US actors are still on strike – and yup, it's about those looming AI clones The union representing actors in the US film, TV, and radio industries has turned down the latest contract offer from studios in its battle to regulate the entertainment sector's use of AI. SAG-AFTRA, short for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, has been locked into negotiations …
Not to mention there are dead actors who've been dead longer than book copyrights last, so has anyone put forward how long an "estate" can profit from their famous dead ancestor image?
Here's a few thousand from 1950 - 1953. Some of thoise famous faces will have plenty of surviving film an "AI" could model from.
Are you sure those are no longer under copyright? If copyright was renewed, the term can be as long as 95 years for works registered prior to 1978.
Copyright in the US for older works is complicated.
I believe it's a good thing for actors to hold out on this topic with no compromises. Lots of people, me included, will take a chance on spending an entire paycheck to see a movie if a favorite actor is in it. Actors will also pick and choose the projects the will sign on to so they can make sure they don't get pigeon-holed into certain characters and are "always a bridesmaid and never a bride". There's also the touchy subject of a deepfake scene that includes partial or total nudity, homosexual relationships, violence, etc. People shouldn't, but they do, form thoughts that the actor has the same views as a character they've played which is why actors will want to read a script/treatment of a project before they accept a role. With AI replication, they lose that discretion. For deceased actors/performer, the estate doesn't get any say which can sully a reputation of somebody whose no longer around to counter any bad press. That could be a huge hit to that estate which will often consist of children/grandchildren/widow(er)s.
"How the hell much do movies cost where you're from???"
So much that it has to be something I really really really am interested in seeing in a cinema. I think the last one was Ghostbusters: Afterlife and it was a whole paycheck, but not cheap. With winter on the way, it's easier to smuggle in snacks and drinks under heavy clothing. I'm self-employed so I can choose a mid-week matinee at a discount. The nearest cinema is a 90mile round trip so petrol has to be put in the cost calculation. Since it had been a while before that last visit, the higher prices were a shock and I'm guessing prices have gone up since then. When I was a kid, we'd go to a matinee and chose a cinema that has lots of theaters so we could the most bang for our pocket money. As kids we could get away with bringing our snacks if we at least put some effort into not flaunting it. Dragging in a bin bag full of popcorn wouldn't have been allowed.
How many years until you can feed a movie script into a generative AI, press the "Generate" button and get a semi-finished movie? Pick your characters from a ready made library, do some interactive polishing and your blockbuster is ready for YouTube. 10 years? Spending $300mln to make a movie will be seen as one of the quaint things they did back then...
The glut of content will also push the prices films can command, both for individual viewing and for showing/distribution rights, way down. Quality will be lower (yes, it's possible for it to go down), because actual screenwriters and actors and directors and cinematographers and the rest do make a difference; but it's very difficult to survive on quality, because most consumers don't care. It's hard to see how this is not going to be hugely disruptive to studios.
I expect we'll end up with a bunch of niche markets for higher-quality content of particular sub-genres, and a lot more mass-audience content of low quality and very low profitability, simply fungible distraction commodities. And the latter category will be largely machine-generated, probably by purchasing the rights to existing works at a low rate (because prices will have been driven down) and cranking out conversions with minimal human supervision. It won't just be on YouTube; it'll be the bulk of what's available on the major streaming services.
The next stage will be eliminating the service providers, with customers just generating low-grade content to their own tastes from inputs they choose. "Alexa, show me an action movie based on a Tom Clancy novel."
It's a good thing there are already a lot of books, because I don't know that I'll be interested in anything new being released in any medium in ten years.
"but it's very difficult to survive on quality, because most consumers don't care. It's hard to see how this is not going to be hugely disruptive to studios."
The reason I only go to the cinema every few years is the lack of quality. Even if there is some quality, the usual formula is to take a book and reduce it down to a tiny bit of dialog that's only used to connect action scenes. The last Dune remake was a tour-de-force of woke. I did like the ornithopters, but changing Dr Kynes from male to a black female was pandering in my eyes. There are already strong female characters in the story as long as they don't get cut out. I'm also a fan of Max Von Sydow and loved his portrayal. I'll still watch the second installment if the trailers look good, but I might just wait the extra couple weeks for it to come out on streaming services. I do like that they felt they could go with a longer presentation. All of the Harry Potter movies could have been made much longer to cover the entire books and people would have bought tickets for each one as each installment was released. I identified with Fred and George and their roles were chopped down to almost nothing in the films.
What will happen next is quite obvious. Studios will create idealistic AI characters loosely based on existing actors but not close enough to fail a legal test.
Anyone who watched Titanic will already have experienced computer generated crowd scenes - and that was 1995-7 technology. Today it would be even better.
Then we will have AI-based agencies with AI actors for rent. At this point the real, and often overpaid, actors will be redundant. After all, AI actors will not be unionised, can work 24/7 without needing trailer homes, meal brakes, youth-regaining plastic surgery or expensive insurance.
Then writers will use AI to write scripts for AI actors.
It sounds like science fiction but it is possible right now. The real actors ought to wake up to the fact that their longevity is shorter than they hopes for.
The die is cast.
It sounds like science fiction but it is possible right now. The real actors ought to wake up to the fact that their longevity is shorter than they hopes for.
Science fiction was way ahead on this. I still can't remember the book, but read about this years ago with fully-AI actors who'd been digitally resurrected, and had no rights. Personally, I think this could be good, if it ends up breaking the Hollywood system. Good actors and writers can still probably make good movies as indies, leaving Hollywood to churn out derivative dross.
Yeah. Imagine the security one would feel if every single one of the cast will still be alive and not embroiled in a scandal come the 15th Season of your top TV show.
A.I. characters are the executives dreams come true.
Personally I'd much prefer the next generation hold up an AI character as their role model than the usual misfits of screen and stage, who are still operating as if they're above accepted moral norms.
If this were a viable path studios would already be casting their films with non-AI impersonators of big-name actors, and paying them next to nothing. The fact that they don't suggests they feel they need that big name on the poster to draw people in. Also, people are put off by uncanny-valley lookalikes of faces they know well.
The mill owners brought in looms not just because they were efficient but they made workers lives easier.
Luddites smashed up looms not because they were against mechanisation but because there was no safety net for those workers who had become highly skilled over years of working and bore the scars (literally) to show it
Sudden, unmanaged changes in work are what cause the strife
When entertainment from AI becomes good enough for most people to consume, what happens to the entirety of entertainers?
I get the feeling entertainment isn't going to be the problem. There's an interesting story developing in Ukraine. There have been rumors of a rift between their military and government. So there was a video of Gen. Zaluzhny giving a speech where he was very critical of Zelensky. Zaluzhny was then apparently arrested. But it turns out that video was a rather convincing fake produced by Russia. The ability to use Hollywood tech for psyops and propaganda seems a lot more dangerous than cloning actors to save on paying wages, and residuals.
I have a feeling that stage acting is a market that's already pretty saturated. It's not going to offer opportunities to a whole bunch of TV and film actors.
The underlying problem is that most of the potential audience doesn't care, and will pay — though, soon, not very much — for product regardless of how it's produced.
A few years ago a close friend who worked in tech but dabbled in theater and screenwriting and short films was offered a part as a prime extra in a big name, big budget Hollywood movie. It paid a fair bit better than minimum wage, he hung out with some big-name actors, and eventually got to see himself - if briefly and occasionally - on the big screen. Fun stuff, dream fulfillment.
As part of the "standard contract/standard prep" the studio required him to participate in live and green-screen motion capture over a period of several weeks prior to actual filming. He had to sign off on the "usual" releases. He thought the capture technology was pretty neat.
And not too long after production wrapped and the big movie was on every screen everywhere, my friend died.
His wife called me for help and, in the course of untangling all the things that come with death, asked how she could prevent the studio from selling or showing - in any capacity - her deceased husband over and over again forever.
All I could offer was "get an exceedingly skilled and connected and likely very expensive attorney", because once he was motion-captured and digitally mapped, he - not just his likeness, but the visual and mobile and vocal uniqueness that was him became the property of the studio, to be used as they saw fit.
I think there needs to be a better answer and a better model for this. No person or organization should own unlimited rights to any other real person, no matter how digitized and data-fied they may be.
(The pint is raised to absent friends and the digital ghosts they leave behind ==> )
All I could offer was "get an exceedingly skilled and connected and likely very expensive attorney", because once he was motion-captured and digitally mapped, he - not just his likeness, but the visual and mobile and vocal uniqueness that was him became the property of the studio, to be used as they saw fit.
We live in interesting times. It may not be just movies that could lead to distress. What if the contract allows the likeness to be sold? Then becomes a holographic digital greeter at a Walmart, or other store? I have a feeling the book I'm trying to remember was called something like 'Out of Copyright', but thanks to the 'upgrades' to search engines and that being a pretty common term, damned if I can find it. A pretty old SF story though that touched on those themes. I guess one way to resolve it might be for the rights to someone's likeness to terminate on death, but a contract could get around that. There'd probably also be pressure from studios and possibly families to allow digital life after death, especially if there are royalties involved. See also the Tokien family, or Oliver Reed's performance in Gladiator.
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