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This should obviously be illegal if it's not already. Hopefully case law directs the legal system towards the correct conclusion.

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AI actors seems like a good thing. Generative AI will allow small groups of creatives to stick to their vision and create truly unique art. The massive staff required for movies today seems like a major cause of the blockbusterfication of hollywood where every movie is trying as hard as possible to play it safe.

I think you're going to have to come up with a better explanation for why destroying acting as a profession is somehow good for "creatives".

It'll be a revolution for indie filmmakers. $0 budget movies with top-notch visuals.

When movies take $100 million each to make, you need execs and investors to make it happen, and they want safe returns. When they cost $0, anybody with an idea can turn it into a film - the kind of stuff studios would never have greenlit.

I don't think you guys understand the media market (or art for that matter) at all.

The "AI is going to destroy creative work" view requires either 1) wild optimism about the future of AI, a belief that it will quickly become orders of magnitude better than anything we can do today, or 2) a lack of understanding and appreciation for good art.

Like yeah you'll probably be able to churn out some hideously mediocre content slop with AI. I'm extremely skeptical that we're anywhere near producing anything good with AI.

it's a matter of perspective.

obviously AI won't be able to compete with traditional movies for some time, but for amateur film makers who don't have a budget for sets and actors, AI is going to help them make their work better.

i don't know if that is good or bad though. one side effect of AI helping to make movies is that there will be so many more of them. think about all that cheap content on youtube. imagine a bunch of that enhanced with AI. it will still be cheap content, but it will look better, which means we will have a harder time to detect it and dismiss it.

One of my all time favorite films is It's such a Beautiful Day, an animated film painstakingly created by a single visionary. If generative AI allows creatives to create similar projects in unique ways, which I believe it will, then I'm all for it.

> a belief that it will quickly become orders of magnitude better than anything we can do today

I don't think this is true, all we need is a belief that generative AI will quickly become a tool that allows small groups or individuals to create projects that are better than they can create today. If my theory that small groups are better able to create artistic statements than large groups is true then the small group + AI will be better than the current massive group paradigm.

Enlighten us, then, on what you understand art to be. If art in your view is simply defined as something humans make and that computers will never be able to do regardless of how much quality the final product has (or, imagine if I were to blind watch two movies, one human made of excellent quality and an AI one of an even better quality, and I choose the AI one), then honestly we (and likely many of us on this forum) disagree on such a fundamental level that it is not worth elaborating.

It's a poor analogy, but maybe they imagine something like a composer being able to release their classical music without requiring a conductor and orchestra to convert it to sound.

The odd bit to me is how such tools open up a spectrum of possibilities with poorly defined roles or boundaries. When is someone a musician with electronic instruments, versus a DJ, versus a consumer? And what are the equivalents for film synthesis...?

Indeed, imagine if people cried the same way when electronic music or synthesizers were getting started (well, some people did). It is just that now when it is coming for their profession, they are panicking.

It should be illegal for me to make a digital version of myself if I want to?

Why?

The parent comment was most likely referring to the idea that someone else should compel you to give away the replica to an organization, in perpetuity, without compensation or rights. I don't think anybody is against a digital replica used privately where you can be sure you control the data and any derived income.

no, it should be illegal to pay you only a pittance of a lump sum to be able to use your digital version in a movie. for example maybe you should have the right to get paid for every minute that your digital version appears on screen, like actors are paid today.

Isn't that just a contract negociation? Why does it have to be a law?

because this is a negotiation between weak individuals and a very strong movie companies. as the movie companies have shown that they won't hesitate to exploit people working for them, laws are needed to protect the individuals.

Models who pose for digital animation are not weaker than other humans, who don't require specialized laws to protect them.

People have agency and can decide for themselves if a job offer is worth it.

Do clothing models have special laws? Do the people who pose for stock photos have special laws?

you don't get the point. every individual is weak in the face of a large corporation seeking to exploit them. that's why we have laws to protect employees.

People have agency and can decide for themselves if a job offer is worth it

if they desperately need a job then they don't.

the pandemic actually demonstrated that. many more people than before are refusing to work when a job forces them to be in an office. that means previously they accepted that work even though they would have preferred not to. but they didn't have the agency to voice that preference. only the demonstrated evidence that work from home is possible and the collective awareness of that gave them that agency.

likewise, most people are uninformed as to the consequences for signing away the right of a digital version of themselves. at a minimum they are not aware of its value.

that is a power imbalance the film industry seeks to exploit, and that power imbalance must be corrected by giving individuals more protection.

it is similar to copyright. i know the US doesn't recognize this but at least in europe copyright includes the inalienable right for a creator to be associated with their work even if they sold away the right to profit from it financially.

Do the people who pose for stock photos have special laws?

yes, they have the right to control how their image is used.

in a similar manner, at a minimum it must be recognized that an individual should always have the right to use their own digital version as they wish and to control how their digital version is used by others and that selling the rights to someone else must not prevent them from doing so.

where there large likelihood of individuals being exploited, the law must step in to reduce the risk for that exploitation.

that's why we have minimum wage laws. that's why in europe health insurance is mandatory for any job and even available if you don't have one. that's why in many countries you can't dismiss an employee without proper justification, or you can't evict tenants unless they egregiously violate their tenant agreement (and failing to pay rent on time is not such a violation).

there are plenty of examples of how the law protects individuals from being exploited. to suggest that such laws are unnecessary is completely missing the power imbalance that exists here, or worse willfully ignoring it.

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