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The Rolling Stones’ new music video features a de-aged version of the band created using deepfake technology.
On Thursday, The Rolling Stones released the music video for In the Stars the first track released from the group’s upcoming album Foreign Tongues, due out on July 10. In the video, directed by Francois Rousselet, the legendary rock band appears decades younger than its real-life members, who are now in their late 70s and early 80s.
Rousselet used deepfake technology to digitally de-age current band members Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, and Keith Richards. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the technology was provided by Deep Voodoo, the AI company founded by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
The In the Stars video shows digitally younger versions of The Rolling Stones performing in a warehouse surrounded by fans, with the band designed to resemble how its members looked in the late 1970s. The video also features actress Odessa A’zion, who at one point licks the digitally de-aged Jagger’s face. In another scene, she places a cigarette between Wood’s lips while sitting with the band on a couch.
The project is the latest high-profile music video to use Deep Voodoo’s technology. The company previously worked on Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 video for The Heart Part 5 which digitally transformed the rapper into figures including O.J. Simpson, Kanye West, and Kobe Bryant. Deep Voodoo also helped digitally de-age Billy Joel in the music video for his 2024 song Turn the Lights Back On.
The Hollywood Reporter says that it remains unclear exactly how the deepfake process was created, although the video credits list body doubles for Jagger, Richards, and Wood. The credits also include several deepfake artists, as well as an “AI data wrangler” working on the project.
De-aging technology has become increasingly common in filmmaking. Last year saw the release of Robert Zemeckis’ film Here starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Here follows multiple generations of couples and families as they inhabit the same home over many thousands of years. For the movie, Hanks and Wright were digitally de-aged with AI-assisted technology Metaphysic Live, which face-swaps in real-time. For example, 58-year-old Wright was de-aged using footage from her at age 19 to be paired with her present-day performance. However, the use of de-aging AI technology in Here sparked debate.
Critics raised concerns that AI-generated younger versions of major stars could eventually reduce opportunities for younger performers or lead studios to rely more heavily on digital recreations of established actors. As BBC Magazine noted last year, “de-ageing has gone from being a derided novelty to a useful film-making tool in fewer than 20 years.”
English (US) ·