TV and Film Extras Are Afraid AI Will Copy Their Faces and Bodies To Take Jobs (theregister.com) 79
An anonymous reader shares a report: Production companies are scanning the faces and bodies of actors and actresses, who fear their likeness will be used to create fake AI doubles for TV shows and films in the future. Some workers spoke to NPR last week about being subjected to the scans, and feeling like they couldn't say no. Alexandria Rubalcaba, who was working as a background actor, described being called into a trailer and asked to stand in front of cameras.
"Have your hands out. Have your hands in. Look this way. Look that way. Let us see your scared face. Let us see your surprised face," she said. What was most concerning, however, was that she didn't know what or how her images were going to be used. "My first thought leaving the trailer was, 'Oh this might just be the future," Lubsey said. "We might just lose our jobs," Dom Lubsey, an actor from Los Angeles, added. Studios already use computational techniques to create synthetic images of people to create fake crowds for backgrounds in films.
It's not too far-fetched to think that extras can also be generated too. Andrew Susskind, an associate professor at Drexel University's film and TV department, explained how AI-made background actors would slash production budgets. "Imagine ballroom scenes, party scenes, any scenes that need tons of extras," Susskind said. "Imagine the amounts of money they would be saving. Not paying $180 a day. Plus meals. Plus costuming," he said.
"Have your hands out. Have your hands in. Look this way. Look that way. Let us see your scared face. Let us see your surprised face," she said. What was most concerning, however, was that she didn't know what or how her images were going to be used. "My first thought leaving the trailer was, 'Oh this might just be the future," Lubsey said. "We might just lose our jobs," Dom Lubsey, an actor from Los Angeles, added. Studios already use computational techniques to create synthetic images of people to create fake crowds for backgrounds in films.
It's not too far-fetched to think that extras can also be generated too. Andrew Susskind, an associate professor at Drexel University's film and TV department, explained how AI-made background actors would slash production budgets. "Imagine ballroom scenes, party scenes, any scenes that need tons of extras," Susskind said. "Imagine the amounts of money they would be saving. Not paying $180 a day. Plus meals. Plus costuming," he said.
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they have been doing this for decades with CGI, the people that should be worried are the animators
Re: Scrub my toilet liberal (Score:1)
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You're a liar. You're glossing over the fact that it couldn't do this without first being fed a giant catalog of illegally sourced images of real people's faces. It doesn't generate those faces just "based on text input." It generates them based on text and image/video input. Those aren't 100% unique from-scratch fabrications pulled out of some magical AI's virtual asshole. They're evolutionarilly-generated combinations of parts of real people's faces who have had their rights violated in many cases to be i
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The AI learns to draw faces by looking at lots of faces.
That's also how humans learn to draw faces.
Re: Scrub my toilet liberal (Score:2)
Re: Scrub my toilet liberal (Score:1)
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That is exactly right. No one cares about non-famous faces. Extras are insane if they think this will get them anywhere. The real issue is about cloning stars. That's where the money is.
Re: Scrub my toilet liberal (Score:1)
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They can clone trolls also, you're obsolete.
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can they clone moderators to automatically downvote the cloned trolls?
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AFTER they find enough dupe cleaners.
Re: Scrub my toilet liberal (Score:1)
time to union up! (Score:4, Interesting)
time to union up!
Re:time to union up! (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be a good way to guarantee AI would take over this more quickly. It's a good incentive to pluck this low-hanging fruit as soon as possible.
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That would be a good way to guarantee AI would take over this more quickly.
So's capitalism.
Re:time to union up! (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt anyone's holding off on figuring out how to have AI generate background people that just have to stand and/or walk around. As soon as that's done and has spread around, "movie extra" will no longer be a job.
And I don't think it will take long. There's free software that can render a free model walking around, it just takes more money to pay someone to spend time to set up the animation than to hire a warm body for a day. For now.
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time to union up!
Go speak to the supermarket and speak to the former cashier who now supervises 4 self-checkout stations.
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Hey, he got a promotion, he's a supervisor now!
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Re:time to union up! (Score:4, Insightful)
So you can get screwed one way, or the other. Might as well go down fighting then.
Or ... adapt and survive. Its sort of what the universe forces upon us.
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Bend over and take it. Understood.
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Bend over and take it. Understood.
Actually that would be the person I responded to, the after affect of going down fighting.
Again, I propose adapting to avoid the fight you will lose. Don't be a luddite, face the reality that textile mills we be automating. You had a good run spinning cotton by hand but it is now time to learn something new, to adapt to an evolving world.
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And do what? Strike? Absolute best case, you cripple a bunch of movie producers and companies and put them out of business - which would be a great contribution to American culture. We *want* Disney, CBS, etc, put out of business. But that ain't going to get you any jobs as extras in movies.
Strikes can work where the job is critical and where you can't just go out and find someone else. "Movie Extra" doesn't qualify on either count.
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Can you elaborate on why you want Disney and CBS out of business?
AI will create artificial faces and bodies ... (Score:5, Insightful)
TV and Film Extras Are Afraid AI Will Copy Their Faces and Bodies To Take Jobs
OK, AI will create artificial faces and bodies for the extras in scenes to eliminate IP issues. It already happens at a distance, it just keeps getting closer and closer to the camera, where more details can be recognized.
Fortunately AI seems to be starting with some of the most useless humans on the planet, internet influencers.
Face it, if your only value is the look of your face or body, you are entirely replaceable.
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It's probable that the scanning is to provide match data for special effects and post work for specific scenes. It's not that they're creating artificial actors to replace existing actors in that case, as much as it is they need to put the extras through the same scanning as the principal actors in order to provide continuity when doing the SFX work.
The question then is, what happens to the data afterwards. What might make more sense is handing a copy of the data to the extra, or "banking" it with SAG/AFT
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I hope they wait until AI faces improve dramatically. Right now they are really creepy.
It's not uncanny valley stuff. A lot of the training sets seem to be almost exclusively children, especially for female characters. They have adult bodies and the face of a 12 year old.
In 4k these flaws, even for background actors, will become very apparent.
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I hope they wait until AI faces improve dramatically.
Oh I am not arguing they are ready to do so, just that its inevitable.
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First, TV and movie extras are barely paid - the public is usually recruited and at best,
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First, TV and movie extras are barely paid - the public is usually recruited and at best, you get $20 for a whole day on set. If you're really lucky, you'll get access to craft services
You are ignoring many costs, recruiting, screening, training/ costumes, makeup, reshooting due to extra errors, etc.
Finally, extras are, sadly, rarely influencers.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply so. Just noting another area where AI is replacing people.
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If the face looks like a normal human, it's guaranteed that it will look like somebody. Sure, the studio may try to say the AI face was randomly generated, but then all the faces the AI was trained on will file a class action lawsuit. That's an even bigger lawsuit than being sued by one person.
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If the face looks like a normal human, it's guaranteed that it will look like somebody. Sure, the studio may try to say the AI face was randomly generated, but then all the faces the AI was trained on will file a class action lawsuit. That's an even bigger lawsuit than being sued by one person.
A human extra may look like some other person, and that other person has no right to protest. If an AI truly generated a face algorithmically then that is likely enough to get it ruled a coincidence.
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But the AI "algorithm" is trained using images of real faces. The algorithm learns the features of faces and reproduces those features in the face it generates. The people whose images were used to train the AI may try to sue based on the fact that the TV studio is profiting off features it learned by looking at their photos. It's going to come down to reasonableness of the judges, which these days spells doom.
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But the AI "algorithm" is trained using images of real faces. The algorithm learns the features of faces and reproduces those features in the face it generates.
But one specific person is a small part of that data. Many others will have the person's nose. Still others his ears, etc. As long as the algorithm is not using his specific picture, if the features are somewhat arbitrarily chosen and it's a coincidence the result resembles him then it should be OK. Just as it is for human painters, sculptors and other artists who combine real feature and coincidentally create something that resembles somebody. Its like the disclaimers in movies, resemblence to actual perso
What does it actually say in the contract? (Score:3)
Are extras signing away their likeness for all eternity?
I hope they're not going to hit it big later as a star if they are... because whoever they sold their likeness to originally will be able to clone them without further compensation going forward.
As with any contract, you're allowed to make ones that aren't advantageous to you. In the same vein, you're also allowed to decline to accept the contract and just walk away.
BTW, California does recognize that you have a right to your likeness, and that people are not allowed to copy your appearance, speech, etc. in an effort to monetize it. So I assume if studios are scanning extras, that they're applying the same contracts they would normally use for extras to appear in a film.
California publicity law: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-gui... [dmlp.org]
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California does recognize that you have a right to your likeness, and that people are not allowed to copy your appearance, speech, etc. in an effort to monetize it.
No problem, more production will leave California.
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Look-a-likes happen already. They just have to deal with people they don't know coming up and starting a conversation before they realize they have the wrong person.
If it's all digital any way the easy way to fix it is the old Identikit way from '60s movies. Just mix up eyes, noses, cheeks, mouths, chins, etc to randomize the faces.
That old movie "Looker" keeps coming true. The movie didn't quite work, but it's topical enough.
For that matter "Oh my god, what am I doing?" Is also on point, but that was a twi
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I guess they're not scanning these actors to use their likeness. But instead using their movements and expressions to train AI and build new, fictional people to put in their place. This way, the studios won't have to bother with future contracts.
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They don't even need actors to scan then. They could call temp agencies and pay those people double their rates to scan them. Most wouldn't care and would be thrilled to make twice as much as usual, even if for a short time.
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I agree. But just to clarify, when I said actors I were meaning the extras or any other people hired only for this purpose, since they're too acting.
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There's probably already SAG rules that prevent this and require that anyone who is an actor, even for a few minutes, is covered under their terms. That won't stop what you're talking about, but it might slow it down.
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Are extras signing away their likeness for all eternity?
That's exactly what the studios are proposing, and it's a big sticking point in the strike. One day pay for scanning then they get to use the scans however they want for as long as they want.
One thing comments here are also overlooking is that these scans can (will) be used not only to put the person they scanned into films as a virtual background actor, but also to train AI to create 'from scratch' background actors. Feeding the models with high quality, multi-angle scans will get them better results fa
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Over 40 years ago . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
. . . Hollywood made a documentary about this: Looker [imdb.com].
Um, yeah, most of those jobs (Score:2)
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It's not even a real job, they get paid scale for something that really isn't even a job and you could find lots of people to do for free.
No one should or should expect to make any sort of a living at it, they need a real job, too
Re:Um, yeah, most of those jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody really expects to make a living from being an extra. But it's a potential entry point to the acting business, which looks like it's about to close.
Similar solution (Score:3, Insightful)
The music industry learned a way to resolve most conflicts between composers, performers, and producers: they each automatically get an industry-wide agreed-on cut. This way it's harder to take advantage of desperate newbies: if the tune is a hit, they automatically get a cut. I believe composers and performers can agree to a higher percent than the default, but not a lower one. (It's assumed producers are not desperate newbies. I'm probably over-simplifying, but this is the gist.)
Something similar can be done with AI: if an AI version of the actor is used, they get a fixed percentage, based on screen time and total revenues. Actors could also forbid AI usage of them without explicit written permission. But they wouldn't be allowed to sign away their default cut if and when used. This protects desperate newbies from being pressured into signing away their cut.
However, a trickier aspect is composite AI characters, like a Schwarzenegger Goldie Hawn: "I'll be backed up...". Do they divvy up the actor's cut based on the number of actors in the composite? What if it's a mashup of 10? 100? Checks for half a cent would have to sent.
Is being an extra a career? (Score:2)
They shot a movie at my house school when I was growing up. Tons of people from my school were lining up to be an extra in the movie.
I didn't realize that being an extra was a career. I thought it was the kind of thing that people did for the novelty of it. It's weird to think that there are people out there looking at AI filling in scenes with extras saying, "they took our jobs!" Do actors in New York or LA do a bunch of extra jobs in hopes of meeting people who could actually cast them in real roles?
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You can make $50k/year as an extra bouncing from set to set if you persist at it and show up for every gig in the area. And sometimes you get lucky and get picked up for something bigger. Good money? No. But a living... for now.
Why is this desirable? (Score:2)
Why is it desirable for anyone to pay $180/day (plus meals, plus costuming costs) for the proverbial "cast of thousands?"
I definitely understand the concerns of actual actors, especially in regard to their likenesses potentially being used by someone in perpetuity, but the idea that this should extend to an AI created "man in background #3" who sits at a table saying "peas and carrots" is a strange hill to die on.
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If it is the hill you live on, it may be worth dying on if you don't have another hill to move to (and sometimes even if you do but it's a big jump). Doesn't matter how strange it is.
Yeah, well, better find a real job (Score:2)
Find a real job or get roles with lines. Extra work is going to disappear sooner than you want to think it can. The only times a human extra is necessary is for close together where a face and the extras essential stand together.
For anything at a distance, the price of real-time 3d character generation keeps dropping. I figure you have maybe 10 years left before the only roles are in live tv.
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Already done. For the Colosseum scenes in Gladiator (released in 2000) they used a mix of live people, digital rendering and cardboard cutouts.
Re: Yeah, well, better find a real job (Score:2)
I remember that. But I was thinking light-to-medium crowds in settings like a hospital, non-rush hour train stations, subway/bus riders, people inside shops or across the street from the action.
Basically any NPC that an actor does not interact with, e.g., walking on in a crowded environment or any situation where the actor must take note if them.
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I wonder if they could have fixed that scene in North by Northwest where the extra kid clamps his hands over his ears before the gunshot. Because he knew it was coming from previous takes.
No worries! Do live theatre! (Score:2)
Because the arts pay so well! Why, in my most recent year doing comedy, I made six figures! (The first three figures were zero.)
Seriously, though, if AI ends up killing much of art, it's a real threat to our culture.
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It WILL replace a lot of the actors. The questions are "How quickly?" and "How many?". Eventually all the actors will be replaced, but that may be a decade or two away. The actors of "the golden age" (whatever that it to you) will be synthesized, a Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe will star in new films. (Neither of those had contracts giving them control over future uses of their images. Nor did Charlie Chaplin, or many others. And all copyrights will have expired.)
What current actors have is a BRI
But of course... (Score:1)
Of course they will! Souls don't grow on trees you know, and Hollywood sold theirs so long ago that no one there remembers having them in the first place.
https://youtu.be/Yd60nI4sa9A [youtu.be]
I mean, they could invent their own shit, but it's just so much easier to steal it from others. Just ask ruSSia, they stole their entire culture that way.
AIs see dead people (Score:2)
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Because it's difficult to extrapolate from a series of 2D imaged to a 3D model, and you need to do that to get the shadows and lighting correct. This, however, is only a temporary problem.
Dispossessed of your job? (Score:1)
https://www.tor.com/2021/10/05... [tor.com] Anyone have information on if that was ever completed?
If it's ok for them (Score:2)
You wouldn't download an actor...
Copyright (Score:3)
I love how copyright is used to close of access to our own culture for multiple lifetimes as soon as somebody finds a way to monetize it. It's one of my favorite things about intellectual property. - I just can't wait for an opportunity to fight some bottomless pocketed titanic corporation for the rights to my own likeness... which I assume will lead to things like...
"Oh, we own your likeness, and your life story. It's in the EULA you signed. Would you like to license a new hairstyle? Oh! btw, it looks like your subscription to the color "Black" has lapsed. Renew?
Once this can of worms is opened and the $$ starts to flow, there will be no stopping it.
Character generation isn't an issue (Score:2)
They'll let the RNGod create a million extras, classified by ethnicity and age and they'll use those.
Background actors generally aren't important enough to worry about a specific face, so why would they bother stealing one when they can have a computer generate whatever they want?
As a bonus, when someone sues for theft of their likeness, the response will be, "Nope, you just happen to look similar to a randomly generated person... like any two humans can be similar".
My wife watches Lifetime and LMN. (Score:2)
As a result, I wind up seeing quite a bit of it.
These cheap movies with prosaic titles whose primary theme is that "men are evil and will hurt you," seem to have a lot of success in finding types.
By that, I mean that they're good at finding Sandra Bullock types. Good at finding Jennifer Aniston types. You get the idea. This has always been a thing, but now that it involves AI, it's suddenly a big deal.