Actors say Hollywood studios want their AI replicas — for free, forever
Actors say Hollywood studios want their AI replicas — for free, forever
No, this is not a Black Mirror episode.
The reveal came as SAG-AFTRA actors confirmed they were going on strike.
I wonder what the future is gonna hold for famous people. There's gonna come a time when a rando dev can just press a button and a beautiful, funny, and any other-positive-quality-you-could-want person will be generated. This person will never commit a sex crime, will never say a racist remark, never do anything controversial. I imagine once that happens that's just kinda it for famous people who represent a brand.
Soo Hatsune Miku?
Hah, I only knew that name from Daisy 2.0, turns out is a whole rabbit hole!
Well, that's an unexpected but correct answer
But it's not that easy. If this rando dev's creation never catches the public's attention how can they love it, hate it, forgive it and love it again. So this positive-quality-creature can’t be a star.
And how about acting? You don’t think that acting is an art. That actors actually create a character, that’s either boring for the audience or catching it’s empathy. If there’s no actor creating this character, than the rando dev has to create them.
And to make a movie they have to create a lot of different characters and some will turn out to be better in creating characters than others. So they will be famous for doing it great. The public will admire them and they will have their moments on the red carpet and get the chance to make a racist remark or slap someone in the face.
You know, Mark Twain was such a rando dev. And he got a lot of fame. And now the fame will be coming back to the authors…
Look at animated movies. They're giant collaborations of hundreds of mostly anonymous people, basically large software development projects. They hire stars to do the voices, not because they're all that great as voice actors (trained voice actors can often be had cheaper), but to be the face of the film in public and promote it.
That is, the skill of a Hollywood star is not really anything to do with the product, but simply being famous, recognizable, and likeable. They are a brand, like Mickey Mouse or Colonel Sanders (once an actual person!).
I don't think the question is art vs not art. "Art" is an abstraction bestowed upon something by the viewer.
I think a lot of people are still struggling with this, but popular "art" is already largely devoid of humanity, and reduced to formulaic focus group fluff, and has been for a long, long time now. AI just streamlines the processes we already have.
Any additional debate on this will reduce to linguistics. You can - "I know it when I see it" - all you want, but that's a cop out. The reality is that media which produces a specific neurochemical response in humans doesn't, and never has required human input. A breathtaking landscape. A feeling of tranquility during snowfall. A kinship with an animal. An AI generated image. These are all the same process.
Yes ... interesting and on point! Only two thoughts to add ...
Now's a good time to pay attention to what industries come off as the most creepy and dystopian, as AI is sort of allowing them to reveal themselves as always that way
And, relatedly, something I keep thinking of with stories like this is that we should maybe try to realise how continuous the transition into dystopian behaviour is. Like, with your artificial celebrity ... are we not somewhat headed that way already with the underlying real life person merely being the mold onto which an artificial celebrity is cast? From "photoshopped" images and footage, scripted and produced social media statements, ads everywhere, and branding driving everything ... is it really a huge discrete step to simply digitise the likeness of someone ahead of time?
The lesson ... fighting against small things can matter ... a lot. Just like the parable of "First the came for X and I didn't care ... ". Once you let the line be moved a little in the wrong direction on something that matters, it can end up moving a lot!! And if we're truly going through some late-stage-capitalism dystopia ATM, a lot of it, IMO, comes down to forgetting the importance of doing things on principle.
But there's the rub. Right now the "principle" here is basically being a luddite to me. I don't see a big moral quandary - I see a contract dispute between 2 well funded groups regarding voluntary employment. And a demonstration of why Unions might be good for workers.
Stage theatre will make a come back.
Just like vinyl albums are now $50+ a piece
At what point does the AI just write the script, build actors and environments for it, "shoot"/render the movie, advertise it, and send it out without any human interaction? Will the movies of the future just all be animated? Would definitely be far cheaper than buying equipment, paying staff, and renting locations.
That assumes perfection. An AI is going to make mistakes. Maybe not the same mistakes a human will, but they will still make mistakes.
It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough to convince some corporate juggernaut to inflict it upon us.
This person will never commit a sex crime, will never say a racist remark, never do anything controversial.
But controversy is good, it generates attention. My fear is that the "optimized" artificial celebrity will be exactly that and it will be a whole new level of shitshow. When you think about it, there are already people who maintain "controversial" public personas for that exact reason (not naming any, since I don't want to give them more attention), so it's not even that far fetched.
I can't wait to see all the Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson A.I.-likes.
I really hope the trolls put those people's (and others like them) likenesses in compromising positions using A.I. fuckery.
Basically the idea of Aki Ross from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Square was just 20 years early.
I'm worried more about posting a controversial comment online, getting a knock on the door from the FBI or some government agency saying "you're under arrest for robbing this bank"
"I didn't leave the house, I didn't Rob..."
"Here's video proof of you with your face clearly visible, robbing this bank and doing a dance"
AI is just going to be the next way that we're all gonna get fucked over and exploited by the mega rich. What a future...
This is true. I work in a related field, and my company and almost all of its clients are falling over themselves trying to identify what can be already replaced with AI.
Systematically processes are being broken down to identify activities that are "cognitive" are can be done by AI, with the goal of eventually replacing the human workers with AI almost entirely for those tasks. All these companies, including mine, are super profitable for most part but that is apparently not enough, and everyone fears being left behind and their share price tanking if they don't adopt AI too. So there's a mad rush to get it done everywhere.
All these companies, including mine, are super profitable for most part but that is apparently not enough
It can never be enough when you're worshiping Mammon. Anything less than all and even all it self is too little for them.
You should expect this, and we're all the problem.
Most humans are inherently lazy, and corporations exist to make as much profit as possible. If they don't embrace AI, their competitor will, and their competitor will crush them because they will have lower costs and humans in general tend to care more about price than ethical concerns (see clothing production).
Sigh... Guess we gotta copyright the human body and face. I fucking hate this timeline.
Personality rights are already a thing. They are a mess in the US though.
Portrait rights - i.e. the right the own one's image - is a thing in some European jurisdictions. But of course this doesn't exist in the US.
This is lawyers fuel
Like an onion or like a cake?
Don't we already have pretty robust laws when it comes to person's likeness?
I presume most contracts cover this aspect mainly for the purposes of marketing and future references. Of course the actors probably didn't expect the extent the current technology could allow their likeness to be exploited.
It would probably make sense to require more specific contracts for this purpose, and have previously signed general contracts become insufficient for using actors' likeness for this purpose.
They say they are expected to accept contracts that were designed for the old business model while the industry structure and technologies have changed. Here's some video of the speeches & demonstrations.
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If a corporation puts their crimes inside a computer, they can get away with it for years before anybody figures out how to do anything about it.
It's not really that complicated if there's a will and resources to investigate. You can legally compel someone to produce evidence or show you how they do things whether it's in an Excel file or in a paper ledger.
Conversely, you can burn a paper ledger just as easily as you can delete a computer file. In fact computer files might actually be more resilient since they can be recovered if not properly destroyed.
in her opening statement of the press conference, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said that “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines.”
The Nanny, comin in hot! Fran Drescher has always been cool as hell, I didn't realize shit was the president of SAG-AFTRA!
I can never in-hear her laugh on Friends.
Salma Hayek is gonna be piiiiisssseeddd!!
You had me poop in a church?!
sigh
Creepy ass motherfuckers. You'd almost have to be a studio exec to think this is even something you should ask.
No one saw “S1m0ne” 20 years ago because they thought it was too far fetched.
Go back even further to Looker from 1981.
I think a time will come in our dystopian future where it will be trendy to have a performance by a real actor or a traditional painting created by a real artist ... that will be the gimmick, so to say.
As long as I can help it or afford it, I will always prefer human art over machines.
The reality is works produced by humans are going to be a luxury for the rich, while the poor have to setting for AI generated crap.
Hear, hear! If pop culture is gonna be a frothy cesspool of AI generated shit, I'm going all in on subculture.
I wonder who the last famous actor will be
@Aurenkin @igalmarino Well we'll still have soccer players
Please, I've seen AI robots that flop better.
Man, this is reminding of horror comic book story from like 40 years ago. Actress signs away the rights to her own appearance, has to be disfigured or something because she's no longer allowed to look like herself
I'm almost certain there was a movie like this. A guy create a AI celebrity and he fall in love with her. I believe he "kills" her in the end.
I don't remember if the public end up knowing if she was fake or not.
“The congress” is coming closer.
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/152795-the-congress
I understand why some people might not like this movie. But I think about it a few times a week. And one major part of the scenario is about a famous actor giving her digital copy to a studio and the unforeseen consequences.
Yeah these recent events really do start to look like The congress. I watched it only recently due to one of such events. Not sure I fully understand why people dont like it.
Anyway, the second half of it is just so eery, the reality distortion part, is sometimes both inspiring and uncomfortable. And I think there’s some potential parallel with generative AI.
With Dalle/ChatGPT, one may create virtually anything from already available data, just like people in the 2nd half can take on any form, which is inspiring to me.
But at some point, I guess both can lead to some loss in meanings, detached from reality. And eventually, instead of embracing beauty in diversity, people might turn to or get normalized to bias and conformity. Like how GAI may exacerbate unrealistic beauty standards, and how those people tend to choose only certain forms/figures to “be”.
First thing I thought of when reading the title. The movie is 10 years old!
These mfers watched "Joan is Awful" from season 6 of Black Mirror and said. LETS DO THAT!!
The Critic did it instead of the Simpsons this time.
It Stinks!
I wish I blogged about how I thought this would happen back when I first saw that Tupac hologram years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbrFmPBV0Y
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Good bot.
Nice thumbnail