Freaky time to become an actor !?
Hey guys!
Back here today for a post trying to make sense of the Hollywood actor and writer strike you might have heard about.
A little introduction
The main gist of the strike is that actors, writers and to an extent other support staff are not getting paid adequately now. Streaming made their pay worse as exemplified by Scarlett Johansson suing Disney in 2021. What happened is that they released her Marvel movie “Black Widow” on Disney+ quickly after releasing it for movie theatres. This was due in part to COVID driving down cinema attendance. It meant that of course it had its box office revenue potential cut short. What made Mrs. Johansson rightfully mad is that she earned a percentage of the box office revenue as part of her pay package (instead of relying on upfront and fixed pay), and thus lost on a lot of money. Disney did not care as much because it helped their Disney+ revenue, which she could not take a portion of. The problem is she was not fairly warned or paid for this shift in strategy, despite her superstar actress status. Now imagine if you are not her.
This can also be bad in terms of royalty payments. For example did you know that some of the main cast of “Orange Is The New Black”, arguably for a few months the biggest Neflix show, had to continue their previous jobs whilst filming the show. They cannot keep financially afloat because they receive less that 30$ a month from people watching their work (on top of a really bad base pay when filming)? This is despite hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals streaming the show on a monthly basis.
So that shift in pay dynamic due to streaming is one of the main reasons behind the strike. But another one is much more interesting for the context of this blog.
It is now established that actors and writers think the past and current status-quo are horrible for them and an abuse of position of power from the studios and streaming services. But they are also immensely scared of what the future holds, if things were to continue the way they are.
Would it surprise you that the culprit, aside from corporate greed, is…..
….AI!
To be or to be AI-ed?
What the big movie studios have been doing recently is they have enforced in their contracts clauses relating to using one’s “likeness” to produce future AI based content. Likeness refers to voice, body and face, or anything that can remotley refer to the individual. Kind of like how they digitally recreated Carrie’s Fisher face in some of the scenes in the last Star Wars movie despite her sadly passing away before the release of the movie. It is not the first instance of using a dead’s actor likeness for a movie, to refer to their emblematic role. Paul Walker in the “Fast & Furious” franchise should also ring a bell. Once again for superstars, should their family be fairly compensated and should the studios respect the likeness yeah it could make some sense. Even though we don’t talk enough of how outright disgusting it is to see essentially a dead person forced to act without their consent.
That’s probably not Carrie Fisher
But what happens for living actors? The studios now want to use your likeness for PERPUITY. So an aspiring actor would have to sign contracts with such clauses to make it big and thus not actually be needed to act. Once again losing on some BIG money and a total lack of control of who you will portrait, what will you say or do, and how long you do it for.
Let’s go to the funny business now
You came here for the weird stuff, let me show you some appetizers. The future of the film industry has a few tricks up its sleeve in regard to AI:
Generating scripts and footage to expand on previously finished tv shows and movies
Have customers pay to feature their likeness in any existing media they want
Have customers pay to create any AI generated movie they want, with whoever they want in it
For the first point, writers are already getting replaced by generative AI. Google’s Deep Mind company is developing software to do that! Bye bye writers, we won’t need you anymore. Or maybe as a consultant once or twice but we’re not paying you much. Same applies obviously for the actors.
For the second point, do you want your ex to upload pictures of you to replace Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, or a Nazi SS officer in Inglorious Basterds? And then distribute those copies online? Okay maybe that first example is funny. You could think that these will be heavily regulated. At first yes probably, but then people outside of the big studios and streaming services will create easy to use and convincing programs to do so. Probably even for free!
For the third point, would Scarlett Johansson for example agree that anyone can order a custom movie where she is put through degrading, weird, or illegal stuff? Doesn’t even need to be outright sexual, although it will happen sooner or later. Down the road once again you could end up being a target of it. It doesn’t matter if the studios make it impossible to do, it will take only one weirdo to do it on their own and spread it for everyone you know to see it. They don’t even need to know you as your face and voice already exists on some public posts. Did you know that being accused or associated with doing something negative, no matter if people know is a lie, is enough for individuals to consider you in a more negative light?
A little warning
At the end of the day, you will be a target of these dynamics and technologies. Revenge porn deepfakes exist, where your face or body is morphed with the actors (a study found 96% of deepfakes online were non-consentual porn). That number might be lower since the new AI craze, but even one instance is one too many. Ai phone scams are happening where the voice of a panicked loved one is replicated to extort some money from you. Your likeness will not remain your likeness for long. This is why strict regulations need to exist to protect yourself, and supporting these strikes is an excellent stepping stone in this regulatory journey.
Before mentionning what I think of all of this, I would like to add an ironic note to this post. The first episode of the latest 6th season of “Black Mirror" actually tackles these issues really well. Despite being made by Netflix themselves!! Annie Murphie and Salma Hayek will convey these parallels better than I ever could. Watch it and you could even see more of how all of this could become YOUR problem down the road.
What can we do to help?
Most of these technological issues at the end of the day boil down to technological regulations. Absolutely not a single corporation or business will care about these issues if they are not put on a leash. Especially if their revenues will benefit from that stance. I hate to sound defeatist but you can already see how brilliantly they are tackling environemental issues with blatant greenwashing, if any at all. The pressure to change needs to come from governments, and to give credit where credit is due the EU for example has been getting quite active with technology and consumer right protections. But for them to act pro-actively in this rapidly shifting world, we need to pressure them to do so.
On a day-to-day scale, talking with others on AI would be a great first step. Trying to understand what is happening around us is great. You’ve probably played around with ChatGPT recently for example. But don’t stop there, try to think of how people could abuse of these tools to gain power or money, as it is there that the unfortunate implications will happen. But also how it can impact YOU at the end of the day. Kind of like what I’m doing here!
It is essential if AI is to follow some level of ethical and societal well being.
Laws should exist to ban the use of non accredited actors in these generative AI works, but these laws will be only as strong as the detection tools used to hunt infringements. Proper care needs to be made, for example a search engine where you can track where you face ends up. Such websites exist but should be expanded upon and integrated into a intra-governmental service.
What’s really scary though is the aspect of jurisdiction. What happens if someone in a totally different continent does this to you? Some kind of global standard would have to be created and enforced. Although it is unfeasible in the current context
