Best and Cheapest Way To Make DeepFakes for ARG?
Yeah, I know, AI bad, DeepFake immoral and unethical, insert all other comments here.
Alright, I'm trying to figure out how to make deepfakes of people who don't exist. Their faces were entirely created with a mix of traditional photoshop, police sketch artist techniques, and help from Nano Banana. Still images are great, but now we need assets of these guys doing dance challenges, speaking in interviews, etc. Their voices were synthesized, so real people's speaking voices will not be used in this process. The problem is that the company is just starting and is dead broke, and DeepFaceLab appears to be really and truly dead. Any leads, help, or alternatives would be great. The budget I was given for this is legitimately $0 because, and I quote, "You can probably find free software somewhere on the internet if you try hard enough!" TIA, guys.
Context: I work for a small start up company that's starting out as an entertainment/music company. There are currently a few groups, and my job is "manager" of two of the five of the ones currently in progress. The music and lyrics are all 100% made by humans, but the faces/avatars themselves are made through AI and heavy photoshop (The company concept is they're a science corporation that has discovered sentient beings living inside a computer in a cyberpunk-esque city, and they're making the first ever entertainment company with some of these AI beings. It will overall be part of an ARG with clues leading to how the company is actually evil, there's some secret anti-human subplot, insert things I can't talk about because of an NDA here) Half of the profit automatically goes to research into combatting the environmental effects of AI as well as finding more sustainable solutions to the current system.
Posted Feb 15, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC