2023-07-15 22:47:00
Hollywood actors are on strike for the first time in 43 years. The measure put a brake on the American film and television business and responds, in part, to the fears that generated the impact of the artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.
Screen Actors Guild (Film Actors Union), better known by its acronym in English: SAG-AFTRA, failed to reach an agreement in the United States to achieve better protection of its members once morest AI.
In a recent episode of Black Mirror, Salma Hayek discovers that she gave up the rights to her IAGETTYI image
That organization also warned that “artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to the creative professions.”
Duncan Crabtree-Irelandthe chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, criticized the producers for their proposals on the use of AI. He noted that the studios had asked for the ability to scan the faces of the extras in exchange for a day’s work so they might own and use their likeness “for the rest of eternity, in any project they want, without consent and without compensation.”
If that sounds like the plot of an episode of Black Mirrorthe Charlie Brooker, it is because it is. The American media pointed out that the recent episode of the sixth season of the series, Joan Is Awful (joan is horrible), shows the Hollywood star Salma Hayek dealing with the discovery that his AI likeness may be used by a production company without his consent. And it’s not just SAG-AFTRA that is concerned regarding so-called “yield cloning”.
Liam Buddof the British trade union Equity, said: “We are seeing that this technology is used in a variety of things like automated audiobookssynthesized voice dubbing, digital avatars for corporate videos or also in the deepfakes used in movies”.
Budd noted that there was “fear circulating” among Equity members and that the union was trying to educate them to understand their rights in this rapidly changing world.
“We’re not short of writers, we’re not short of actors, we’re not short of filmmakers, so we don’t need AI,” says actress and writer Justine BatemanGETTY IMAGES
Earlier this year, filmmaker and writer Justine Batemanhe told the BBC that he didn’t think the entertainment industry needed AI at all. “Technology should solve a problem and here is not a problem that those using AI are solving.. We don’t lack writers, we don’t lack actors, we don’t lack filmmakers, so we don’t need AI,” he noted.
“The problem it solves is for corporations that feel like they don’t have wide enough profit margins, because if you can eliminate the overhead of having to pay everyone, you can appease Wall Street and have better earnings reports. If the use of AI proliferates, the entertainment industry will destroy the entire structure of this business”.
Maybe it’s just a matter of time before ChatGPT or Bard can come up with an innovative script for a movie or turn an idea into a blockbuster script.
In the latest Indiana Jones movie, computer technology, including machine learning, was used at Harrison FordGETTY IMAGES
Some say that AI will always lack the humanity that makes a great movie scriptbut there are legitimate concerns that it will put writers out of work.
The Writers’ Union of the United Kingdom (WGGB), which represents television, film, theater, book and video game writers in the UK, has several concerns. They are between them:
WGGB made a number of recommendations to help protect writers, including that AI developers only use the writers’ work if they have been given express permission and for AI developers to be transparent regarding what data they use to train their tools.
WGGB Assistant Secretary General Lesley Gannon said: “As with any new technology, we must weigh the risks once morest the benefits and ensure that the speed of development does not outpace or derail safeguards upon which writers and the creative workforce in general depend for a living.”
“Regulation is clearly necessary to safeguard workers’ rights and protect the public from fraud and misinformation.”
The rapid development of AI over the past year has led to the concept of ownership becoming convoluted. When someone enters her image into an AI-generated portrait app, like DrawAnyone, DALL-E, or even Snapchat, the resulting images are now in the public domain and can be freely used by anyone.
The new image is not protected by copyright law. Mathilde Pavis, a lawyer who specializes in digital cloning technologies, told the BBC that UK copyright laws need to change.
“It’s strange to me that your face and voice are less protected than your car, your laptop, your phone, your house or your books, but that’s the state of the law today. and that’s because we don’t think how vulnerable we are, so vulnerable that our image can be reused and imitated with AI technologies“, said.
*By Shiona McCallum / Additional information provided by Tom Gerken and Tom Singleton.
