Keanu Reeves Calls Deepfakes ‘Scary,’ Won’t Let Performances Be Digitally Altered

Technology today is inching closer and closer to the realities presented in science fiction movies like The Matrix, and Keanu Reeves doesn’t like it.

In an interview with Wired, the actor voiced his distaste for some modern technologies, specifically calling out the dangers of deepfakes.

“What’s frustrating about [deepfakes] is you lose your agency,” Reeves said. “When you give a performance in a film, you know you’re going to be edited, but you’re participating in that. If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That’s scary.”

Deepfakes have become a growing trend in the entertainment industry. Bruce Willis was deepfaked into Russian phone carrier commercials, Lionsgate used deepfake tech to remove over 30 f-bombs from its movie Fall, and Lucasfilm even hired a deepfake YouTuber after de-aging Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian’s Season 2 finale. Reeves, like many, has some concerns over rapidly advancing AI technology.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies. They’re having such cultural, sociological impacts, and the species is being studied. There’s so much ‘data’ on behaviors now. Technologies are finding places in our education, in our medicine, in our entertainment, in our politics, and how we war and how we work.”

It’s a lot of very Matrix-like thinking from the Matrix star, who also addressed fears of ChatGPT and other AI replacing the jobs of artists and creators by saying, “The people who are paying you for your art would rather not pay you. They’re actively seeking a way around you, because artists are tricky. Humans are messy.”

Keanu Reeves is out promoting his next upcoming film, John Wick: Chapter 4. This week, we learned that the movie is the longest in the John Wick series to date, clocking in at 2 hours and 49 minutes. John Wick 4 is due out in theaters on March 24. While you wait, check out our exclusive character poster that sees John Wick in Paris, or read about how the movie has the series’ most action “by a good margin.”

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.