Robert Downey Jr. plans to sue any Hollywood executive who signs off on the creation of his digital replica.
Robert Downey Jr. appeared on a recent episode of the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast and sent a stern warning to Hollywood in the age of AI: “I intend to sue all future executives” who sign off on the creation of a Downey digital replica. The Oscar winner does not want his likeness being used on screen through AI technology and/or deepfakes. The topic came up in relation to Downey’s Marvel tenure as Iron Man, but he’s confident Marvel would not recreate his Tony Stark through AI.
“There’s two tracks. How do I feel about everything that’s going on? I feel about it minimally because I have an actual emotional life that’s occurring that doesn’t have a lot of room for that,” Downey said when asked about being digitally recreated in the future.
“To go back to the MCU, I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me, with or without me,” he added.
When host Kara Swisher said that “future executives certainly will” want to digitally recreate Downey on the big screen, the actor responded: “Well, you’re right. I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec.”
“You’ll be dead,” Swisher noted, to which Downey replied: “But my law firm will still be very active.”
Downey is currently confronting the future of AI on Broadway in the play “McNeal,” which takes aim at corporate giants in the AI space such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“I don’t envy anyone who has been over-identified with the advent of this new phase of the information age. The idea that somehow it belongs to them because they have these super huge start-ups is a fallacy,” Downey told Swisher about figures like Altman. “The problem is when these individuals believe that they are the arbiters of managing this but meanwhile are wanting and/or needing to be seen in a favorable light. That is a massive fucking error. It turns me off and makes me not want to engage with them because they are not being truthful.”
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The legal system will, of course, have to catch up to the technology changes. I don't think it's right to use someone's likeness without their express permission and compensation.
Will we start seing actors copyright their own persona? Or is this already a big thing inin Hollywood