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When reality crumbles

All across the USA, workers are going on strike.

These aren't your regular workers though.

You won't find these people cleaning toilets in the small hours of the morning. Nor will you find them mowing the grass in parks, sweeping streets or flipping your burgers down at Maccas.

We're talking about "screen actors", that group who rely on their looks, their name, their reputation and their acting skills to make (a sometimes handsome) living when appearing your TV or the big screen.

Right now they're more than a little worried about their future, which is kind of ironic.

It's ironic because they earn a living by weaving a fabric of make-believe and creating an illusion by way of their acting skills.

Which makes the existential threat they face somewhat shocking.

Actors now fear that they themselves will be replaced by the very artificial reality they have created over the years and the decades.

The fact is that AI can now recreate an actor's voice, image, manerisms and presence -- at a much lower cost and with more flexibility than the actor themselves can summon.

Whether you're a top-tier actor who rakes in tens of millions of dollars per movie or just a waitress who relies on bit-parts to help pay the rent, the prospect of having *your* work virtualised and performed by a computer must be a worrying one.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of lawers are busy looking over a lot of contracts right now as actors try to figure out whether they've actually signed away the rights to their faces and voices. Chances are that some have.

Even a decade ago, few would have predicted that advances in AI technology would have delivered the kind of astonishing results we're seeing today.

Back then, an actor who signed a contract would not have been looking to protect themselves in the way that they might today. Could this mean that older movies could be remade or sequels produced where the production company is able to digitally recreate the actors without any further compensation to those people?

Oh my goodness, as I seem to say increasingly these days... don't we live in interesting times?

Given the litigious nature of the USA, I suspect that there will be some movie companies that try to pull a swifty like this and law-suits will explode like a Greek wildfire.

Here's my prediction though... I suspect that right now, smart people are working on hybrid/chymera digital characters that will become a composite of the best aspects of many top-tier actors. They won't actually *be* those actors but will cobble together the best traits of the best in the business so as to create a hyper-star.

In effect, we are probably not far away from a new generation of movies where the stars do not actually exist outside of some huge AI server-farm.

The first generation of these movies will be really crappy -- but people will watch them if only because of the novelty aspect (anyone remember 3D movies?).

However, at the rate of progression we're seeing with AI and its ability to deepfake images, videos and voices, it certainly won't be long before Tom Cruise, Margo Robbie and all the big-names from "the real word" are going head-to-head at the box-office with the new arrivals that are "curiously familiar but unrecognisable as any existing actor".

Lawyers, digital artists and producers are probably chomping at the bit as we enter this new age of entertainment.

Bring it on and watch out for the blood.

Carpe Diem folks!

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