No./1 Is A.I. cinema's latest villain?
Empire delves into the algorithm-fuelled minefield that’s looming for the movie industry
From 2001 to the T-800, from The Matrix all the way to this year’s M3GAN and Mrs. Davis (see page 20), movie history is full of malevolent machines whose violence serves as a warning: don’t mess with artificial intelligence. Hollywood, however, has lately begun ignoring its own advice. In the last few months, a string of news stories have broken, leading to questions about how A.I. might be about to change moviemaking forever.
First there was the emergence of CHATGPT — a text-generating software so sophisticated, it can write screenplays. Then there was the announcement that Robert Zemeckis’ next film Here would feature a digitally de-aged “deepfake” of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, using a generative A.i.-based visual tool called Metaphysic Live. Throw into the mix a stark warning from Keanu Reeves — “What’s frustrating about that is you lose your agency… it’s scary,” he told Variety — and a picture begins to emerge of an industry divided, on the brink of a new frontier.
The belief among those developing A.I. software for Hollywood is that it’ll unlock exciting new storytelling possibilities; a technological leap forward comparable to the advent of sound and colour, that will help directors “pull live, authentic images out of their minds and instantly see them embodied on the screen”, as one CEO, Maria Chmir, tells Empire. Chmir is the founder of Deepcake, an agency that created an algorithm to create hyper-realistic “Digital Doubles” of celebrities. “Our prediction for the near future is that each movie star will soon have their own Digital Double, able to perform stunts and even free up actors so they can take part in more projects,” she suggests.
“The technology is also great for cases where an actor becomes unavailable in the midst of filming a movie or TV series, such as if they pass away or become sick,” adds Chmir. “No need to struggle with finding similar actors or unrealistic make-up. A Digital Double can be created, which will also generate profit for either the actor or their family in the event of their death.” If that sounds morally thorny, well, welcome to one of the most volatile debates in Hollywood at present. Deepcake itself ended up at the centre of a furore in October 2022 after creating a series of ads for Russian telecom company Megafon starring
a digital copy of Bruce Willis. The visually seamless recreation of the Die Hard star — created by feeding 34,000 images of the actor into their software — was officially licensed and made with the consent of the actor (who recently retired due to ill health), but sparked a fevered debate nonetheless about the ethical lines that Hollywood shouldn’t cross as this technology becomes readily available.
“There are boundaries to consider, as with any technological process. For example, we will not work on projects related to political campaigns or issues. Additionally, we will not create Digital Doubles without the consent of the individuals or entities who hold the rights to the original images,” insists Chmir. One Hollywood producer, speaking to Empire on the condition of anonymity, expects the next decade to be full of expensive lawsuits as those rights issues are contested. “We may soon be in a situation where movie stars ‘act’ in their own biopics after they pass away — I know that several movie stars have been approached and are considering selling those rights,” they tell Empire. “The whole area is an ethical minefield that’s developing faster than the courts will be able to keep up with. But at the same time, no studio wants to be left behind.”
Then there are the stories themselves. John Zaozirny, Head of Feature Films at leading literary management company Bellevue, tells Empire he’s spoken to a number of established screenwriters who are “deeply concerned” that screenplays may soon be written by CHATGPT and similar programmes. “But when you look at how these technologies actually function, it’s harder to be intimidated.” CHATGPT doesn’t innovate — it imitates, he says. “If you have a hero trapped in jail, and you need to break them out, all it’s going to do is tell you the ways that people have broken out of jail before, in movies or real life. You want to figure out a brand-new way to do it that people haven’t seen before — that’s what [audiences] are looking for. If you ask A.I. for something brandnew, it can’t do that, because what A.I. does is scrape the internet for what’s been done before.” But what if A.I. reaches a point where it’s able to generate its own original ideas? Zaozirny laughs. “Then screenwriting is the least of our worries.”
In a few years, could A.I. performances start creeping into acting categories at the Oscars? Maybe the next Elvis biopic will feature an A.i.-generated version of The King himself. We might even have moved beyond creating digital copies of existing actors into celebrating fully A.I. performers who don’t exist in the real world at all. The future is here, and it could be one in which we no longer watch movies about M3GAN — but ones made by her instead.