AI And The Entertainment Industry: Opportunity Or Lost Jobs?

It is not hard to find a Hollywood actor, even as long ago as the 1980s, taking part in what amounted to a warning against the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI). That fell to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of the Terminator cast, depicting an AI cyborg sent from a dystopian future to take out the future leader of the resistance against the machines.

The notion that AI machines might destructively turn against humanity, even without being placed in charge of nuclear weapons in the manner of Skynet, remains a concern for some experts. However, the most common complaint has been that it could simply make many, if not most, jobs redundant.

Hollywood: Luddism Or Legitimate Concern?

It is the latter concern that film and TV production companies may have to contend with. This has already been the case in Hollywood, with last year’s strikes by actors hitting production as they sought legal protection against AI taking their jobs.

However, as the BBC recently reported, the situation is not quite as simple as the type of Luddite arguments that might have been used concerning technology in the past. Partly, this is because there are legal claims in progress over the unauthorised use of material from actors, writers and creators to train AI.

Secondly, as the report notes, AI is now being used in production, whether the actors or anyone else likes it or not.

In many cases, this can be in ways that everyone might be able to agree on quite amicably. An obvious example is where Adrian Brody’s Hungarian accent in the Brutalist was enhanced using generative AI. In other cases, it has been used to de-age actors, such as Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford.

Shadows And Dust, Or Immortal Actors?

This could be useful for keeping characters these actors are associated with going, such as Indiana Jones, should anyone want another film in that sequence (arguably, most who saw the fourth and fifth films would take a different view).

It can even be used to revive dead actors (will Val Kilmer be in the frame now that he has passed?) or at least used to solve problems if an actor passes during filming.

However, CGI can already do this; in the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, it was used in a couple of later shots involving the character Proximus, played by Oliver Reed, who had died with a couple of scenes still to act out. A digital reconstruction of his face was superimposed over that of a replacement actor for these short segments.

Pulling Up The Drawbridge?

A powerful counter-argument to this is that while it may benefit A-listers to claim royalties on avatars of their younger selves acting out action scenes or speaking in perfected accents, ‘background’ actors with minor roles, not to mention extras, may prove expendable.

Once again, however, CGI may have already got there, helping to create large crowds when there are only a few actors on the scene, namely those who are at the centre of the action with speaking roles.

At the same time, some choose to forego such use of extras. Indeed, Gladiator itself had plenty of actors playing roles from Germanic warriors battling the Romans in the forest through to the crowds in the Coliseum.

It was not just Ridley Scott who decided not to use CGI this way. It may be argued that the CGI involved in creating moving human figures in James Cameron’s Titanic, while ground-breaking at the time, soon looked dated and that it was not that much more advanced when Gladiator was being filmed.

However, the technology was undoubtedly available for Christopher Nolan, had he chosen to use it in Dunkirk. In the event, he declined, even though this led to many critics arguing that the film was unrealistic in reducing the number of men on the beach from the hundreds of thousands who were there in May 1940.

No Fate But That Which We Make?

For filmmakers, a key question may be this: If AI will spare the A-listers, but not the rest, might that deprive the next generation of stars the opportunity to work their way up the ladder in the profession?

If so, might AI leave us not just with the possibility of immortal actors who continue to reappear in perpetuity, but the necessity of it because there is nobody to take their place?

The ideas about AI first incorporated into Terminator in 1984 still resonate, with the first trailers for yet another film (the seventh, for those still counting) having just been released. Arnold Schwarzenegger will still be in it.

The question is whether actors in future sci-fi films, or any other roles, will get their chance to be as big a star as Arnie, or whether AI will be saying “hasta la vista” to them.