videos fabricating apparently real footage of people – and their potential to disrupt democracy. But this might be the clip that makes you believe it. A YouTube clip of Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader in conversation with David Letterman on his late night show in 2008 has gone viral for showing Hader doing an impression of Tom Cruise – as his face subtly shifts into Cruise's. The mind-melding video has been viewed nearly 3m times since being uploaded to the YouTube channel Ctrl Shift Face a week ago. "Well, I guess I don't need to do mushrooms any more," is the top-voted comment.