Kaleidoscope

I know a little bit about advances in AI (I have to keep up, it’s part of my job description). I’ve used DALL-E, the image generator developed by the same folks who created ChatGPT. By now we’ve all seen examples of AI-generated or altered people. But I’m not on the very cutting edge. I don’t have as much time as I’d like to explore the farthest frontiers of AI progress. I do have friends who are working at the very limits of that frontier, and they have friends who are doing things that are as near to magic as you can get.

One such outfit is Kaleida. Go to wearekaleida.com, scroll down to “Hyper reality,” and have a look around. I’ll wait.

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Ooohhhmmmmm….

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Now that you have (presumably) picked your jaw up off the floor, let’s talk about how these recent advances in synthetic reality are going to impact entertainment.

Yes, it’s flabbergasting and gobsmacking to see Prince and Elvis and David Bowie return to ‘life.’ But we’ve been expecting this. It’s a manageable development, while also being a source of continuous low-key debate. What’s really serious here is the astonishing synthesizing of Daniel Craig. Why? Because Prince and Elvis and David Bowie are dead. Daniel Craig is not. One assumes he might like to continue as a working actor. But he doesn’t have to. He can simply license his synthetic self to perform in contracted roles while he sits back, watches himself “act,” and noshes beer and popcorn. However, I will assume that he doesn’t necessarily want to do that, and has the power to control his options.

Or does he?

Craig has stated that he is done doing James Bond. But what if a studio wishes to have his synthetic self portray Bond? That depends entirely on what the contracts state. I assume Craig has good lawyers. It’s harder to find a good lawyer for a dead performer.

The can of worms this burgeoning technology has opened is full of ramifications we are only just beginning to understand. If you looked at the right page, you saw synthetic Elvis. If whoever controls the rights to Elvis’s appearance and performances decides to license those rights to, say an enterprise that wants to have his synthetic self perform in Vegas, what happens to the livelihoods of all those professional Elvis impersonators? For that matter, what happens to a cover band that does the Beatles when perfect reproductions of the Beatles are contracted to perform in a concert film featuring none other than their artificial selves?

YouTube sites like Mystery Scoop having been using basic at-home AI to bring long-deceased people back to life from paintings, photographs, and sculptures. If Mystery Scoop can from an old photograph produce a reasonable iteration of Abraham Lincoln blinking, smiling, and moving his head, in full color, it boggles the mind what a professional outfit like Kaleida could do with the same dead President. Everything I have seen by them on their hyper-reality page involves modern celebrities, but I don’t see why they couldn’t do the same for George Washington or Casanova. If not today, then certainly within a couple of years. Imagine watching a film of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with perfect synthetic reproductions taken from sculptures of the actual participants (Caesar, Brutus, etc.) voicing the dialogue. It would be wonderful, amazing, educational.

Unless you happen to be an actor.

And therein lies the crux of what the Screen Actors Guild) is striking about. Yes, the strike involves salaries and time off and such. But the real issue revolves around the potential use of synthetics. If Kevin Costner doesn’t have full protection for his likeness, then the producers of Yellowstone can presumably employ a synthetic version of him, coupled with synthesized voice (easy to do now), to do sequel episodes and shorts until the cattle come home. The future livelihood of every actor is at risk. Because synthetics don’t talk back to directors and producers, don’t vouchsafe script changes, don’t ask for overtime, and don’t need health care.

The same goes for deceased performers. Does owning an early version of Taylor Swift’s music catalog allow the owners to generate a synthetic version of her singing those songs? Given the box-office success of her current concert film, you’d better believe that someone, somewhere is checking the fine print on multiple contracts. Can the owners of Marilyn Monroe’s estate license her synthetic self for appearances in film? Or worse, commercials? One such commercial has already been done, featuring much more primitive tech and the image of Audrey Hepburn.

Kaleida claims that its technology eliminates the uncanny valley that causes synthetics to generate unease when they are viewed. If their and related technology can actually do that, then brace yourselves for a flood of resurrected performers.

What such tech will do when applied to documentary films and the evening news, I don’t want to imagine.