Videos circulating of Tom Hanks promoting a dental plan or MrBeast giving out $2 iPhones are about as legit as that email from a foreign royal begging you to spot them $5K 🙏.
The Forrest Gump star and the YouTube philanthropist warned their fans this week that clips making the rounds on social media are AI deepfakes created without their consent. And that’s just a tiny taste of how the nascent tech that can animate celebrity faces and put words in their mouths has been roiling showbiz.
Tom Brady, who probably wishes his FTX ad was a deepfake, threatened to sue the creators of a crass standup special made with an AI-generated version of his voice and likeness earlier this year.
Robin Williams’s daughter, Zelda Williams, posted on Instagram over the weekend that she’s disturbed by attempts to “recreate actors who cannot consent,” like her late father.
AI makes waves in Hollywood
The issue of restricting the use of deepfakes has also been a central sticking point in the negotiation between the SAG-AFTRA union and Hollywood studios amid the ongoing actors strike. Background actors worry their employers could replace them with animated versions of their avatars. Performers also say that without proper AI guardrails, studios could use their work to train artificial intelligence without consent or cast an actor’s likeness in a role that they might find objectionable. (Williams said she’s rooting for SAG in its “fight against AI.”)
AI was also an issue in the recently negotiated contract (not yet finalized) that ended the strike by TV and film writers. The agreement limits the extent to which producers can use AI-generated content to replace the work of human pros.
Deepfakes aren’t just entertainment bogeymen. Doctored content is also disrupting politics. A few days before this weekend’s parliamentary election in Slovakia, AI-made audio clips featuring what sounded like one of the front-runners discussing plans to buy votes and double the price of beer circulated on social media, and…he lost his bid to become prime minister.
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