It’s been a few days since the strikes began, and while I expected some emotional turmoil, I certainly didn’t anticipate being thrown into a full-blown Orwellian AI dystopia courtesy of the Hollywood studio contract proposal.
During SAG strike press release, the studios casually mentioned their groundbreaking AI options… Little did we know that they had plans to hire background actors for a single day, scan them, and then exploit their likeness for eternity without further consent or pay.
And this is just what came out from closed doors! Just contemplating what proposals are lurking behind the boardrooms, in any industry, has sent me spiraling into an existential abyss.
Everyone knows that overall the Hollywood system is toxic and predatory, but this is a new level of sci-fi exploitation, at least that is known in the US. The SAG & WGA strike is the first public fight to protect those who are about to be reduced to AI, who already bear the burden of a broken business model.
Many who have barely survived are surviving even less. What boundaries are or aren’t set here regarding livelihood and AI replacement, will set a precedent in all industries.
And my existential crisis is in, it was already toxic before, I don’t know if it even can be fixed or we’re really headed to some kind of global AI-disruption we’ve never known and thus impossible to prepare for.
The global pandemic made us question what really matters and how do we all survive when the world shuts down. Now this feels a lot more real, how do we survive when we’re all replaced by semi-sentient robots?
I’m so happy this proposal was not accepted, but my career is on lockdown again.
Time to focus on what makes me feel human, grounding into my physical experience in the expression of dialects and human language.
Your podcast is deeply moving and intelligent, as well as particularly reflects the transformation that is impacting all industries as well as our social fabric as a whole. We all know this is just the beginning.
In one sense there should be no surprise that Hollywood is adopting AI, and when it can, use it to replace, initially, background actors. This has been developing throughout cinema’s adoption of digital animation, as far back as James Cameron’s Titanic, the CG produced wide shots of the ship show people walking around the deck of the vessel. These ‘people’ were computer animations and not living background actors.
In fact one can think of animations themselves, dating back to the very early 1900s, as having been replacing actors for well over a century. The voices of the cartoon characters have largely been human actors, although in some cases, as in voice artist Mel Blanc, he created many of the voices of various characters himself.
Actors, writers, set builders, hair/makeup artists and everyone else impacted by Ai generated words, images and sounds, must and will, prove their substantially more significant value over algorithms. There will be many changes, and some job descriptions may largely disappear, but art can and will prevail.
In the meantime, the more that actors become their own producers and rely less of industry-driven factory projects, the more creative, and human diversity will not only survive, but prosper.
I hope that actors and writers win their struggle. And I also know new and perhaps unexpected opportunities will arise for them as well.
Thanks for your honest, brave and vulnerable message. I think all that see it will learn from it.