> I like that this technology has the potential to lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar.
Why would it lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar?
If anything wouldn't it increase the value of being one? Because now Megastar Jim Bob Jones or whoever can "appear" in hundreds of movies a year and collect checks from all of them for using their likeness. Instead of those roles going to smaller actors who would presumably get the part today.
Also it makes the value of that mega superstar more valuable because their deepfake won't age nor will it be encumbered by their death. We could start seeing Marilyn Monroe in movies again. And if you're someone like Brad Pitt, it means suddenly you have an entirely new revenue stream from licensing your likeness for years, decade, etc.
Because you prompt the AI to generate Chad Britt who looks and sounds an awful lot like Brad Pitt, but not enough so to infringe on his likeness rights.
If your intention is for people to confuse this person with Brad Pitt then you already have issues that will probably get to court, at least for the first few times to be decided should this be legit or no.
Not a chance. Blurred Lines lost a copyright case for seeming like it could have been a Marvin Gaye song. You won't be able to use Chad Britt unless it is a satire of Brad Pitt that every judge thinks is funny.
Wouldn't it come down to proof of intent to exploit? Surely an actor who happens to look like Brad Pitt can't be prevented from working in the film industry on that basis alone? I agree that calling themselves Britt Pad or whatever might be crossing the line!
Seems like it is one thing to hire a look-alike of Brad Pitt (or your selected star), a very different thing to hire another actor and then replace his/her face with synthetic animated images of Brad Pitt.
The first would get laughed out of court. The latter would be an obvious ripoff to anyone (perhaps excepting some soverign-citizen-level pedants).
An interesting test would be a taking someone who looks extremely similar to Brad Pitt, but can’t act, and buying the rights to their likeness, and pasting it over an actor.
That was a copyright case though. The legal basis for lawsuits over misappropriation of artistic likeness are in privacy and right of publicity laws, and these vary a lot from one jurisdiction to the next.
I think there's a legal case to be made about a virtual unlicensed use of a celebrity depending on if it's satire or intends to take away their income without their permission. An example would be not paying Fred Astaire's estate for his likeness in virtual productions that recreate him.
I watched that video but couldn't tell what part was supposed to be Deep Faked.
EDIT:
I see now from a comment, the face does change. I actually didn't watch it but just skipped through parts of it and didn't notice the transitions because every time I skipped I ended up back on Kendrick, lol.
Sassy Justice was fun despite being a slightly low quality deep fake compared to recent standards. I liked it because it was the joke, rather than trying not to draw attention to the fact that it’s all fake.
> I liked it because it was the joke, rather than trying not to draw attention to the fact that it’s all fake.
Same thing they did with South Park (and Team America). It allows for more comedic freedom because you can always fall back on the defense of "this is just some stupid crappy thing, how could you possibly ever take it seriously".
Not a harmless technique. Similar to the assholes we all know who say "Can't you take a joke?" after saying some really mean shit and then laughing at the victim.
I believe the parent commenter's point is that nobody is going to confuse these caricatures for the actual people. There will be many nefarious uses for this technology, but this is not one of them.
Parker and Stone were pioneers in using CGI–originally, Maya–to dramatically compress animation's reaction time. Deep Voodoo makes sense as a continuation of that trend into the voice acting and realistic animated domains.
Pretty much the entirety of South Park series, minus the pilot episode (which still used real construction paper).
It became increasingly obvious with time, as they started doing a lot of interesting things in later seasons that aren't really suited for non-CGI, like smooth camera angle rotations around the scene, complex special effects, etc. While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of making it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode.
> While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of making it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode
Which they needed because of their insane production schedule.
New episodes air on Wednesday on Comedy Central. They have to have the completed episode uploaded to Comedy Central a few hours before that.
There are times when the Friday before they have no idea what the next episode will be about. Parker and Stone figure it out over the weekend, Parker writes a script, and then production can start on Monday morning. That gives them two days plus a few hours to go from freshly finished script to complete episode.
They need to, even on what is for them a leisurely week where they have the script by Thursday, be able to see that something isn't working and needs to be changed hours before air time and have their system be fast enough that they can do it.
Around the turn of the century they actually had a more powerful animation pipeline than the major animation studios like Pixar or DreamWorks or the major CGI places, all because they needed such fast turnaround.
What makes their use of CGI "revolutionary" is how it enabled them to have a real quick production schedule. Most episodes are written, acted, and animated in the span of 6 days. They will often sketch out ideas for the season beforehand, but the bulk of the work on a given episode is done in that very short timeframe. It's why their show is always able to be incredibly topical, often lampooning current events within days of hitting the news cycle. Personally, I think it's the reason they still feel fresh and relevant even after more than 20 seasons.
Traditional animated sitcoms like The Simpsons or Family Guy still contend with a 9-12 month production schedule per episode.
> Minor correction I think many of the first season episodes are still using construction paper.
Thanks for clarifying, good point. I should've been more clear in my original comment, because I meant to say that the pilot used real construction paper only (with no CGI), not that construction paper wasn't used at all after that.
There is a difference between deepfakes that are openly marketed as such, and deepfakes which are maliciously promoted as being real videos.
The movie industry in general stands to benefit the most from deepfakes. Imagine making a movie without paying any cast? Or bringing dead actors back for new roles? There are plenty of legitimate use cases for deepfakes.
At first glance it seems that actors would be the first victims here, and so you wouldn't expect CAA (an agency representing actors) to invest money into a technology that could replace them. But I think it's more complicated than that.
Deepfakes won't "replace" actors - certainly not any time soon - but will complement them and serve as a multiplier for their image. Angelina Jolie can license her likeness, and directors can make a movie with a deepfake Jolie. She gets paid for doing no work.
The A-listers will be fine. The first victims will be the talent that's cast as extras and minor supporting roles. There wont be much of a market for deepfake clones of them, and eventually some A-lister or entirely synthetic deepfakes will crowd them out of their jobs.
The relevant problem agencies face is that their products have a shelf life. If you're Tom Cruise's agent, why wouldn't you want to extend his career indefinitely?
That doesn’t sound right. To use a better example than Tom Cruise, I don’t think LeBron James negotiates his own sneaker deals. Some agent is getting a cut as usual.
If LeBron James dies and someone somehow has the rights to his likeness, they are not an agent however. They are the rights holder. Perhaps they coincidentally also have an agent doing the work, but it is not LeBron James’s agent. :)
Technology needs creative minds to make it work meaningfully, they have an excellent track record here and deserve this. I wouldn't want to be Tom Cruise right now ...
This is a great business potentially. Imagine Denzel Washington or Brad Pitt "selling" rights to their likeness even when they are 80 or 90 or dead. We would still be able to watch new movies with them starring.
Same for music artists. Why stop there same for our loved ones.
Feels and sounds weird on first pass but this has significant applications.
The funny thing is that th book it’s based on satirizes the falsehood of Soviet communism, the movie satirizes the falsehood of consumer culture as an opioid.
62 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 94.6 ms ] threadThis may have potential for a smaller indie filmmakers. Have any celebrity cameo for cheap in your budget film.
I like that this technology has the potential to lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar.
Why would it lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar?
If anything wouldn't it increase the value of being one? Because now Megastar Jim Bob Jones or whoever can "appear" in hundreds of movies a year and collect checks from all of them for using their likeness. Instead of those roles going to smaller actors who would presumably get the part today.
Also it makes the value of that mega superstar more valuable because their deepfake won't age nor will it be encumbered by their death. We could start seeing Marilyn Monroe in movies again. And if you're someone like Brad Pitt, it means suddenly you have an entirely new revenue stream from licensing your likeness for years, decade, etc.
Doesn't mean you're wrong about likeness cases, but the Blurred Lines/Gaye ruling is far from canon at this point.
The first would get laughed out of court. The latter would be an obvious ripoff to anyone (perhaps excepting some soverign-citizen-level pedants).
Had they been even slightly reasonable, it never would have gone that far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY
0 - Regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time, multiple Grammy Awards.
I think it mostly lowers the value of being the next tier down, since the mega stars would no longer be limited by hours in the day.
Here's a music video they made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY&t=1m40s
I think there's a legal case to be made about a virtual unlicensed use of a celebrity depending on if it's satire or intends to take away their income without their permission. An example would be not paying Fred Astaire's estate for his likeness in virtual productions that recreate him.
EDIT:
I see now from a comment, the face does change. I actually didn't watch it but just skipped through parts of it and didn't notice the transitions because every time I skipped I ended up back on Kendrick, lol.
0:00 - Kendrick Lamar
1:44 - OJ Simpson
1:54 - Kanye West
2:08 - Jussie Smollett
2:44 - Will Smith
4:00 - Kobe Bryant
4:22 - Nipsey Hussle
source comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY&lc=UgzjbAGLK8NGZ...
Same thing they did with South Park (and Team America). It allows for more comedic freedom because you can always fall back on the defense of "this is just some stupid crappy thing, how could you possibly ever take it seriously".
I believe the parent commenter's point is that nobody is going to confuse these caricatures for the actual people. There will be many nefarious uses for this technology, but this is not one of them.
It became increasingly obvious with time, as they started doing a lot of interesting things in later seasons that aren't really suited for non-CGI, like smooth camera angle rotations around the scene, complex special effects, etc. While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of making it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode.
Which they needed because of their insane production schedule.
New episodes air on Wednesday on Comedy Central. They have to have the completed episode uploaded to Comedy Central a few hours before that.
There are times when the Friday before they have no idea what the next episode will be about. Parker and Stone figure it out over the weekend, Parker writes a script, and then production can start on Monday morning. That gives them two days plus a few hours to go from freshly finished script to complete episode.
They need to, even on what is for them a leisurely week where they have the script by Thursday, be able to see that something isn't working and needs to be changed hours before air time and have their system be fast enough that they can do it.
Around the turn of the century they actually had a more powerful animation pipeline than the major animation studios like Pixar or DreamWorks or the major CGI places, all because they needed such fast turnaround.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2076781/
Traditional animated sitcoms like The Simpsons or Family Guy still contend with a 9-12 month production schedule per episode.
But yeah after the early episodes / seasons it's cgi
Thanks for clarifying, good point. I should've been more clear in my original comment, because I meant to say that the pilot used real construction paper only (with no CGI), not that construction paper wasn't used at all after that.
The movie industry in general stands to benefit the most from deepfakes. Imagine making a movie without paying any cast? Or bringing dead actors back for new roles? There are plenty of legitimate use cases for deepfakes.
At first glance it seems that actors would be the first victims here, and so you wouldn't expect CAA (an agency representing actors) to invest money into a technology that could replace them. But I think it's more complicated than that.
Deepfakes won't "replace" actors - certainly not any time soon - but will complement them and serve as a multiplier for their image. Angelina Jolie can license her likeness, and directors can make a movie with a deepfake Jolie. She gets paid for doing no work.
The A-listers will be fine. The first victims will be the talent that's cast as extras and minor supporting roles. There wont be much of a market for deepfake clones of them, and eventually some A-lister or entirely synthetic deepfakes will crowd them out of their jobs.
Same for music artists. Why stop there same for our loved ones.
Feels and sounds weird on first pass but this has significant applications.
The funny thing is that th book it’s based on satirizes the falsehood of Soviet communism, the movie satirizes the falsehood of consumer culture as an opioid.