The real Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise are not fighting on top of a skyscraper like the infamous AI battle. But they did show up at an 'F1' premiere together in London in 2025.

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Hollywood is an industry built on likeness and fame. But consumers are entering a world in which anyone’s likeness can be co-opted, as AI-generated deepfakes proliferate.

YouTube, the world’s largest video platform, has developed a solution. And now it is opening it up to Hollywood.

Executives at the Google-owned platform tell The Hollywood Reporter that their proprietary deepfake detection tool, years in the making, is now open to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused: Actors, athletes, creators and musicians, whether they have a YouTube channel or not, can sign up to identify and request removal of deepfakes on its platform.

“I would think of it as a foundational layer of responsibility,” says Mary Ellen Coe, YouTube’s chief business officer, in an interview with THR. “We’ve been working on this for quite some time since the genesis of thinking through AI tools and the implications on the platform … frankly, we have not seen the vectors that are even possible, and we are working very closely with talent agencies and third-party management companies to make sure that public figures can actually get ahead of this before something negative happens.”

YouTube first began testing the tool nearly a year and a half ago, then expanded it a few months later to some of the most prominent creators on its platform, and earlier this year to selected politicians and public officials, but the doors are now officially wide open for those most at risk of having their livelihoods damaged by the technology.

“What YouTube’s offering is — and I don’t say this about many tech companies — but out of the graciousness of their hearts, they are doing the right thing by providing these tools at no cost to the talent, so they can protect their real estate,” says Jason Newman, a partner at the management and production firm Untitled Entertainment. “Their real estate is their face. Their real estate is their body. Their real estate is who they are, what they do, how they say it.”

The timing of the tool’s expansion comes as the industry grapples with the continued growth of deepfakes across platforms, and with video models quickly turning hypothetical worst-case scenarios into reality for many stars.

While everyone remembers when they first saw the deepfake of Pope Francis wearing a puffy coat (one of the first photo deepfakes to capture the public’s imagination), the past six months alone have delivered what one high-level source calls two “oh shit moments” for Hollywood.

Last fall, OpenAI launched the Sora app, and a barrage of popular characters and IP quickly flooded it, including familiar faces from actors playing film and TV characters, and historic figures like Martin Luther King Jr., who had their AI likenesses puppeteered by its users. OpenAI ultimately put a stop to the MLK and IP-driven deepfakes (and of course it shut down Sora altogether last month), but the damage was done.

Then in February, videos created by Seedance 2.0 featuring Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise spread across the internet like wildfire. As one source notes, that was a wake-up call for Hollywood: Not only are deepfakes here, but they are progressing at lightning speed.

A widely-circulated, AI-generated video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise was made using Seedance 2.0.

Seedance 2.0 / Ruairi Robinson

“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale,” MPA president and CEO Charles Rivkin said as videos of the faux battle between the movie stars spread.

“If you think about public figures, famous figures, your image and your reputation are paramount to your livelihood,” says Coe. “And the idea that that could be corrupted in some manner is really an important concept, because there have been instances of this that I think people have talked about, it’s really important that they can have a semblance of control and ability to manage that.”

YouTube’s chief business officer Coe began thinking about developing the deepfake detection tool more than three years ago, when the company, under CEO Neal Mohan, began to lean into the potential of generative AI on the platform.

Mohan authored a blog post at the time titled “our principles for partnering with the music industry on AI technology,” writing th

YouTube Opens Up AI Deepfake Detection Tool to All of Hollywood