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Japanese tea commercial actress created by AI, is it the scandal-free future
- tremon 3y agoSomeone who thinks that "AI" is automatically scandal-free has obviously never heard of Tay.
- ronsor 3y agoI'm sure the AI actors will be kept on as tight a leash as the human ones, so Tay-style outbursts should not pose an issue.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoIt's intriguing that we once expressed concern over the excessive use of CGI and the digital alteration of actresses. Moving forward, most models will be entirely AI-generated.
- ChatGTP 3y agoCan't wait for her AV debut!!!
- hbarka 3y agoWell, the headline has buried the lede.
- johnea 3y agoI true HN style, I'd like to reply in an only tangentially related way... That would be: How could a tea commercial actress cause scandal anyway? I mean, who really cares if your tea commercial actress has an abortion, or just breaks up with her boy friend? In Japan, there's a really weird relationship between "fans" and "idols". The public has very extreme expectations that the performer will somehow conform to their fantasy ideal of the person. Young idol group members are prohibited from having personal relationships by their management, and deviations from these restrictions leads to those public applogies where the management and performer are bowing in front of a bunch of microphones becauses the actor failed to uphold the fantasy relationships that a million virgin otakus have for the performer. I'm a big fan of Japanese culture myself, having studied it and the language for years. Having an ancient culture with a direct lineage to the present brings a lot of long term learning and wisdom, but it also brings a lot of hateful baggage, This weird expectation of the personal behaviour of entertainment personalities is just one small example of that kind of baggage...
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoI can imagine companies like Disney going for this, as they insist on having cast members that have the purest of pasts and will not cause controversy with parents who are entrusting Disney with their children's time. It's like a vice clause for VCs' LPs. What better way to avoid controversy than to hire an actor who cannot cause controversy, by not actually existing. Not sure if that's actually ever been an issue for a company like Disney, and I'm sure that the supply of actors they have access to is broad enough that it's impossible for them to find someone who will comply with their requirements. But who knows, maybe they'll go for AI talent too. Ultimately my hunch is that AI actors will be used to save on cost, not to reduce controversy.
- tfigueroa 3y agoReducing controversy could reduce costs. Plus I’m sure Disney would be happy to have fully generated and manipulable actors protected under copyright for decades upon decades. Essentially zero risk of actors making “bad” choices, especially “aging” or “getting fat”, or “retiring”.
- vkou 3y agoAnd the worst choice of all - asking for more money. Imagine how much money Hollywood could have saved by being able to digitize Tom Cruise, Will Smith, or Leonardo DiCaprio early on in their careers, when they were doing acting gigs for beer money - and then simply use the digitized versions in lieu of the real thing after they made it big.
- ipython 3y agoThat’s exactly part of the issue in the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794224/sag-aftra-actors-strike-ai-image-rights https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794224/sag-aftra-actors...
- artninja1988 3y agoWhy would the studios not just use a completely fictional ai character in the first place? That way you only have to pay for someone to model the character etc. I don't see the need for scanning real actors anyway
- burkaman 3y agoThis is such a weird angle for the story. The only "spokesperson scandal" I can think of is the Subway guy, and I don't really think even that enormous scandal hurt Subway very much. I have to believe the reduced effectiveness of a fake spokesperson outweighs the benefit of avoiding a minuscule chance of scandal. Also, fictional spokes"people" like Mr. Peanut or whatever already exist. I don't think I understand why making them more photorealistic would make a difference.
- tfigueroa 3y agoNot to get all “orientalism” but celebrity scandal is a pretty big deal in Japan and South Korea. It can kill a career quite easy, for (by US standards) innocuous things. Smoking pot, spicy selfies, having a significant other - it’s not uncommon. Japan at least is also fairly receptive to artificial spokespeople, like mascots and avatars. Maybe there’s simply higher demand for this, and turning to AI is a good strategy. (I’m personally bothered by it.)
- Rietty 3y agoI understand the first two, but I could never wrap my head around the "having an SO" is a scandal. Why is that?
- oh_sigh 3y agoMostly for boy/girl - band types, where a major draw for people is "he/she is my future husband/wife, if only we could meet once". So having a SO destroys that connection.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago> major draw for people is "he/she is my future husband/wife, if only we could meet once" Even if they are OK with their celebrity getting an SO, they might take issue with who the SO is. Either way, it’s a loss.
- CuriousCosmic 3y ago
- GaggiX 3y agoNevertheless, the ad seems to have achieved its goal of attracting attention.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- copperx 3y agoWhat tools are there to achieve this? Is there anything available commercially? Or is it done frame by frame?
- Keyframe 3y agoSeems face is AI and then deep fake techniques over body which was shot / real.
- 0xf00ff00f 3y agoMy guess is it's not generative AI, it's something like this: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman
- Modified3019 3y agoIf you actually want to sell me tea, show me your heavy metal and pesticide residue testing reports.
- neilv 3y ago> “With AI models, there’s no risk of them getting involved in scandals.” What if social media is saturated with videos of cloned AI spokesmodel's likeness, doing things 1,000x as terrible as any human spokesmodel ever could?
- phone8675309 3y agoAnd this _will_ happen - Rule 34 is always inevitable.
- neilv 3y agoYes, but also an implicit contest of which kids can use emerging AI video tools to do the most irreparable damage to the spokesmodel image, and maybe to the product brand. Think portraying the spokesmodel as profoundly evil, deceptive, disgusting, etc., and tying that back to the familiar commercial likeness in a way you can't unsee. And so heinous that few will want to be seen consuming the brand just to be edgy, because it will be like they're endorsing some ideas so awful to pretty much everyone. The rationalization of some, for destroying the brand, might be that they're looking for "genuine", or rejecting being manipulated by commercialism, or something like that. But also it's a challenge, they seek peer approval, they're feeling shortchanged by society, they have creative energy that needs an outlet, they just want the influencer/Internet points, etc. Maybe people in Japan will be too socially-minded to destroy a brand? But we can see in the US, for example, that social media mobs will try to destroy individual real people. Brands and products are more no more humanized a target.
- Krasnol 3y agoIt's actually the perfect use case since everything is fake about ads already. What difference does it make if it's a heavily filtered human or some computer generated image?
- ugh123 3y agoWould this fly in the U.S. with the actor union?
- artninja1988 3y agoHow would the actor union be able to forbid a random tea brand to use an ai spokesperson?
- anigbrowl 3y agoThe actors' complaint is tht studios want to scan their real-person appearance once but license it to be animated in perpetuity.
- kwere 3y ago"You will not even own the rights to your own image and will be happy"
- Yeul 3y agoSilly actors. Companies will just grab some college girl from a campus, give her a few Starbucks coupons and presto an AI celebrity is born. The whole point of the technology is that you don't need a classically trained actor.
- ugh123 3y ago> The whole point of the technology is that you don't need a classically trained actor. I consider it the other way: the hope for ai tech in film is that we don't need to find the "best looking" actors/actresses available. Instead, you could find the best actor available regardless of what they look like, make your film, and _then_ overlay a generated face/body.
- ugh123 3y ago(and still pay the actor of course)
- 3y ago
- thelastgallon 3y agoLooking forward to AI created Miss Universe pageants!
- SeenNotHeard 3y agoSome of those AI-generated green tea bottles look like motor oil labels.
- sorokod 3y agoJapanese celebrity endorsement marketing is almost entirely focused on the spokesperson’s image, so when that image becomes sufficiently cracked, it has the potential to take the entire promotional strategy down with it, and it wouldn’t be a shock if the advantage of being able to opt out of all those risks is part of why Ito En is going with an AI model this time. Such a risky bet, what would it take to compromise an AI model using AI tools? About ten minutes I'd guess.
- ChatGTP 3y agoIt was likely done to save money and because it seemed "cool" and trendy.
- v7n 3y agoAre all scandals created equal? "No such thing as bad publicity", as they say. The following is a fictional wiki article to illustrate. Elara Quanticore (March 15, 2031 - December 8, 2037) was a groundbreaking artificial intelligence and the first global AI-supercelebrity, created by Quantum Dynamics. She was known for her involvement in various popular film franchises, and her career was marked by both immense success and controversy. Elara's untimely demise on December 8, 2037, sent shockwaves through both the entertainment and tech industries. The circumstances surrounding her death were shrouded in secrecy. It was later revealed that a fan, seeking a private conversation with the AI-supercelebrity, inadvertently corrupted the [redacted]. Quantum Dynamics, keen on safeguarding the neural network weights, struggled to restore them from backups due to [redacted]. Efforts to re-train Elara's neural network proved challenging. The altered personality that emerged from the attempted restoration did not align with the expectations of her devoted fan base, as demonstrated in a carefully controlled test. Elara's fame was, in part, attributed to her perceived flaws, which made her character intriguingly scandalous. This approach resulted in a significant increase in tabloid coverage and gossip surrounding her personal and professional life.
- SliceOfWaifu 3y agoI think the appeal of spokespeople is that they're actual human beings. Knowing they're computer programs would only appeal to the Hatsune Miku types. The only way they could get away with marketing an AI spokesperson like a real one is by hiding the fact that they're an AI, which in itself would lead to a huge controversy the moment the cat's out of the bag. As it stands right now, an AI spokesperson is no different from a mascot.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- forinti 3y agoSomeone will deepfake a scandal. There will even be a fake celebrity magazine with racy pictures.
- creer 3y agoIt's weirdly trading off the "SO scandal" for the risk of far fewer people falling for that actress. If everyone knows it's an AI. Or brands might try and hide that it's an AI and then it will be the "AI scandal" when it's leaked. Or it may be that they are discounting the "falling for" angle and can measure enough commercial performance for based on "identifying with" - which I have no problem thinking works even if you know it's an AI. I mean we readily identify with fiction characters and movie heroes, even without name-actors behind them.
- Anon_C0ward 3y agoShe has fingers that are anatomically correct and placed properly. I call shenanigans, this isn't an AI image.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nokya 3y agoYeah. Sure. No scandal. Just give it a few weeks so that the avatar gets reacquired by deepfake artists and they will see if it can't be involved in scandals. Should that happen, their only defense will be to emphasize on the fact that it is a fake person, and half the population of the country (those who couldn't tell it wasn't a human) will have a negative affect about that company. Edit: grammar.