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.
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!).
That is, the skill of a Hollywood star is not really anything to do with the product, but simply being famous, recognizable, and likeable.
I bet studio execs and agents hate having to deal with their stars’ erratic behavior off screen and their personal projects. AI stars voiced by unseen voice actors are much more easier to deal with and they can pay voice actors less. This is IT driven enshittification of the entertainment industry.
Once it’s been trained on the data of every movie ever made, won’t the AI be able to figure out what exactly makes a performance nuanced and captivating? We’re at the very start of this AI journey and it’s often indistinguishable from real life already.
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.
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There’s already a smaller fandom of actual AI VTubers. VAs of VTubers don’t seem to care at all, and even being amazed by the tech.
Stage theatre will make a come back.
Just like vinyl albums are now $50+ a piece
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.
Give 'em an inch and they’ll take a mile.
Give em an inch and they’ll take your arm and your first born child.
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.
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.
Soo Hatsune Miku?
You know I was once convinced Hatsune Miku was the primitive start of a huge shift in the entertainment industry.
No one believed me when I said AI would one day be seriously considered against flesh and blood entertainers.
Well whose laughing now, huh?!
Well, that’s an unexpected but correct answer
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.
activities that are “cognitive” are can be done by AI
Management.
Ironically management could really be done by an ai well. AI is amazing at time management and keeping its feelings in check, bad managers tend to be poor at time management and have a hard time not letting their personal beliefs seep into their work.
I wish that I was that optimistic. The data AI:s are trained on can be just as faulty causing them to have “personal beliefs seep in”…
That’s why models exist. You don’t let the AI do whatever it wants
Replacing the cognitive activity of the CEO would save the most money.
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.
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.
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.
That’s a different actor. The Friends character Janice is a parody on Fran’s character on The Nanny.
They did a great job because I always thought it was the same woman!
that one on Friends was not Fran Drescher, it was Maggie Wheeler
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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Creepy ass motherfuckers. You’d almost have to be a studio exec to think this is even something you should ask.
Hey, this is just like – (sees thumbnail image) never mind, I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, carry on
Salma Hayek is gonna be piiiiisssseeddd!!
You had me poop in a church?!
sigh
No one saw “S1m0ne” 20 years ago because they thought it was too far fetched.
Go back even further to Looker from 1981.
I wonder who the last famous actor will be
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@Aurenkin @igalmarino Well we’ll still have soccer players
Please, I’ve seen AI robots that flop better.
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.
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
The Critic did it instead of the Simpsons this time.
It Stinks!
These mfers watched “Joan is Awful” from season 6 of Black Mirror and said. LETS DO THAT!!
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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I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot.
