Hollywood is on strike. For the first time in more than six decades, writers and actors have walked off the job. They are protesting, principally, the disruption to residual payments in the age of streaming.
However, they are also fighting to prevent studios from using actors’ digital likenesses without their consent, a prospect they rightly believe will threaten their livelihoods and reputations as artists.
It is a delicate time. The arrival of ChatGPT in November last year sent ripples through the creative industries. The chatbot’s ability to churn out believable, detailed text material had scriptwriters wondering if their skills would one day no longer be needed.
Then, as artificial intelligence (AI) started displaying jaw-dropping capabilities in generating images and video footage, people started to envision something even more disruptive: What if AI could eliminate the need for real filmmaking entirely? The technology to make this a reality is not quite ready, but it is developing at an intense pace thanks to billions of dollars in venture capital funding and big tech research and development.
On Thursday last week, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for the striking Screen Actors Guild, told a news conference that studios were already gearing up for a time when the work of “background performers,” or extras, would involve being scanned, getting a single day’s pay, after which studios own those likenesses for the rest of eternity.
Studios challenged that characterization, saying their proposals included “groundbreaking” provisions that would allow the use of AI, but give actors ultimate consent on how any digital replicas would be used.
One dystopian — and highly entertaining — take on how this might play out has come via Black Mirror, the future-gazing Netflix series that in its latest season includes a portrayal of actors’ worst nightmare. In the episode, Salma Hayek, playing herself, unwittingly signs away the rights to allow her digital likeness to act out absolutely anything — with disgusting results.
The series is designed as a dark comedy, but in creative circles, the lack of agency over one’s actions is an immediate and serious concern. At Bloomberg’s Technology Summit in San Francisco last month, I met with Creative Artists Agency chief legal officer Hilary Krane. The company represents thousands of film stars and other creatives.
“If we’re in a world where technologists believe that the likeness of human beings does not belong to those human beings, because they’re reducible to zeros and ones, we’ve upended a major pillar of our economy,” Krane said.
Krane is right. An actor’s right not to be in a production should be heavily protected, not just for financial reasons, but on artistic principle. Building a body of work, and deciding what to include in it and when, is a deeply personal process. Until studios start to grasp this, they are likely to be airing a lot of reruns.
The threat to artists does not just come from movie and TV studios trying to exert control and cut costs. It is also from the coming torrent of AI tools that would mean just about anyone could recreate a person’s likeness and have them appear to engage in performances or acts without their consent.
Just this week, an AI-generated image depicting actress Jennifer Lawrence proliferated on Twitter, receiving more than 6 million views. That is the very tip of the iceberg.
Likewise, the now-conjoined writers and actors strike represents just the beginning of dealing with the repercussions of AI in film and TV. Over the course of decades, compromises would need to be made: It would be naive to try to prevent AI from playing a large role in the future of film, but creatives should have input in how and why AI is used.
It is likely to be a long time before compelling entertainment can be crafted solely from AI. Indeed, that day might never come.
Writing in Vanity Fair earlier this month, John Lopez, who is part of the Writers Guild of America’s AI working group, described Hollywood as essentially being in the business of capturing the “miracle of human connection into a moving image.”
There is no doubt that machines can easily grasp the technicalities of the second half of that aim. But human connection? There is no data that can explain why great creative works work.
If and when the time comes, and studios start churning out cheap AI-powered entertainment, people might instinctively vote with their wallets, rewarding productions that maintain the essence of great filmmaking, with all its human complexities.
Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist. Previously, he was a San Francisco-based correspondent at the Financial Times and BBC News.
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