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Comment by belter | Hacker News Reader

I can see famous actors licensing their image, with multiple shadow actors doing their moves. Now you can make 50 movies per year instead of 5. You heard it here first...

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Pretty sure that's already a thing, not for movies per sé but for ads where a celeb can license their avatar - 3d model and voice for use in ads. Especially useful when they want the celebs lips to move correctly when the ad is translated into non-native languages.

Damn, I didn't realize that was already being done. Are there any articles about this or other references you could point us to about this phenomenon?

Yup. As an aspiring indie game dev i eagerly await large scale emotive text to speech. Being able to write a script and have it "acted" for a fraction of the cost, possibly free if i build it myself, is kinda mind blowing.

Microsoft's latest models are very, very good at this.

Try the demos here (and be sure to experiment with the "speaking style" parameter box, and try out the "(Neural) Preview" voices for US English): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...

As a gamer this is also something that I could see having a positive impact as currently the requirement for voice acting a) often limits the amount of text content because it costs to have it voice acted in all supported languages and b) locks in content once the voice acting is done because it would be too costly to redo it for fixed text / questst / etc.

Also, shout out to the team my Mycroft for Mimic3, their open source TTS model: https://mycroft.ai/blog/introducing-mimic-3/?cn-reloaded=1

I can see studios licensing upcoming actors in perpetuity for a pittance. Alternatively, they can synthesize a persona that never ages/complains, and have dozens on nameless grunts be the underpaid talent -like the thousands of people who've donned Goofy suits for Disney

You say "licensing their image", I see "pirated likeness". Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

The next step is obviously for studios to create their own artificial actors. Why let someone get famous enough to demand high licensing fees when you can fully own the likeness that gets famous. Not even sure this is a bad thing since celebrity culture isn't really good either.

see the film "The Congress" where Robin Wright does exactly this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkDyKWKNeaE

Too much exposure. I'm thinking instead about a dozen more young Sean Connery 007 movies, ten more young Harrison Ford Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies, etc. diluted in the next 30 years. Replace with any other star and repeat for the next century. I guess that copyright could be extended to faces and the usual 75 years after the death of the actor. Studios will take care of that.

I've been thinking it, but I haven't seen someone else write it - see ya in 2025 Belter.

With the rise of really good neural TTS engines that can re-create voice actors with a high level of accuracy, I've been predicting the same thing will happen in cartoons and anime for years now.

The shadow actor still needs to deliver a convincing performance though (=$$$). AI can't magically make bad acting turn into good acting.

Why not create an AI model that improves acting?

Acting style transfer. And they thought the creatives would have the safe jobs! Ha!

I wonder if The Rolling Stones will be around long enough to license AI-written and performed albums.

That sucks, movie nowadays are getting pretty bad.

the eternal reboot of the MCU movies

you should patent/copyright the idea and profit from it

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