[James] Dean has been cast as the star in a new, upcoming movie called Back to Eden.
Damn, I wonder if people will have to include something in their wills against their likeness being used like this. Imagine your descendents selling the rights to your likeness and it being used to promote views you disagree with, capitalising on the reputation you had before your death.
There’s already a thing called “likeness rights” that actors have. Presumably the filmmakers in this case made a deal with whoever inherited those rights when James Dean died.
The article has a bit on this:
In general, when a celebrity dies, “rights to publicity” pass on from the celebrity to next of kin, or to the party granted these rights in a will. But Kahn says even a will, which will usually dictate who will benefit financially from the commercial use of the dead celebrity’s image and likeness, holds limited legal weight since “it’s not like a contract because it’s a one-way document”. The power for how that person’s image is used passes to their living executor.
People need to realize that dead people do not have rights, only living people have rights. A dead person can’t go to court.
Gunna get a Don’t Reanimate sticker on my driver’s license.
But you can be a background Extra in the Never Been Kissed Reboot!!!
Robin Williams did that exact thing with Disney in his Aladdin contract
Well, toys less than actual computerized doppelganger. But all the same. Who’s gonna call out The Mouse?
One remaining spark of light in this, I don’t think an AI or indeed most writers could mimic anything like the frantic ad-libbing he was known and loved for. But I do think he was loved enough that 98% of the populace would see that movie just to see “him” in something again.
I don’t think an AI or indeed most writers could mimic anything like the frantic ad-libbing he was known and loved for.
I’m not convinced. If you trained a model on all of his performances and scripts, I think it could generate something that could fool most people. Not everything it generates would be terrific, but even if only 1% is good, you just cut out all the rest.
And that’s at the current state of tech.
Hell fucking no!
Come on thats crazy, why should they make new content with dead people? Should we bring back Marilyn Monroe? would it be enjoyable to watch movies or even a Ads of dead people, that are made by AI? Leave the dead where he is, its not a good idea to use dead actors/stars. Yes they had a success back in their era, but now its a new era, and we need something new not old. As for the rights, I believe they should ban any form of AI related in movies etc., it may be just the beginning.
The movie industry is allergic to any new ideas unless it can be used to regurgitate old ideas that are safe money makers. They’d rather people watch dead actors or the same plot twisted around for the millionth time because of nostalgia instead of trying something new.
In this situation I would stop watching movies.
Monty Python got this right 50 years ago:
Thats just a different therm for “we grave robbery and violate peoples rights”
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Damn that was super interesting to read. Thanks for the post. 👍
Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I get the feeling that AI necromancy will be the next 3D. It’ll be a fad for a few years, and then we’ll wonder where “look kids, it’s [dead/old actor]!” went. Maybe AI will find a useful place in film, maybe it won’t, but I doubt it will be one of the main draws for very long.
I figured this was coming some day. Do no one remember when Budweiser made that commercial using John Wayne?
That was the day I invasion that movies could be made with dead stars. Imagine a world where you could make a Grown Ups movie and actually have Chris Farley in the film as it was attended. Or bring back John Candy.
Ethical it probably wrong but growing up I thought of this many times and wonder what it would be like.
And the technology is almost there, almost prefected to a point that say in 10 years if stay the course you won’t need to hire movie actors in the first place.
So from the perspective from the actors I would be totally against this. But as a fan of movies makes me excited.
But it isn’t bringing those people back. It’s bringing approximations of them back. AI John Candy won’t make the comedic decisions and acting choices of the real John Candy. What you love is their talent, not their physical appearance and voice.
I disagree I believe we can bring those people to life on film. Take Chris Farley for example. You take all the films and the years on Saturday Night Live. Combine that with probably 100’s of hours if not more of interviews and behind the scene footage. Then take everything every written by him. There is apparently 90% of his voice for the original Shrek movie out there. Add that too.
Put it all into an algorithm with AI and you could probably get pretty damn close short of having the real life person.
Watch and see if they decide to push forward with this technology (and seems rhey do) we could see tons of long dead actors come back to life in new movies and film.
So you’re saying this AI knows comedy like Chris Farley knew comedy? Because I haven’t even seen an AI that can tell a good joke yet.
There was also the commercial for prostate cancer research starring Bob Monkhouse, which was released in 2007, four years after his death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quxOMX1jl1w
At least in his case, the family granted permission to use his likeness because prostate cancer was his cause of death. An impressionist provided his voice for the commercial, not AI.
