Celebrities such as James Dean can be brought back to life thanks to artificial intelligence, but it is raising troubling questions about what rights any of us have after we die.
[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.
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.
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:
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’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.