Instagram's 'virtual' celebrities
bbc.com
bbc.com
Shudu is ageless, ever available, won't do anything against the corporate image and can be bought and sold.
Ok, she is a generated personality but this will happen with real people too. Tom Cruise is too old to appear in action films? Well, his image won't be.. even after he is dead and gone his image will be owned by a corporation. He won't be too short to appear as Jack Reacher anymore either.. We might be lucky with some celebrities who are already dead, at least they will get left behind. Its difficult to know how this will affect new talent though, perhaps society will become sick of recorded images and turn to live events but I can see that the CGI power will increase such that these images can be generated live.
We already had some of this with Tupac of course
Sometimes one might wonder if we're someone elses Truman Show. It's OK though, in that case climate change doesn't matter :-)
There was also a good SF film similar to this called "Surrogates" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_35), which somehow flew under the radar when it premiered, back in 2009. It's a combination between what you're describing and Asimov's description of life on planet Solaria. From the wiki page of the latter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun
> The book focuses on the unusual traditions, customs, and culture of Solarian society. The planet has a rigidly controlled population of 20,000, and robots outnumber humans twenty thousand to one. People are taught from birth to avoid personal contact, and live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Face-to-face interaction (referred to in the book as "seeing"), and especially impregnating a woman, when replacement of a decedent is necessary, was seen as unavoidable but dirty. Communication is completed instead through holography (referred to in the book as "viewing") , where in contrast to "seeing", they are free of modesty, and have no problem if an interlocutor sees the other's naked body. A two-way teleconference allowed the participants to hear and see each other, but in 3D - an idea almost unheard-of at the time of publication, when color television was a novelty.
I remember back when Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came out, Square was saying that the Aki Ross character model would be like an actress. "While Square ruled out any chance of a sequel to The Spirits Within before it was even completed, Sakaguchi intended to position Aki as being the "main star" for Square Pictures, using her in later games and films by Square, and including the flexibility of being able to modify aspects such as her age for such appearances."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy%3A_The_Spirits_W...
They already did...
[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-02-28-sopranos...
We all know who that corporation/religious group will be, too.
On a tangent, have you considered that Tom Cruise may have the most wonderful life in existence? He's known, and probably liked, by billions for his movies, he's adored by his fellow religious adherents, the religion provides him a pampered lifestyle where his every whim is taken care of be what are essentially servants (religious adherents instructed to never question him and see to his every need, no matter how hard or ridiculous[1]), has enough money to do whatever he wants due to his fame and career, and has the idea that he deserves this as a chosen individual strongly reinforced every day by both the people surrounding him and the reality of his situation.
I mean, a billionaire Saudi Prince might have it pretty good, but they have nothing on Tom Cruise. Even a dictator with total control over his people usually has some repercussions when visiting other locales.
It's not something I would wish for myself, but I can't honestly say if I was in that situation I would decide I should get out of it, given how it would condition me. He's likely the most "blessed" individual to walk the Earth to this point, given what he has access to in the modern age.
1: As recounted by Leah Remini in an interview by Joe Rogan regarding Scientology.
He (seemingly) has, at least, borderline personality disorder and possibly NPD.
That suggests highly unstable relationships, emotions, etc. Not a life you would wish for yourself.
Material luxury both comes with its own trappings (eg. fear of being kidnapped; a fear that your friends only want you for your money/fame; which creates paranoia in most rich people) -- and then, in lots of cases, mental illnesses.
But how much of that is because of his situation? Is it possible to remain what we would consider a sane, well-adjusted individual given prolonged exposure to that situation?
Are dictators or the kings of ages past with absolute or close to absolute power any saner?
> Not a life you would wish for yourself.
Yes, as I said, not something I would want for myself, at least in my current mindset. But if I was in that situation for more than a few months, I'm not sure what or who I would be after that time.
In the "crazy interview" Tom did for scientology you can literally see him flick through a deck of emotions. His entire demeanor is a bit like a random walk through mimicking the emotional states of others.
I can't recall if I had any idea of the trigger in that case. But, hypothetically, it could be a technique to disguise an unpalatable emotion he was havin. Often, I believe, this would be rage/anger/contempt.
I wonder whether the "intense eyes" of cruize/kanye/etc. are that of an intense rage/contempt. Their demeanor is certianly mimicry, what it is they would be emoting is harder to ascertain.
People describe being around that type as like "walking on egg-shells". That's because they really are in an anger-prone state... you just can't see it. But you can "feel" that if you slip up, the rage will become public and take the form of abuse.
I know several people who have worked with Cruise on films who describe their experience as the opposite of this.
He seems to be a very happy, upbeat person who has avoided taking any psychotropic drugs. If that's what "profound mental illness" looks like, sign me up.
It has a quite a specific feeling to it. The manic who denies the need for drugs is somewhat correct in how good they feel, but they lack the self-insight to be aware of their impact on others and self-destructive tendencies.
Their "intensity" arises from the europhia of (hypo)mania, the feeling that it is too good to be "medicated away" etc. and a strong desire to persist in their (hypo)manic state. But it is mostly quite debilitating, and can quickly exacerbate into psychosis.
In an insane world, sane people are said to be insane. There is a huge amount of truth in that statement.
He (seemingly) has, at least, borderline personality disorder and possibly NPD.
Please don't make armchair diagnoses of people like this. I think you need to seriously reconsider how appropriate it is to make cavalier declarations of another person's mental health in a public forum. Even if you were a clinically trained professional, making this assertion on a message board would be baseless speculation.
EDIT: I find the flippancy with which you're commenting in this entire subthread to be demeaning and inconsiderate. Please step back for a moment and understand that you're extrapolating speculative diagnoses from observations you have not made in a clinical setting. You're pontificating about someone's mental health despite the fact that you cannot possibly be informed about it.
> making this assertion on a message board would be baseless speculation.
Yes, its speculation. But arent we exactly on a message board where we are speculating? Isnt this whole conversation, from the OP article itself, a game of speculation?
Why refrain from speculating about the mental health of a person?
You seem to be repeating good-natured pablum which applies, of course, when dealing with specific vulnerable people who could be affected by such speculation. In this case, certainly, it would be bad.
But we're not in that case. Its entirely reasonable to make a judgement about the mental health of other people, in the course of assessing their life.
> You're pontificating about someone's mental health despite the fact that you cannot possibly be informed about it.
Yes, like every person in this thread on every topic in this thread. Speculation isn't bad in itself. It's pretty necessary in the course of discussing a topic.
I am not diagnosing anyone. I am speculating about a diagnosis for the purpose of illustrating problems I believe Tom Cruize may have: so what?
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
He has been through three divorces. If I was going to pick the most wonderful life in existence it won't have a divorce in it.
There's more to the movie than that, but that's the first act. Goes a little deeper, and gets a bit weird after that; preserving the "image" of Princess Buttercup gets the ball rolling, though.
I am thinking about Gibson and Idoru and I think this is something he missed about the future.
https://www.fxguide.com/featured/furious-7s-most-stunning-ef...
Imagine when these characters become so lifelike that they are near indistinguishable from reality. Imagine when someone gives them a voice and personality, and you can speak with them. Imagine then that they star in their own movies, and some of the personality traits you've helped shaped or bared witness to emerge in those movies. The connection you will feel.
Today celebrities are inherently limited by their own bandwidth. These people will have near unlimited bandwidth. Everyone can talk with them. I'm thinking of the movie Her.
This is really interesting!
Edit: This made me think; The Sims in year 2050, might be immoral; almost Truman Show-esque.
Un-lifelike famous characters are already very much a thing, especially in e.g. japan where there's characters appearing everywhere.
While I personally am not a fan of this kind of artificiality, I'm also not saying it's something to be outraged about. I find it fascinating, more than anything.
"‘I created this character called Katy Perry. I didn’t want to be Katheryn Hudson. It was too scary’" - https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/11/katy-perry-int...
Was just interesting in the light of choosing Katy as an example.
"My job is to make my company money, so I have to act exactly like they want me to. Soon I will have to look how they want me to. Say what they want me to. Be who they want me to be. To convey a specific message that is not my own."
At the end of the day, the fake person has more power than the real one, because it is backed by corporate interests.
Characters don't need to be lifelike and indistinguishable from reality to be huge celebrities as is. Animated cartoon characters can already do everything you just said, and are sometimes even more popular than humans.
There is no reason to believe a character indistinguishable from a real human would be capable of achieving more popularity than a similar human.
If you’ve seen the movie Her, that’s sort of what I’m thinking about.
And behind the scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW6mYurjYZ0
Still a little on the wrong side of the uncanny valley, imo, but for a real-time demo it was extremely impressive.
And while they're not intended to look or pass as humans they "give" hours-long packed concerts: https://youtu.be/HI0mv7P_sRk
Obviously they're being played by real actors with motion control equipment, but there's a lot of work that goes into making them feel believable as virtual characters, with facial expressions and lots of other animations that are probably added after recording.
They've become very popular in Japan over the last year. The most famous one is called Kizuna Ai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NasyGUeNMTs
That's because they learned their lessons from 20 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONIKb1EwX6U (kyoko date, one of the very first realistic virtual idol, 1997) (god, when did I become old enough to see patterns through generations :|).
edit: I find the new crop of virtual idols a bit creepy (anime charadesign, childish themes). Might be a generation thing.
> “If you think about social media, Instagram isn’t you. It’s just a digital version of you – one that shows photographs, sometimes videos, and comments on specific things,”
"Ceci n'est pas un pipe.": the image is not the thing, and there may be images without referents.
Until then let us all hail our gods of technological progress.
There will always be capitalization and fabrication on what is popular and perceived to be "good". "Reality" TV is a thing :)
/s
It's not commoditization of beauty.
I suspect the most competitive virtual supermodel would be that created by a person (say, some schlub) who desperately needed to be such a supermodel and could handle themselves in that situation: projecting their own desired identity through the mask, to animate it.
Or, created by an AI which itself is a needy schlub that craves validation and can handle itself as a supermodel. There's no reason this hunger should be exclusive to humans only. And an AI would have greater bandwidth for learning what the public wanted from 'it as a supermodel'.
Take a popular Pixar character, add an AI and a bunch of stock photo backgrounds, and you'll hook the under-12's in a minute.
However, I feel like this could be a whole new ball game in terms of setting unrealistic expectations (not that they aren't doing that anyway with photoshop). But if it is transparent that these IG models are virtual and not real, maybe that will help kids understand that real humans can't look as perfect as a virtual model and that helps them create realistic expectations?
edit: I suppose they could also use virtual models and fatten them up / give them more acne to make them more 'realistic'
Instagram celebs are either hot girls, or guys with lots of money to pay for promoted content.
They dont take their own photos, they use professional photographers. Anyone without the professional style or not willing to play facebook's algorithm game loses out.
The internet is getting very specialized and content quality is skyrocketing.
Guys are hot, too. Not all of them need to pay for ads, and not all the women got there without it.
I can't disagree. When I was a kid, I wanted to eat Butterfingers because of Bart Simpson and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made me want Pizza Hut. Along the same lines, "physical" celebrities have teams of PR agents telling their clients how to act and shaping the public's perception of them.
This isn't really a new idea, just a new vector, right?
Would not bet on that. If this stuff holds foot, these models will soon have rights and fanatics who will lament when these things wear or do things non characteristical of them. They'll have to have rigid, stereotypical personalities to which the follower communities will practically confine them.
"Normal" humans look far different from celebrities and these CGI creations, but celebrities and these CGI creations look similar because celebrities are already mostly CGI.
Exotic cars are... expensive? A lot of the appeal of owning one is the perception of (and the very real) cost, but they are still what they seem to be.
The problem occurs when there's deception about its identity. There will be trust issues in the near future if things like this persist. Then again, would it even matter if some celebrity is a real person in the future?
If neural network voice generation tech gets democratised in the next few years too then you could even be pushing out video content too as an entirely different personality than your actual self.
There are fictional characters that are listed as authors of actual books (Richard Castle comes to mind) but a mere pen name is not a fictional person.