Scarlett Johansson is taking legal action against an image-generating AI called Lisa AI: 90’s Yearbook. The generative AI company used her digital likeness in their ad campaign without seeking consent. Johansson is not alone in her litigation.
As tools to create synthetic virtual humans become widespread, less expensive, and accessible to all, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what’s fake. For many, it will cause outrage (and lawsuits); for others, it may produce entirely new revenue streams.
Real Tom Hanks can’t be everywhere all at once, but fake Tom Hanks can and is. He can be seen (again, without permission) hawking dental plans. But with his consent, he can remain eternally young and in multiple places. Hanks and actress Robin Wright have already
signed on to star in an upcoming Robert Zemeckis film where Metaphysic, a company that specializes in creating digital humans, will de-age them using AI instead of traditional
CGI and special effects. Hanks joins a bevy of other celebs rushing to secure their digital likenesses.
It’s taking over Hollywood faster than Ozempic. Media-savvy Paris Hilton already has numerous virtual personae: as a chatbot on Meta’s Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook platforms (where she was paid a hefty
sum), doling out NFTs, and building Slivingland, her own Roblox world. Her control
center for all of her virtualness is her media company, 11:11.
Ninety-one-year-old James Earl Jones signed away his eponymous Darth Vader voice to a company that uses Respeecher, which uses sound bites to “clone” an actor’s voice. This allows a studio to record his voice
in perpetuity. Actors can be anywhere, everywhere, all at once, forever.
Hollywood celebrities are flocking to digital studios to create, claim, and manage their own digital likenesses. Remington Scott, CEO and Chief Architect of Hyperreal, creates amazingly realistic A-list virtual humans with an underlying rights management system to ensure that
digital likenesses are tracked and compensated across multiple platforms.
Hyperreal produces hypermodels, which are ultra-realistic digital re-creations of a person's entire body, face, and voice, plus motion-captured movements and mannerisms. The company has created near-perfect likenesses of young Paul McCartney, TikTok star Madison Beer, and
others.
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