Tom Cruise Olympics Has Fallen Causing Frenzy Thanks To Russia

Microsoft linked the Tom Cruise-narrated fake documentary to two Russian groups called Storm-1679 and Storm-1099. The people behind the fake documentary even included the Netflix “ta-dum” sound and animation ahead of each of the four nine-minute episodes.

The faux Cruise opens the documentary by intoning, “In this series, you will discover the inner workings of the global sports industry,” adding, “In particular, I will shed some light on the venal executives of the International Olympic Committee, IOC, who are slowly and painfully destroying the Olympic sports that have existed for thousands of years.”

While AI-generated videos involving celebrities like Tom Cruise are often obvious to the technologically savvy, these videos can often fool many. However, there are some obvious issues if you go through the trouble of watching the fake documentary. For one, Cruise’s narration has the signature AI cadence, meaning his delivery is a bit off and not how you’d expect an experienced and acclaimed actor to say his lines.

Tom Cruise’s script includes some terms that are more commonly used in Russia, such as referring to a hockey game as a “hockey match.” Almost no one in America would refer to a hockey game as a “match,” giving away some of the obvious Russian influence. There are some outright strange lines in the script, which sound like they were either run through by a translator or generated by AI without anyone bothering to edit the lines.

One example of this is when the AI Tom Cruise says, “In Jerry Maguire, my character writes a 25-page-long firm mission statement about dishonesty in the sports management business. Jerry wanted justice for athletes, which makes him extremely relatable.”

There are also times when the AI Cruise narration repeats lines randomly and instances where the audio cuts out completely. The odd delivery, the audio issues, and the obvious errors quickly make this stand out as an AI-generated video, but there are certainly clips that sound realistic enough that they could fool more than a few people.

Microsoft reported that the AI Tom Cruise documentary first appeared in June of 2023, but the upcoming Olympic Games scheduled for July 26 through August 11 in Paris have caused it to resurface.

The Microsoft report also gives some ideas as to the motive, as the Storm-1679 group is attempting to spread disinformation that makes people afraid of attending the games. Videos that include fake CIA warnings that there is a high terrorist attack risk at the games and fake news videos claiming that people have returned tickets out of fear of terrorism have also been released.

The Storm-1679 group is also using the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict to stoke fears about the upcoming games, with the group posting images in November 2023 of graffiti in Paris threatening Israelis attending the Olympics. Microsoft reported the graffiti in the images was digitally generated. In short, if you see some clips of a Tom Cruise documentary about the Olympics floating around the Internet, know that you’re not getting the real deal.