nofilmschool.com: Meta and other AI companies hired actors during the Hollywood Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes to train AI with their expressions, movements, and voice, paying as little as $300 to use the data collected "in perpetuity."
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Reflecting on the use of AI to generate characters, like the recreation of Carrie Fisher in the latest Star Wars installment, is indeed mind-boggling. The idea that jobs are being created to "train" AI to replicate human performances raises important questions about ethics, legality, and the future of the entertainment industry. The potential for AI-generated actors to blur the lines between reality and fiction presents a host of moral and ethical dilemmas. Should there be regulations in place to govern how AI-generated content is used? How will this impact traditional actors and the job market within the industry? What about creative ownership and consent? As technology continues to advance, it's crucial for society to grapple with these questions and establish guidelines that strike a balance between innovation and responsible use of AI. The convergence of AI and entertainment is a transformative development, and the way it shapes the industry will undoubtedly be a topic of extensive debate in the years to come. This intersection of technology and creativity forces us to rethink and redefine the boundaries of storytelling, art, and human authenticity.
Going off on my comment on the previous post about Daniel Radcliff’s stunt double, I think generative AI and other kinds of technology have many potential and benefits to the film and entertainment industry. From a production standpoint, using generative AI can be helpful when shooting a scene that can be potentially dangerous (e.g. when dealing with explosives) or a scene with a lot of background actors (e.g. battle scenes). The idea is that it minimises the chances of putting actors at risk and also reduces any extra work that goes into coordinating a large group of background actors. It may be selfish to say, but if I were the production manager, I would rather have the VFX department use generative AI to fill out faces on the screen than auditioning and filming 300 people. Though the problems mentioned in the articles are also valid – how do actors, especially those who are not A-list, protect their images from being used without consent (or consent they didn’t understand before)?
It is frustrating that companies like Meta are exploiting the actor’s strike to exploit actors who are struggling financially to agree to a shady deal. It seems that Meta is using this opportunity in anticipation of there being more strict regulation on using actor's likeness and AI to replace actors. Artists like the Weeknd and Drake who have the financial means to sue when their likeness is being used illegally. Future regulation around the parameters of AI should also require studios to inform consumers when AI is being used to make background characters. There have recently been some videos online showing examples of when real actors are being used as background characters versus when AI is being used and it's creepy. Also seems wild to me because I had a friend who is not an actor but over the summer loved getting to be a background character in the Summer I Turned Pretty. I don't understand what the studios are losing by not having those kinds of positions. This is why the strike and negotiations that SAG-AFTRA Is doing is so important: the technology is moving much more rapidly than we as a society can adjust to.
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