Me, Myself and AI
The proliferation of face-altering VFX leaves some viewers questioning which actors are real
Armen Nahapetian wants the world to know: “I’m not AI.” While the 16-year-old actor is gaining notice, it isn’t just for playing a teenage version of Joaquin Phoenix’s titular worrywart in Ari Aster’s epic dark comedy “Beau Is Afraid.” He added the disclaimer to his Instagram bio because people keep thinking he’s not a real person but a digitally de-aged Phoenix.
“I went to the movie theater a few weeks ago, and one of the employees was pointing at the poster saying, ‘Oh, my God, you’re real!’” Nahapetian recalls.
The main poster art features four versions of Beau, all posing in shimmering gray satin pajamas. There’s a Phoenix wearing a farmer’s hat, a Phoenix sporting male pattern baldness, a Phoenix buried under wrinkles — and a smoothfaced Nahapetian. The theater employee’s confusion may seem absurd, but the reasoning makes sense: Here are three Joaquin Phoenixes; by inference, the fourth must be one too, right?
The “Beau” mix-up goes beyond the key art. Photographs of Nahapetian at the film’s premiere dumbfounded a fair number of social media users, who had also mistaken the actor for a de-aged Phoenix after watching the trailer.
The confusion is a symptom of audiences now assuming onscreen actors are digitally transformed. Once cutting-edge tech, such effects have become a regular ingredient in the public’s media diet, appearing in practically every Marvel project and even modestly budgeted films like “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and “Scream VI.”
Advancements in generative AI have automated many steps in visual effects work, and the programs are becoming more accessible. Cristóbal Valenzuela, CEO of AI research company Runway, told Variety in February that AI tools are being employed on productions that wouldn’t have looked to them a few years ago, such as indie Oscar winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
“Everyone is going to be able to make the films and the blockbusters that only a handful of people were able to,” Valenzuela said.
Trailers for the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” tout a locomotive set-piece featuring a digitally de-aged Harrison Ford. To achieve the effect, Lucasfilm fed reference footage into an AI program, making the 80-yearold actor resemble his 38-year-old self in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Eight years ago, another film tapped moviegoers’ memories of Ford. “The Age of Adaline,” starring Blake Lively as a woman who doesn’t grow old, cast Anthony Ingruber for flashback sequences of Ford’s character. Ingruber was hired after going viral for his uncanny impression of Han Solo. If the film were conceived today, would producers consider employing de-aging effects instead?
These digital alterations have a latent impact on audiences’ relationship with stars. From the dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park” to the neon netherworld of “Tron,” CGI has produced spectacles outside of reality since its first integration into moviemaking. Now, visual effects can alter performers too, to both subtle and dramatic degrees. Add to that the encroachment of increasingly undetectable deepfake videos and voice clones that proliferate on social media. Such developments forecast a dilemma: What is the value of an actor when a viewer cannot accurately discern if that is one on-screen?
As strange as Nahapetian’s situation may seem, it could certainly happen again. It has happened before. During the second season of “Ted Lasso,” there was a brewing fan theory that Brett Goldstein’s character, the foulmouthed soccer veteran Roy Kent, was a CGI creation. Perhaps it was the Apple TV+ series’ soft lighting or Goldstein’s stunningly symmetrical facial hair that roused suspicions.
“It’s quite disconcerting, because I’ve seen a lot of sci-fi films. And I started to be like, ‘Maybe I am [CGI],’” Goldstein joked on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” at the time. “They’d implant memories to make me think I wasn’t.”
Nahapetian couldn’t have foreseen his plight either, but he’s accepted it with a sense of humor.
“It’s half joking, but half being serious,” Nahapetian says about his updated Instagram bio. “I thought people would eventually realize that, you know, I’m a real boy.”