Celebrities and Hollywood executives have found themselves at odds over the use of Artificial Intelligence like ChatGPT, even as its already happening at every level of moviemaking, eliminating human accountability and judgment.
Stars like Harrison Ford , Keanu Reeves and more have started to speak out about AI using their likeness and voice. While some celebs have been willing to sell their rights to AI companies, others have taken steps to protect their image in contracts, Fox News noted.
They have this artificial intelligence program that can go through every foot of film that Lucasfilm owns, Ford said of George Lucas production company, making him look younger in the final film in the Indiana Jones franchise.
I did a bunch of movies for them, he added. They have all this footage, including film that wasnt printed. So they can mine it from where the light is coming from, from the expression. I dont know how they do it. But thats my actual face. Then I put little dots on my face, and I say the words, and they make [it]. Its fantastic. The danger is less about AI in the creation of documentary, the actual production, and more in the curation of it, says Amit Dey, executive vp nonfiction at MRC https://t.co/vawj91Cx5t
The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 4, 2023
Reeves, who famously played a character who fought AI in The Matrix in the 1999 sci-fi thriller, isnt as keen on the technology. He said he realized a while ago he needed to have legal protection to prohibit digital manipulation of performances without his consent.
I dont mind if someone takes a blink out during an edit, Reeves told Wired. But, early on, in the early 2000s, or it might have been the 90s, I had a performance changed. They added a tear to my face, and I was just like, Huh?! It was like, I dont even have to be here.'
Its going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies, he added. Theyre having such cultural, sociological impacts and the species is being studied. Theres so much data on behaviors now. Technologies are finding places in our education, in our medicine, in our entertainment, in our politics, and how we war and how we work.
People are growing up with these tools, the John Wick star continued. Were listening to music already thats made by AI in the style of Nirvana. Theres NFT digital art. Its coolbut theres a corporatocracy behind it thats looking to control those things. Culturally, socially, were gonna be confronted by the value of real, or the non-value. And then whats going to be pushed on us? Whats going to be presented to us?
In Hollywood right now, the Writers Guild of America(WGA) is striking and many of your favorite shows are on hold as TV and Film screenwriters express unease and concerns over chatbots rewriting or writing scripts, Fortune.com noted. The strike is also over an increase in pay and larger contributions to benefits.
Writer, director, and actress Justine Bateman issued a warning to those in the business amid the strike when she tweeted that AI has to be addressed now or never. I believe this is the last time any labor action will be effective in our business. If we dont make strong rules now, they simply wont notice if we strike in three years, because at that point they wont need us.
Actors, you must have iron-clad protection against the AI use of your image and voice in the SAG MBA or your profession is finishedshe added.
AI is terrifying, Danny Strong, the Dopesick and Empire creator said. Now, Ive seen some of ChatGPTs writing and as of now Im not terrified because Chat is a terrible writer. But who knows? That could change.
Michael Winship, president of the WGA East and a news and documentary writer said, Were not totally against AI. There are ways it can be useful. But too many people are using it against us and using it to create mediocrity. Theyre also in violation of copyright. Theyre also plagiarizing.
In a recent Vice article, voice actors spoke out about having to sign their rights away to these tech companies using voice-generating artificial intelligence.
Its disrespectful to the craft to suggest that generating a performance is equivalent to a real human beings performance, SungWon Cho, a game and animation voice actor said.
Sure, you can get it to sound tonally like a voice, and maybe even make it sound like its capturing an emotion, but at the end of the day, it is still going to ring hollow and false, he added. Going down this road runs the risk of people thinking that voice-over can be replaced entirely by AI, which really makes my stomach turn.
Film producer Emmet McDermott recently wrote that writers should be concerned about protections against AI in the documentary and nonfiction space, the Hollywood Reporter noted.
The greatest threat to broader culture posed by ambient machinery isnt the bottom-up, AI-generated art populating social media (think: Wes Anderson Directs Star Wars), McDermott wrote.
It is the top-down, AI-powered platforming of art, which were already seeing across the media landscape algorithms deciding, on a global scale, which stories to tell and how and it is especially insidious in the realm of nonfiction, he added.
Actor-screenwriter Clark Gregg said that whats especially scary about [AI] is nobody, including a lot of the people who are involved with creating it, seem to be able to explain exactly what its capable of and how quickly it will be capable of more.
Amit Dey, executive vp nonfiction at MRC said, Its one thing if human-made films are competing in the market against robot-made films. Its another thing entirely when data in the form of artificial intelligence, or proprietary algorithms, shape the decisions around what human audiences are exposed to. In other words, what gets boughtwhat stories get told.
However, CEO Bryn Mooser of XTR has defended using AI after creating a proprietary algorithm which he called a valuable tool to help guide his development process.
We had always been thinking of it as a tool, and as a tool its incredibly useful, Mooser said. What conversations are trending. What people are talking about. We built it so we could overlay that with historical data in the documentary business.
What works, what doesnt, he added. Its application as a tool to enhance what filmmakers can do is incredibly powerful and important. And my hope would be that its embraced.
Others have noted that it is Hollywood themselves that has been warning us for decades about the dangers of getting too close to AI, Gizmodo noted.
Such films they mentioned that bring this idea home include the 2014 Ex-Machina, 2001s Artificial Intelligence, Ghost in the Shell in 1995, and of course Disneys 1982 Tron. The theme with so many of these sci-fi films is that AI can eventually develop its own autonomy and then the battle between humans and machines changes forever.
