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People really don't see where this is going, do they? Replicas are the last of their worries. Actors and singers should be more worried about being replaced by

People really don't see where this is going, do they? Replicas are the last of their worries. Actors and singers should be more worried about being replaced by perfect, completely artificial people. It's like when extras were worried about being replaced by body scans. No, ThisPersonDoesNotExist will replace you all, silly.

gamblor956 3y ago
Hollywood productions have already begun shifting back toward using extras instead of CGI actors. It turns out it's a lot cheaper to just tell a real person to do something different in real time a bunch of times over the course of a day then it is to tell animators to animate a bunch of CGI people differently a bunch of times. Extras don't get paid that much to begin with (a fixed, flat rate which varies depending on the type of production i.e., commercial vs TV vs movie). Digital artists don't get paid all that much either, but the disparity is large enough that you actually lose money (compared to hiring a real-person extra) if you need to re-animate a CGI extra more than once. And quite frankly, given the limited VFX budgets most productions have to work with, it's better to spend the VFX budget on actual visual effects than on background filler. Otherwise, you end up with Dr Strange 2, Secret Invasion, and the Book of Boba Fett...
- jameshart 3y ago
  Wait until the LLM interface to the behavioral model of your virtual extras means you can tell the CGI actors to do something different a bunch of times without having to have an animator involved... and they don't need you to provide craft services and wardrobe or complain about being stood on their feet for hours.
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    I'm not sure anyone alive now will still be alive when this magical feat happens. After all, people were saying that robots would talk like humans and be indistinguishable from sentient life before you or I were ever born. Decades later, even with CPUs with more than 1,000,000,000,000x the processing power it's still news when a company releases a robot that can walk in a straight line without falling over, which is something that human babies can do before they're able to figure out how to control their own bowel functions.
- kromem 3y ago
  You literally just made their point. "Generative AI is going to replace actors." "Well actually productions are moving back to actors because they are cheaper than digital artists." Yes. And guess what else is going to be cheaper than both actors and digital artists?
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    Not generative AI, if that's what you're implying. Just because companies are offering it for free right now as a loss leader means they're going to keep it free when the accountants come home to roost. An extra costs $100-$1000. A digital artist's time costs about twice that. A license for a generative AI image will cost at least 4x what it costs to pay the extra, and that's not including the subscription you'll need to pay to access the AI service.
swatcoder 3y ago
That whole train of thought not only requires that long-form virtual actors are within reach (we’re close but not there), but that all this recent generative work can escape having a signature at scale. There’s ZERO evidence of that right now and little reason to expect it. What’s dramatically more likely is that generative AI will be an incredible new medium, disrupting current arts and reshaping almost all art markets the way photography and sound recording each did a few. And its disruption applies to film, illustration, music, coding, writing, etc That’s no small achievement and its an exciting thing to witness, but it’s not the same as replacing the arts that already exist. Arts have shown themselves to be cockroaches, that simply adapt themselves around these sorts of disruptions. There will still be HUGE markets for human (and hybrid) arts even as they are smaller and differently shaped than what we saw in the 20th century.
- garba_dlm 3y ago
  > little reason to expect it. there's one huge reason to expect this: it's cheaper than real people (no salary, no royalties) only looks expensive because it's new. but it won't stay expensive because it's all software so it has zero cost of distribution (given the internet) > And its disruption applies to film, illustration, music, coding, writing, etc just keep going, this stuff will disrupt THE LAW. the foundation of civilized society as we know it!!! this goes beyond markets, markets are based upon the law!!!
  - rnk 3y ago
    You are being silly about "the law!!!", right? I do agree that soon we'll have best movies with human actors, best movies with some AI actors, best movies with all AI actors. And then the academy will resist movies with AI actors, then maybe have a special category before they give up because all the movies have them.
    - rcarr 3y ago
      I wouldn't say they're being silly no. Think of what is going to happen when anyone on planet earth can make any kind of photo realistic propaganda materials they want. Imagine somewhere else on the planet with tensions between two communities like Israel-Hamas. Now imagine you're someone with an agenda. You can now create videos and news reports in the blink of an eye showing one faction murdering some kids from the other. Target some unstable "pizzagate" individuals with the videos and then wait for one of them to go on a vengeance rampage with the hope that it actually sparks a real riot or war. Or imagine there's a presidential election and one candidate wants to take down the other. So they buy your psychological profile from some data broker, then create a deep fake video of the candidate reading a speech tailored to make you dislike them. You don't even have to go so large scale. Imagine you're a teenager and you're mad because someone else is making moves on the person you fancy. So you decide to create a video of this love rival kicking a dog outside the school and upload it to Youtube under a fake account and then spread it round the school. It will get to the point where you cannot trust anything you see on the internet anymore. Laws are absolutely going to have to be created and rewritten to take into account this new reality. I strongly suspect all social media accounts will need to be tied to ID numbers like passports or social security at some point within the next 20 years.
m463 3y ago
Wouldn't they have to be trained on real people? Doesn't this cover real people, not just professionals? Of course, they could get non-actor real people to consent and sign contracts, and then the AIs wouldn't forget their lines.
LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
This is why labor organizing is so important. The Hollywood writers got major protections against AI exploitation in their new deal, and surely SAG will follow with their own version. Hollywood can’t exist without its writers or actors and they’ve made it clear to the executive class that they will not take these changes lying down.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
  What does organizing a union have to do with this? People are going to be building this stuff at their kitchen table. YouTube just surpassed Netflix with teens...no one needs McCorp to make content now and even less so in the future
  - mplewis 3y ago
    Unions protect labor from the forces of capital who take advantage of them. See: the recent WGA strikes and the protections from AI work that they now work under.
    - oldpersonintx 3y ago
      OK but you aren't addressing my point... How does a union contract stop me from making something at my kitchen table? The union contract is between some Corp and their employees The Hollywood strikes seem rooted in 1985...no one needs Hollywood to make or consume content anymore
      - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
        No one is saying that you can’t build something at your kitchen table.
        jimmaswell 3y ago
        I think the point is it becomes irrelevant how good of a contract hollywood actors get if hollywood is cut out of the picture entirely by smaller independents using AI.
drngdds 3y ago
People like celebrities and personalities. Perfect and artificial is the opposite of what they want. People like Taylor Swift because she's Taylor Swift, not just because she's a great singer. (Not to mention that, for music in particular, live shows are a thing.) There will definitely be a role for fully AI characters when the technology gets there (people love vtubers and vocaloids already!) but I doubt they would ever really replace human performers.
- itake 3y ago
  This doesn’t track. If this was true, people would not like fictional characters, like sponge bob or pikachu. Taylor Swift is a generated personality designed by a branding and marketing company. People don’t care if there is a human portraying the character or a team of artists.
  - anewcolor 3y ago
    people want authenticity, and ai is just not gonna fly sure - you can suggest that Taylor is the product of branding/marketing. its cynical and somewhat true. but aside from that, she's an artist. in the deepest meaning of the word. people are not going to resonate with a generative ai. instead - people will continue to resonate with actual art and artists expressing actual feelings
    - jmprspret 3y ago
      > people want authenticity, They _want_ that. But they rarely have that. I argue most if not all music artists in particular, are "fake" already, in the sense that, like you say, branding+marketing, and scripted stunts and controversies, etc. People are already fooled by this in today's age. I think there might be pushback, but I think in the end people will accept/be fooled by ai generated artists.
      - soco 3y ago
        Or maybe the two truths can coexist: some people will worship SpongeBob and others Taylor Swift, all will attend both live and virtual shows of both, with the only negative consequence that SpongeBob will now eat (more of) the cake of some other human artist. It's still displacement just slightly less dramatic. As for myself, I'm a simple man, going only to cellar live shows which cannot be replaced by AI as the very reason of being there is... being there with the artist. So the AI seems to only threaten the pop industry, not undeserved if you ask me.

gamblor956 3y ago

Hollywood productions have already begun shifting back toward using extras instead of CGI actors. It turns out it's a lot cheaper to just tell a real person to do something different in real time a bunch of times over the course of a day then it is to tell animators to animate a bunch of CGI people differently a bunch of times. Extras don't get paid that much to begin with (a fixed, flat rate which varies depending on the type of production i.e., commercial vs TV vs movie). Digital artists don't get paid all that much either, but the disparity is large enough that you actually lose money (compared to hiring a real-person extra) if you need to re-animate a CGI extra more than once. And quite frankly, given the limited VFX budgets most productions have to work with, it's better to spend the VFX budget on actual visual effects than on background filler. Otherwise, you end up with Dr Strange 2, Secret Invasion, and the Book of Boba Fett...

jameshart 3y ago
Wait until the LLM interface to the behavioral model of your virtual extras means you can tell the CGI actors to do something different a bunch of times without having to have an animator involved... and they don't need you to provide craft services and wardrobe or complain about being stood on their feet for hours.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  I'm not sure anyone alive now will still be alive when this magical feat happens. After all, people were saying that robots would talk like humans and be indistinguishable from sentient life before you or I were ever born. Decades later, even with CPUs with more than 1,000,000,000,000x the processing power it's still news when a company releases a robot that can walk in a straight line without falling over, which is something that human babies can do before they're able to figure out how to control their own bowel functions.
kromem 3y ago
You literally just made their point. "Generative AI is going to replace actors." "Well actually productions are moving back to actors because they are cheaper than digital artists." Yes. And guess what else is going to be cheaper than both actors and digital artists?
- gamblor956 3y ago
  Not generative AI, if that's what you're implying. Just because companies are offering it for free right now as a loss leader means they're going to keep it free when the accountants come home to roost. An extra costs $100-$1000. A digital artist's time costs about twice that. A license for a generative AI image will cost at least 4x what it costs to pay the extra, and that's not including the subscription you'll need to pay to access the AI service.

swatcoder 3y ago

That whole train of thought not only requires that long-form virtual actors are within reach (we’re close but not there), but that all this recent generative work can escape having a signature at scale. There’s ZERO evidence of that right now and little reason to expect it. What’s dramatically more likely is that generative AI will be an incredible new medium, disrupting current arts and reshaping almost all art markets the way photography and sound recording each did a few. And its disruption applies to film, illustration, music, coding, writing, etc That’s no small achievement and its an exciting thing to witness, but it’s not the same as replacing the arts that already exist. Arts have shown themselves to be cockroaches, that simply adapt themselves around these sorts of disruptions. There will still be HUGE markets for human (and hybrid) arts even as they are smaller and differently shaped than what we saw in the 20th century.

garba_dlm 3y ago
> little reason to expect it. there's one huge reason to expect this: it's cheaper than real people (no salary, no royalties) only looks expensive because it's new. but it won't stay expensive because it's all software so it has zero cost of distribution (given the internet) > And its disruption applies to film, illustration, music, coding, writing, etc just keep going, this stuff will disrupt THE LAW. the foundation of civilized society as we know it!!! this goes beyond markets, markets are based upon the law!!!
- rnk 3y ago
  You are being silly about "the law!!!", right? I do agree that soon we'll have best movies with human actors, best movies with some AI actors, best movies with all AI actors. And then the academy will resist movies with AI actors, then maybe have a special category before they give up because all the movies have them.
  - rcarr 3y ago
    I wouldn't say they're being silly no. Think of what is going to happen when anyone on planet earth can make any kind of photo realistic propaganda materials they want. Imagine somewhere else on the planet with tensions between two communities like Israel-Hamas. Now imagine you're someone with an agenda. You can now create videos and news reports in the blink of an eye showing one faction murdering some kids from the other. Target some unstable "pizzagate" individuals with the videos and then wait for one of them to go on a vengeance rampage with the hope that it actually sparks a real riot or war. Or imagine there's a presidential election and one candidate wants to take down the other. So they buy your psychological profile from some data broker, then create a deep fake video of the candidate reading a speech tailored to make you dislike them. You don't even have to go so large scale. Imagine you're a teenager and you're mad because someone else is making moves on the person you fancy. So you decide to create a video of this love rival kicking a dog outside the school and upload it to Youtube under a fake account and then spread it round the school. It will get to the point where you cannot trust anything you see on the internet anymore. Laws are absolutely going to have to be created and rewritten to take into account this new reality. I strongly suspect all social media accounts will need to be tied to ID numbers like passports or social security at some point within the next 20 years.

m463 3y ago

Wouldn't they have to be trained on real people? Doesn't this cover real people, not just professionals? Of course, they could get non-actor real people to consent and sign contracts, and then the AIs wouldn't forget their lines.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago

This is why labor organizing is so important. The Hollywood writers got major protections against AI exploitation in their new deal, and surely SAG will follow with their own version. Hollywood can’t exist without its writers or actors and they’ve made it clear to the executive class that they will not take these changes lying down.

oldpersonintx 3y ago
What does organizing a union have to do with this? People are going to be building this stuff at their kitchen table. YouTube just surpassed Netflix with teens...no one needs McCorp to make content now and even less so in the future
- mplewis 3y ago
  Unions protect labor from the forces of capital who take advantage of them. See: the recent WGA strikes and the protections from AI work that they now work under.
  - oldpersonintx 3y ago
    OK but you aren't addressing my point... How does a union contract stop me from making something at my kitchen table? The union contract is between some Corp and their employees The Hollywood strikes seem rooted in 1985...no one needs Hollywood to make or consume content anymore
    - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
      No one is saying that you can’t build something at your kitchen table.
      - jimmaswell 3y ago
        I think the point is it becomes irrelevant how good of a contract hollywood actors get if hollywood is cut out of the picture entirely by smaller independents using AI.

drngdds 3y ago

People like celebrities and personalities. Perfect and artificial is the opposite of what they want. People like Taylor Swift because she's Taylor Swift, not just because she's a great singer. (Not to mention that, for music in particular, live shows are a thing.) There will definitely be a role for fully AI characters when the technology gets there (people love vtubers and vocaloids already!) but I doubt they would ever really replace human performers.

itake 3y ago
This doesn’t track. If this was true, people would not like fictional characters, like sponge bob or pikachu. Taylor Swift is a generated personality designed by a branding and marketing company. People don’t care if there is a human portraying the character or a team of artists.
- anewcolor 3y ago
  people want authenticity, and ai is just not gonna fly sure - you can suggest that Taylor is the product of branding/marketing. its cynical and somewhat true. but aside from that, she's an artist. in the deepest meaning of the word. people are not going to resonate with a generative ai. instead - people will continue to resonate with actual art and artists expressing actual feelings
  - jmprspret 3y ago
    > people want authenticity, They _want_ that. But they rarely have that. I argue most if not all music artists in particular, are "fake" already, in the sense that, like you say, branding+marketing, and scripted stunts and controversies, etc. People are already fooled by this in today's age. I think there might be pushback, but I think in the end people will accept/be fooled by ai generated artists.
    - soco 3y ago
      Or maybe the two truths can coexist: some people will worship SpongeBob and others Taylor Swift, all will attend both live and virtual shows of both, with the only negative consequence that SpongeBob will now eat (more of) the cake of some other human artist. It's still displacement just slightly less dramatic. As for myself, I'm a simple man, going only to cellar live shows which cannot be replaced by AI as the very reason of being there is... being there with the artist. So the AI seems to only threaten the pop industry, not undeserved if you ask me.