{"id":4232,"date":"2023-07-25T13:32:18","date_gmt":"2023-07-25T13:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/?p=4232"},"modified":"2023-08-29T19:27:29","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T19:27:29","slug":"actors-are-really-worried-about-the-use-of-ai-by-movie-studios-they-may-have-a-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mpelembe.net\/index.php\/actors-are-really-worried-about-the-use-of-ai-by-movie-studios-they-may-have-a-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Actors are really worried about the use of AI by movie studios \u2013 they may have a\u00a0point"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominic Lees<\/a>, University of Reading<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Film and television actors in the US came out on strike<\/a> on July 14, causing Hollywood productions to shut down. The action has also had an impact on US films shooting in the UK: director Tim Burton\u2019s Beetlejuice 2 has \u201cpaused\u201d<\/a> and the production of Deadpool 3, filming at Pinewood Studios with stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, has been stood down.<\/p>\n

The dispute is about remuneration for actors, very few of whom enjoy the high income of Hollywood stars. But an additional argument between the union, SAG-AFTRA, and film producers is about the use of artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a>. Actors are fearful of the impact of AI on their careers. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When they perform on film sets, their image and voice are digitally recorded at extremely high resolution, providing producers with huge amounts of data. Actors are concerned the data can be reused with AI. New processes such as machine learning \u2013 AI systems that improve with time \u2013 could turn an actor\u2019s performance in one movie into a new character for another production<\/a>, or for a video game.<\/p>\n

Actors feel an urgent need to control how AI manipulates their image. The union president, Fran Drescher, says<\/a>: \u201cWe are all in jeopardy of being replaced by machines.\u201d But how realistic are these fears?<\/p>\n

\u2018Synthetic media\u2019<\/h2>\n

When we talk about the use of AI in film and television, there are multiple techniques under development. We categorise these as \u201csynthetic media\u201d. This covers processes such as deepfakes<\/a>, voice cloning, visual effects (VFX) created using AI, and completely synthetic image and video generation. <\/p>\n

I have written before about deepfakes for The Conversation, pointing out the benefits<\/a> as well as dangers. For screen actors, deepfakes are one of the most vivid threats. <\/p>\n

This is because, since machine learning took off, Hollywood stars including Scarlett Johansson and Gal Gadot have found their faces deepfaked into porn movies. This is a major gender-based issue: it\u2019s almost always female actors whose images are manipulated and used in this way. <\/p>\n

We tend to think of artifical intelligence as omnipotent. But my research has found that integrating deepfakes<\/a> into the language of cinema and TV drama is difficult. Certain shot types are easy, such as front-on long shots, but asking the AI to produce a profile shot tests the algorithm to its limit. <\/p>\n

Industry research and development (R&D) programmes such as Disney Research have invested a huge amount of effort into perfecting deepfake techniques<\/a>. But no one has yet produced an easy way to swap an actor\u2019s face into any shot size or angle that the director chooses, with convincing, high-definition results. <\/p>\n

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