Nicolas Cage Warns Young Actors About AI
"This technology wants to take your instrument. We are the instruments as film actors."
Speaking at the 25th Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday, the "Longlegs" star warned up-and-comers not to let their performances be manipulated with AI to create "employment based digital replicas" (EBDRs) — and no, not even in the limited terms described by new protections against the tech.
We must have posted this one at the same time. Wonder what it will do to make up artists in Hollywood. I hadn't even thought of that till Roy read me this article this morning.
All kinds of jobs will be erased. There are direct job losses and then you have the auxiliary.
For example, is they shut down the Space Shuttle program, there were 7K jobs lost at KSC. The estimate was there were 27K jobs affected in a 3 country area.
There was a breakfast place that was out of the way but was packed at 6 AM with people going to one of the back gates. After those people were laid off, the restaurant crashed.
When I was growing up here in Kenosha, WI we had American Motors Corporation, which eventually became Chrysler beforre they pulled out completely. After that we were pretty much almost a ghost town here. Before that, however, the downtown area was always busy, there were bars and restaurants everywhere. The city is finally building up again. Even after the Jacob Blake riots in 2020.
And they're finally doing something with the land on which the automobile factory stood and was empty for so many years.
A lot of towns like that in the Midwest. There are going to be more towns like that in the future.
Consider the demise of Hollywood. What does that do to things in Los Angeles?
"There is a new technology in town. It's a technology that I didn't have to contend with for 42 years until recently," Cage said referring to EBDRs, as quoted by Deadline.
"This technology wants to take your instrument," he continued. "We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums."
EBDRs are one of two types of digital replicas described in the groundbreaking deal struck between actors and movie studios following the conclusion of the SAG-AFTRA strike last year.
Whereas "independently created digital replicas" allow for the creation of entire (potentially AI) clones of an actor without their participation, EBDRs only work with the performer's physical involvement for a specific project — like, for example, the AI de-aging of an actor's face.
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