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Harrison Ford digitally inserted via AI into Solo: A Star Wars Story

See what happens when machine learning is used to replace Alden Ehrenreich with a young Harrison Ford.

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Bonnie Burton profile photo
Bonnie Burton
Journalist Bonnie Burton writes about movies, TV shows, comics, science and robots. She is the author of the books Live or Die: Survival Hacks, Wizarding World: Movie Magic Amazing Artifacts, The Star Wars Craft Book, Girls Against Girls, Draw Star Wars, Planets in Peril and more! E-mail Bonnie.
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Harrison Ford shows up in a fan remake of scenes from Solo: A Star Wars Story. 

 Video screenshot by Bonnie Burton/CNET

Actor Alden Ehrenreich brilliantly portrayed a young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story. But for some fans, Harrison Ford will always be the quintessential space smuggler.

Instead of paying millions for CGI special effects to transform the 76-year-old Ford into his younger self from the 1977 Star Wars: A New Hope, one fan figured out how to do it using artificial intelligence (AI).

The YouTube channel Derpfakes makes videos showcasing how AI can create impressive special effects. AI processes and analyzes actors' photos in a variety of poses, then creates a database of them to use to automatically replace one actor's face with another. 

In a Derpfakes video posted Monday, Ehrenreich's face is expertly replaced with Ford's in scenes from 2018's  Solo: A Star Wars Story.

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"Using footage and stills of a pre-1977 Harrison Ford, I tried to make the most convincing young Solo I could, with the peak (in my opinion) being the final scene," Derpfakes posted in the video description.

This isn't the first time someone replaced Ehrenreich's face with Ford's in Solo. 

In May, Star Wars fan Nick Acosta remade the Solo trailer using digital compositing software.

Acosta swapped out Ehrenreich for digital composites of Ford's face using footage of his earlier movies, including American Graffiti and The Conversation.