TV and film extras fear generative AI will copy their faces and bodies to take their jobs

Production companies are scanning the faces and bodies of actors and actresses, who fear their likeness will be used to create fake AI doubles for TV shows and films in the future. Some workers spoke to NPR this week about being subjected to the scans, and feeling like they couldn't say no. Alexandria Rubalcaba, who was …

[alain williams]

Extras but not script writers

I live near the Warner Bros studios in Watford (known for Harry Potter). I have friends who work there.

One is a minor actor and film extra. He is very worried about his likeness having been taken and how it will be used without his permission as a generated extra in future films. He does not like AI.

Another friend is a script writer. He likes AI, it can do a lot of work in generating a script ... but that script is not good enough to use and this is where he comes in - tweak/improve it to be something great. He likes AI - as long as it will not improve enough to replace him completely before he retires.

[MrAptronym]

Re: Extras but not script writers

The only writers I know have not been fans of generative AI, I will admit none are specifically scriptwriters. The text it writes tend to be without cohesive theme or nuance. I don't know why someone would rather edit a soulless husk of a bad script into something good as opposed to crafting something with actual intent behind it.

Especially because I suspect fewer people will get paid a lot less over time to do the editing than to write things. I cannot imagine the result is anywhere near as good either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Extras but not script writers

Some series and even movies seem to be assembled with the scripts' "cohesive theme or nuance" having apparently a very low priority. I would guess there is enough of an audience market for low budget "entertainment" containing sufficient graphic violence (no limit) and sex appeal (up to legal limit) to make bland and pointless AI generated scripts an acceptable economy.

[IGotOut]

Re: Extras but not script writers

"The text it writes tend to be without cohesive theme or nuance. "

You've just described Fast and Furious 5+

FAMILY!

[TheMaskedMan]

"One is a minor actor and film extra. He is very worried about his likeness having been taken and how it will be used without his permission as a generated extra in future films. He does not like AI."

I just bet he doesn't, and I can see why. But there are probably millions of non-actory people who would happily pose for scans for a one time fee. I'm afraid that ship has already sailed, or at least is in the process of doing so.

"Another friend is a script writer. He likes AI, it can do a lot of work in generating a script ... but that script is not good enough to use and this is where he comes in - tweak/improve it to be something great."

This guy gets it. The generative genie is not going back in the bottle - it's just too useful. The only thing to do is adapt - make the things do something useful for you, use them to your advantage.

[Evil Scot]

IANAL But...

What they are collecting is personally identifiable data.

In the United Kingdom.

Does a contract erase your statutory rights?

[Spazturtle]

Re: IANAL But...

"What they are collecting is personally identifiable data."

GDPR doesn't prevent you from choosing to sell your personal data.

[mark l 2]

Surely if you are an extra you sign some sort of release form when you take part in work for a production company? So that should explain what they are intending to do with those scans.

But If you are just blinding signing contracts without knowing what your signing then you have much bigger issues and REALLY need to get a lawyer to look over any paperwork before you sign it from now on.

Unfortunately whether we like it or not I think the future of extra work is probably not a rosy one. It won't be long before if a studio is looking to cast someone of a particular age, skin colour, height etc it will be easier and cheaper to call on an AI which will just be able to generate their extra and they don't need to pay for all the other costs that come with hiring flesh and blood people.

The website this-person-does-not-exist.com has been around since 2020 and is able to create realistic looking unique faces of people who don't exist in the real world. And with the advances in AI in the last 3 years im sure its not too far away that fully AI generated realistic looking extras will be possible without anyone's likeness even needed to be scanned.

But look its not just extras who will be out of a job due to AI and automation, there is going to be a lot of industries where the deployment of AI is going to cause certain jobs to disappear.

New technologies come along and disrupt the status quo all the time, leading job losses or even entire industries disappearing in a short space of time. I used to have a part time job when at college back in the 90s working a video rental store, and even a small town could support several of those shops back then, and now i don't even think there are any still remaining near me.

I am sure the lamp lighters, switch board operators, chimney sweeps, telegram messengers etc all felt pissed when technology eventually meant their jobs became redundant.

[Jason Bloomberg]

If you are just blinding signing contracts without knowing what your signing then you have much bigger issues and REALLY need to get a lawyer to look over any paperwork before you sign it from now on.

It's Hobson's Choice really. Contracts will usually be overly permissive to start with and if you don't like the contract; "You can fuck off, darling. Next", and there are plenty of others willing to step forward and sell their souls to the studios and production companies,

How soon until being an extra becomes a thing of the past is hard to tell. When you need a Ben Hur quantity, perhaps, but for most productions it's probably going to be cheaper and easier to employ live-action extras, then faff about with CGI and all that's involved, for a while yet.

I am not cold-hearted enough to have no sympathy but it's a fact of life that some jobs do disappear over time. Change usually means losers as well as winners.

[IceC0ld]

I am now too old to be worried about what may or may not happen should AI take off

however, I am also a parent, and my children will have to live with the aftermath of the decisions being taken, and in that, I HOPE that those involved are using a healthy dose of common sense, and keeping their feet on the ground, and heads out of the clouds :o)

so I took a look back at how other 'advances' were met and how we determined what was to be THE way ....................

profit wins, we are SO screwed :o(

[Version 1.0]

Who the heck needs AI? My friend from darkest Peru had a movie made about his life and that got me eating marmalade everyday since then for the Vitamins and Minerals ... the film makers did a fantastic job manually by themselves with no AI at all after the BBC did a fun series of cartoons. In both cases this was people reading their original books and making movies that were wonderfully entertaining and tremendously visually accurate.

AI might do a visual replacement based on the original films, but if AI had just "read" a book would we be seeing a Kodiak Brown Bear (ten feet tall) walking around the station, not Paddington? The icon applies if you never saw the original movie - LOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Apple get good value for its R&D?

> Meanwhile it had spent a total of $22.1 billion in research and development as of 1 July compared to the $19.5 billion spent last year. That increase is down to Apple working on generative AI

So the generative AI has added $2.6 billion to the bill; even if we allow that much on this project for that last couple of years, this still means that it takes Apple multiple billions of dollars annually to do R&D for (mainly just updates to) its other products? Given what we see coming to market, how the blazes are they burning up that much money? And justifying it to shareholders?

Don't tell me it is the cost of making their own CPUs! An Arm variant as a fabless chip manufacturer!

Are they building their own space station?

[David Pearce]

Cloning research?

Trying to make a clone of Steve Jobs perhaps?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Does Apple get good value for its R&D?

"Are they building their own space station?"

Not as far as the public knows, but there's always rumours about what they might be working on. I suspect the majority of R&D never produces a "product", although some of the results might work their way into existing products. Remember all the rumours about an "Apple EV"? IIRC that turned out to be Apple working car-based software and systems, but not an actual car.

[WonkoTheSane]

This is precisely what caused the current US actor's strike

When actors began seeing legalese in their contracts allowing the studios to do this exact thing, SAG-AFTRA joined the WGA, who were already on strike over studios wanting to create scripts via ChatGPT.

[The Man Who Fell To Earth]

Why bother?

Just generate the extras from scratch. They are in the background anyway.

[SonofRojBlake]

They spoke to NPR this week about it, but when did the scanning happen? Because if it happened any time recently, these people are scabs, aren't they?

Also, echoing the comment of "why bother?" - surely by definition a background extra doesn't need to have an actual existing person's face, any more than any computer game character has to. Just slap a generic face on a generic body and move on.