Bruce Willis Sells Deepfake Likeness Rights So His 'Twin' Can Star in Movies | Hacker News Reader

Bruce Willis Sells Deepfake Likeness Rights So His 'Twin' Can Star in Movies

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78 pointshelsinkiandrew113 comments

This seems to be in rotation. Here are some comments from last time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33024959

It’s sad we’re just regurgitating derivative art more and more. Everything seems to be a sequel or to be memberberries, like StarWars and the new Lord of the Rings snoozefest Amazon lit a billion dollars on fire to throw at the wall.

There are stories now about investors spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying music catalogs, and then hiring brokers to pitch covers to new artists so that they can milk more money out of old songs - like Dua Lipa’s Rocketman cover. Why come up with anything new?

we are post-something alright. I made the same conclusion and it's weird that there is no new Bruce Willis on the market that made it in the last decade. We have people like Pedro Pascal who are good but not a-billion-dollar-garanteed-hit good.

When it comes to music and cinema what changed is we replaced major labels and cinemas with Spotify and Netflix... both are not paying as much as in the old days - up front and in the long run.

Music Albums are no more, most of us are just listening to singles right now – so why release an album at all? But the LP was basically invented by the Beatles who said we put out ten songs at once - before them like in the Elvis generation everything was released as singles! No one thought that you can make the kids buy an LP which was typically a collection of greatest hits until that point. Nobody thought 30-million-sellers like "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Appetite for Destruction" were even possible.

Artists these days need a build in audience which cater to the taste of their audience and then they maybe get the label contract or publisher deal - but I guess most just don't bother at that point and release their things on their own.

We live in a super fragmented market - I stumble upon these bubbles everyday where I think "so this person has a career for a decade appearently and I just learn now about it?" Even if it is completely up my alley...

But everybody can record an album these days that sounds like it was produced by bloody Bob Rock on a 1.000 dollar notebook... when it comes to music everything sounds pitch perfect - which it is thanks to Audiotune. And even "live music" is hardly "live music" anymore in a lot of cases these days. And most of it is derivative and banal.

Back in the days a major label could and would take some kids out of the gutter - who had no other choice to succeed but the Billboard 100 - and put them in front of 60.000 people where everybody just loved the same things. I mean these sort of things still happen but they are few and far between.

Why bother putting in the 10.000 hours to make a career in acting or music if you can get a business degree and make 6-figures anyways?

But I think it makes sense for these musicians to sell their publishing rights because its an easy way out. A lot of these people are old and its easier to give a couple o million dollars to your kids than a music catalog which they probably don't even know how to handle. I mean every musician worth a dime knows about the Frank Zappa family feud so maybe it's all in all better to give these music rights to people who actually know what they are doing.

> it's weird that there is no new Bruce Willis on the market that made it in the last decade

I always considered Dwayne Johnson to be the 80s action hero analog for today. At least the closest.

Well Dwayne Johnson is successful but he is not really a newcomer... The Scorpion King is 20 years old by now and he started his wrestling career in the 90`s.

And he is not really an "actor" actor - he is more like the Schwarzenegger of today I would say.

One could argue about Bruce Willis acting chops but he might will get an Oscar eventually for his lifetime work.

I once read a quote from some movie exec that basically said studios turn to old content when the economy is weak because it is lower risk.

I find this to be true from a few perspectives, it’s lower risk financially for the studio but it’s also lower risk for the audience too. If you’re struggling financially and can only see one movie, you’re more likely to see something that reminds you of good times than risk seeing something totally new.

I do agree with your point though. I’d love to see more original content.

Also, it’s interesting that you reference South Park (membererries) while criticising Lord of the Rings given that South Park is older than the LotR’s film debuts.

> studios turn to old content when the economy is weak because it is lower risk.

Oh no. Given how many reboots and remakes there has been the last 10 years we are screwed in the coming recession.

There's really no "studios" anymore. There's "platforms", which own content libraries and commission new media. They are all giant corporations.

And of course the media they commission is KPI'd into oblivion by hordes of middle management, and done by committee rather than singular creative genius.

So I think that ship has sailed. If people want to watch original content, they're better off finding some niche art house content, maybe of European origin, that seems to be more popular there.

My guess is because the younger generation does not go to the movies that much. So the films are being produced for people who still do - the generation that likes Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Ghost Busters, etc. What is the best way to get most of them go see your new movie? - a remake of an old classic.

My train of thought is similar, but a bit more naïve: As the generation who grew up on these classics gets into influential positions, they want to produce things similar to what they liked. But a demand-side explanation like yours is more realistic than a supply-side one.

I dunno, there's probably something to that. Probably a bit of both.

People love their nostalgia and will consume derivatives of their childhood favorites for that reason. It wasn't always like that, in the past when you got older you had to develop new tastes, so producers had to keep innovating. But the way we consume media now, people are content to binge watch a bunch of derivative Star Wars series so why do anything different? And they even get their kids to join in with them so you have the next generation covered to some extent too

if people like derivative art then so be it.

It's the easiest it's ever been to create new art. Good content will find a way as it always has

There were various rumours about Willis suffering from early dementia, and was "handled" by family and managers in his last couple of productions to drain as much money as possible - while he supposedly was almost not aware what whas going on. I might imagine that this sale of rights could also be purely financially motivated by those behind-the-scenes actors.

Glenn Campbell was also pushed out on the stage to sing despite being deep into Alzheimer's. But since he clearly enjoyed it, I don't think that was a problem.

I saw one of his later shows. He was completely out of it before and after but it was like a switch flipped when he started performing. Perhaps it was his last cognitive link to his full self and former life before his passing.

This is why I would not want to watch "kindof likeof Bruce Willis is in our movie" - let the guy go away.

He was diagnosed with expressive aphasia not dementia. There are no clear public examples that show he suffers from any sort of dementia. The cause of his aphasia has not been shared, but a joint statement was released on a family member's instagram that he was choosing to retire.

Aphasia can be caused by dementia, Alzheimer's, a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, or even a tumor.

Rumors, especially regarding celebrities, shouldn't be taken seriously. It's inappropriate and disrespectful to encourage a rumor like this.

The tone of the comment you replied to is clear, however the strongest interpretation of the comment would look something like my sibling comment to yours.

It seems sensible, ordinary, and just, that his will would be for his kin and handlers to maximise their financial well-being.

I know that's certainly how estate is ordered: for the financial best interests of my heirs, and the best interests of myself in handling my end-of life period.

We are all terminal. Plan ahead.

I agree with you, that conclusion does make the most sense. From reading articles about what recent directors that work with him said, he was aware of his difficulties but was genuinely optimistic.

Celebrities unfortunately can have their careers made or broken on the basis of these kinds of rumors. Culturally, in the US, it seems like critical thinking is being valued less. I can't say for sure if that's true. I recognize that I live in a cultural bubble and rarely interact with people of the opposite opinion that I can have a respectful conversation with. My framework of certain groups is almost completely based on the media tropes and reaction-baiting social media posts of them I come across on things like Reddit and Youtube. Reasonable opinions make boring content.

I believe it was worded slightly differently when I responded to it. On hindsight I might have been feeding a troll comment. I appreciate your perspective. Hacker news just isn't a place where I am used to seeing this type of conjecture based conclusions.

Bruce also has 5 Daughters and given his Aphasia, his acting career is essentially over. "Selling out" with the Geezer Teaser movies and this deep fake thing to give his daughters and family as much money as possible is a brilliant move and far from being handled. It's quite the opposite, I strongly suspect he is very aware he's doing this plans to retire once the gravy train runs out. But since he make a 1-1.5 Million a pop for a Geezer Teaser and who knows how much for this deep fake thing he is still continuing.

And honestly, if true I congratulate him for it, he's setting up his family and children for live while ruining his "good name" in Hollywood without a second thought. Many actors would be too vain to go that route.

I'd say it's also fair to assume his estate is in order[1], advanced care directive; power of attorney; enduring guardianship; last will & testament; or whatever the equivalent are in his state of residence, and that his delegates are acting for him as required.

1. I've used the legal terms relevant to the state here locally, though I'd imagine y'all can interpret the terms to suit

This was my thought as well. Those 'geezer teaser' movies he was making, and now this all feels very much like he's being taken advantage by trusted people close to him.

Willis has been confined to "geezer teasers" [1] for the last decade or so because he has progressive aphasia, a condition that made it very hard for him to learn and adequately deliver lines and has now forced him to step away from acting entirely.

However, he leaves behind a very long back catalog of screen appearances as training data and substantial name recognition, which makes him a near-perfect candidate to be the first mover here.

[1] https://www.vulture.com/article/randall-emmett-movies.html

I always thought this could be an interesting business model for deep fake tech, licensing your own image. Bruce Willis can now die even harder with a digital twin

Normalizing this will change the industry. How soon until the studios start manufacturing digital actors so they don't have to pay humans? They won't have the star power that human A-listers do, but with enough investment and exposure on screen, they could manufacture a pseudo-B-lister then start printing money.

> with enough investment and exposure on screen, they could manufacture a pseudo-B-lister then start printing money.

Why not? They'll only be printing money if the audience likes it.

I think we are already seeing that with "artificial" influencers in China/Japan. This is only the next natural step IMHO.

Didn't they already do that? There was an actor was who was digitally de-aged in some film a couple of years ago.

I attempted to make such a model but it was 23 years ago and the tech-stacks weren't evolved enough yet - they idea was for people to play a game and be able to skin their own characters (irrespective of game) so effectively you carry your user profile, as you've designed across games...

22 years ago in the beginning of 2000 we released The Sims.

But releasing an early playable demo of the entire game before the official release was technically intractable and aesthetically unappealing, because it required a "critical mass" of objects and artwork to be even remotely playable.

Check out "The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998" to see some of the early ugly graphics and primitive gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY

>The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998: A demo of an early pre-release version of The Sims for The Sims Steering Committee at EA, developed June 4 1998.

So instead of releasing an early pre-release demo version of the game, we bootstrapped the Sims user created content industry by releasing SimShow, a simple 3D animated model and texture viewer featuring the character animation system I developed, to enable players preview the characters and kick off the generation of user created content that ultimately made the game so successful after it was finally released.

http://donhopkins.com/home/SimsSkinsTutorial

https://www.thesimszone.co.uk/files/download.php?ID=117

SimShow included some example content (skeletons, skins, and animations) to allow players preview the graphics and animations of the characters, and tutorials for making your own skins, to create "shallow fakes" of yourself and other characters in the game, using widely available tools like Microsoft Paint and Photoshop.

So even before The Sims was released, fans made all kinds of user create content with skins of themselves and also famous characters like the cast of Star Trek and Superman, which EA could not have legally published themselves because of copyrights and trademarks of course.

https://www.supermanhomepage.com/other/sims-skins.php

But since the fans did that themselves, and published them on their own web sites, it was just fine, and by the time The Sims was finally released in early 2000, there was already a big collection of all kinds of fan-made characters for the game available for download.

More stuff about The Sims:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30359560

>When I implemented the pixelation censorship effect in The Sims 1, I actually injected some random noise every frame, so it made the pixels shimmer, even when time was paused. That helped make it less obvious that it wasn't actually censoring penises, boobs, vaginas, and assholes, because the Sims were actually more like smooth Barbie dolls or GI-Joes with no actual naughty bits to censor, and the players knowing that would have embarrassed the poor Sims. [...]

Also there's a great interview with Chris Trottier about "the toilet game", "tuned emergence", and "design by accretion", that I published on my old blog, which is still on archive.org:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160704065742/http://www.donhop...

>Sims Designer Chris Trottier on Tuned Emergence and Design by Accretion

>The Armchair Empire interviewed Chris Trottier, one of the designers of The Sims and The Sims Online. She touches on some important ideas, including "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion".

>Chris' honest analysis of how and why "the gameplay didn't come together until the months before the ship" is right on the mark, and that's the secret to the success of games like The Sims and SimCity.

>The essential element that was missing until the last minute was tuning: The approach to game design that Maxis brought to the table is called "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion". Before it was tuned, The Sims wasn't missing any structure or content, but it just wasn't balanced yet. But it's OK, because that's how it's supposed to work!

>In justifying their approach to The Sims, Maxis had to explain to EA that SimCity 2000 was not fun until 6 weeks before it shipped. But EA was not comfortable with that approach, which went against every rule in their play book. It required Will Wright's tremendous stamina to convince EA not to cancel The Sims, because according to EA's formula, it would never work.

>If a game isn't tuned, it's a drag, and you can't stand to play it for an hour. The Sims and SimCity were "designed by accretion": incrementally assembled together out of "a mass of separate components", like a planet forming out of a cloud of dust orbiting around star. They had to reach critical mass first, before they could even start down the road towards "Tuned Emergence", like life finally taking hold on the planet surface. Even then, they weren't fun until they were carefully tuned just before they shipped, like the renaissance of civilization suddenly developing science and technology. Before it was properly tuned, The Sims was called "the toilet game", for the obvious reason that there wasn't much else to do!

https://web.archive.org/web/20140720190605/http://www.armcha...

in 1997 me and best friend ran Intel's DRG game lab at SC5, and had a huge lab for proving that a $1,000 gaming machine was possible - specifically on Celeron Procs...

We subjectively tested out all games and AGP, and the first iter of Unreal... in order to determine if the optimized instructions were actually working v AMD procs... such that Intel would give the gaming company $1,000,000 in marketing money to promote how much better their machines ran the games...

Thank you for your comment.

That was such a cool video!!!!

Love it.

I love that "im not sure if we can even delete things yet!"

One of the things I wanted back then was the ability to have a service at GAMESTOP or some other such type place to 3D scan your own body and then skin that...

I CANNOT believe that meta is so astronomically terrible in graphics and they havent even thought of a body scanning booth to build out your character.... given they dont have any legs, I assume all the billions never went to riggers...

If FB was smart they'd be dumping a billion dollars at Blender...

>Bruce Willis can now die even harder with a digital twin

I see what you did there, and look who's talking! The verdict of his first deadly sin is that he's nobody's fool and had mortal thoughts, so what just happened is that he wanted to be the last man standing before armageddon, fight fire with fire, and not cop out or breach his contract because of his death wish, and just survive the night long enough that his precious cargo of vice and acts of violence could be appreciated by the kid. ;)

I tried to go the whole nine yards, but I couldn't figure out how to work Beavis and Butt-Head Do America into it.

This is interesting, but it also stands to really weaken actors. If it's anything like the move to streaming platforms, I'd expect to see much lower royalties (if any) for the likeness of a famous actor.

Also, when the studio owns a likeness rather than a performance, I feel this opens the possibility for actors to lose out big time on the roles they can take. Why would Newline hire an actor they already have the license for, ever again?

I'm reminded of the Luddites, who were not anti technology, they just didn't want to lose their positions as skilled, knowledgeable workers when automation entered. Will we see a similar movement of actors losing out as soon as there's enough of a corpus of digital stand ins?

> This is interesting, but it also stands to really weaken actors.

First mover advantage. I look at Bruce Willis cutting this deal like music artists in the 50's-60's who made a good returns on their recording contracts while artists of today sign '360 deals' named as such because the rights owners own everything while the artist makes a pittance, often most profitably from performance and merch.

Supply & Demand. It's the Law.

If he's decided to retire, for whatever reason, wouldn't it make sense to sell this sort of thing? Like, barring serious reputational issues, why not? You're not doing any work. They do have to pay a different actor to have you grafted onto still right?

I don't really see how you avoid this but consider... who watches Bruce Willis films? How old are they? Even if Bruce Willis's likeness is in movies or ads, there's a pretty clear expiration date (ours) even if they could use his likeness forever.

It seems pretty rational all around. New actors who can stand in for specialty CGI isn't that unusual right? And even if every actor got some kind of computer life extension and de-aging, the public interest in that actor won't last. Certainly the famous actors are being rational that their likeness may well earn more than their present day abilities can handle (including your ability to care about it).

It seems like a limited short term problem until we get to the point where the human-indistinguishable CGI are invented and then people are shoved into the CGI character. I guess sort of. Except what else was Gollum? I have the feeling this is all small scale and overblown. How many people would this really apply to for celebrity status, 50?

He's decided to retire because he has aphasia, and is therefore losing his ability to understand and use language.

Yes, I know that. It doesn't really impact that people enjoying watching a script read by Bruce Willis's voice and likeness will be commercially viable for a limited time. He's a fun actor, but all actors eventually stop being a good fit for the era.

Old cowboy films are fun to watch from a historical perspective, but I sure don't care whether a modern film has a likeness and voice of John Wayne, that's just not much of a selling point anymore. I can see it buying you an extra 20 years maybe, but actors just sort of disappear from the limelight all the time and people don't even notice.

Maybe it’s a good thing. It’s about time the modern “nobility” comes from some other field.

“The Congress” is precisely on point: It’s a movie by Robin Wright (2014) about actors signing off their numeric rights to a corporation, and going to a congress to meet other virtualized actors. It made me extremely sad, because it shows what happens when everyone lives in an illusion. It’s really hard to describe the movie, as it’s so unexpected, but so aligned with today’s Bruce Willis signing off his deepfake rights.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/zkDyKWKNeaE

Absolutely! I love that film (as much as love Blade Runner, for similar reasons), and it's spot on point. I wrote more about the film and the technology here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33044577

The Congress was written and directed by Ari Folman, it stars Robin Wright.

She was the producer and it was a passion project for her. I don’t think it’s somehow inaccurate to call it her film, just as one might call it Folman’s.

It's based on Stanislaw Lem's "The Congress", and I highly recommend reading it. It's even more depressing

Quite loosely based on it though, no?

Yes, the film "The Congress" was quite loosely based on the Stanislaw Lem book "The Futurological Congress", but in the same way that the film "Blade Runner" was quite loosely based on the Philip K Dick book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".

Both the books and the both the movies are excellent and unique and stand on their own, all having a lot of interesting important things to say, both in common with each other and on their own.

>According to director Ari Folman, some elements of the film were inspired by the science fiction novel The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem in that similarly to Lem's Ijon Tichy, the actress is split between delusional and real mental states. Later, at the official website of the film, in an interview, Folman says that the idea to put Lem's work to film came to him during his film school. He describes how he reconsidered Lem's allegory of communist dictatorship into a more current setting, namely, the dictatorship in the entertainment business, and expresses his belief that he preserved the spirit of the book despite going far away from it.

> Will we see a similar movement of actors losing out as soon as there's enough of a corpus of digital stand ins?

The era of the famous actor is ending.

For a while they'll use the likeness of current famous actors, like in TFA, but at some point, why deal with them or their heirs? They'll just make their own.

And without even the dream of becoming a famous movie star... quite fewer people will go into acting.

There is so much more than simply a digital twin. Marketing, Social Media. It is not "Look, an avatar that looks like actor XYZ!" it is more like "Actor XYZ and his avatar appear on stage". Proof: it is Bruce Willis avatar, not John Doe's.

This is not really surprising with all the after effects we put on movies. Stuntmen and stuntwomen double already actors and in some of latest Terminator movies Arnold was played by CGI.

This will definitely open new possibilities. Maybe more in the sense of eternal youth. I think that this is what most producers look for, hence all the filters on Insta etc. Harrison Ford was born 1942 and in Bladerunner 2 he does not look like 70+

> in some of latest Terminator movies Arnold was played by CGI.

I think it is emotionally another thing when the character is known the exist in thousands of evil copies. A character that also don't age.

And also the character is a robot.

I always wonder how actors are insured while filming a big production. And what logistics or prep is in place for the case of their death. Well, in the future there will be a contractual clause and a 3D scanning session at production start…

I'd do it if I was an actor. It would help keep me viable for roles for younger men.

I expect it wouldn't just cover death but also other 'contractual disputes'. Kevin Spacey ended up having to pay the House of Cards producers for his removal.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-62433694

I read somewhere that Tom Cruze can’t get insurance for many of the stunts he does himself and so he self insured the productions. Now that could easily just be a rumour, the precision, planning and expertise that goes into he stunts is of the highest possible.

Without knowing the financials of this deal it's hard to evaluate the ridiculousness of it.

There's still generations alive that think highly of Bruce Willis, but I gotta imagine for Gen Z and younger he's just another guy in another movie.

When Disney bought James Earl Jones voice for Vader that made 100% sense because Jones is Vader and Vader is Jones. But Bruce Willis? He's been in cool movies but he's nowhere near as important to a franchise as James Earl Jones.

This feels a lot like Hollywood doing something because it can and is afraid of risk.

Right. I grew up in the eighties, and I was culturally aware that Fred Astaire was important, but he held absolutely no draw for me. My kids will certainly recognize Willis but not care that he's in new material.

Compare Astaire's dance movies with the awful ones they make to day, which are more a sequence of quick cut sweaty frenetic gymnastic fragments than dancing. I can almost hear the director yelling "More energy! Hit that line harder!"

Astaire's movies would film the complete dance in one cut, and show his full body. His dances were about style, elegance, and complete mastery.

See "Top Hat" and "The Gay Divorcee".

"Climax" is a dance-horror movie entirely consisting of french dancers rather than actors.

Nothing like either movie mentioned but it is real dancing by pros (and a good horror movie)

Added it to my netflix queue!

Oh, 100%. The man was talented! I'm just saying that as a kid or young adult I wanted to see contemporary stars.

Having read his biography, I'm not so sure he was particularly talented. He worked his ass off. Very very few people are willing to work that hard.

Why the fixation on younger people? People who aren’t Gen Z and younger still go to movies. It’s not a medium exclusively for young people.

> Without knowing the financials of this deal it's hard to evaluate the ridiculousness of it.

I don’t find it ridiculous at all.

Bruce Willis didn’t retire because he was old or bored, he retired because he has aphasia. This isn’t the next step in his career - it’s the next step in his estate planning.

> This feels a lot like Hollywood doing something because it can and is afraid of risk.

Unfortunately I think that ship sailed a long time ago..

I don't think we're talking about a big budget Star Wars movie or the next block buster. Bruce Willis seems to be making appearances in a lot of "straight to video" movies for the past few years (9 this year alone). Having his name and face on the poster, does probably make it easier to sell to the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Willis_filmography

Ah yes, ‘Bruce Willis’ sold his deepfake likeness. Definitely not his agent or family taking advantage of him. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/bruce-w...

this is bad news for younger actors. Established actors have their name known and this is compounding throughout their career. Frankly they d overshadow all young actors if it wasn't for the passage of time making them look older and eventually dying. But now they can be immortal. Take any movie and add diCaprio in the cast , and he ll now be overshadowing anyone, forever.

I think it's also bad news for older actors. Do you think the terms include royalties for every performance in perpetuity?

I suspect this will reduce earning power of stars as much as new actors.

Hopefully copyright term limits will end the "in perpetuity".

Presumably their fans will still get old and die so these likenesses will only be valuable as long as the fans of the “living” actor are alive.

But this also opens the door to a Mickey Mouse type of situation. Perhaps in 50 years Bruce Willis will be “its” own franchise.

Not if they don't die. Has yoda lost his fans?

Will the deepfaked performances not produce new fans?

> Take any movie and add diCaprio in the cast , and he ll now be overshadowing anyone, forever.

Why? There’s no guarantee a deepfake performance will be any good.

I think you're not being imaginative enough.

Do you think acting talent matters, or will it be supplied by neural networks?

Suppose acting talent does matter. Then Leo and Bruce will probably be in movies 40 years from now, but they'll be puppeted by young actors, and the movies will be successful or not according to whether those young actors are good or not. Maybe we'll have a five-year period where Leo is in every movie before moviegoers get tired of it. But the young puppetmasters behind the scenes who are recording the facial expressions Leo makes in the emotional extreme closeups will still be in a good position to negotiate rich compensation deals.

On the other hand, suppose acting talent doesn't matter. Remember that, just as male porn models used to be selected for their ability to retain an erection in a high-stress situation before Viagra, Bruce's face was selected for being on a decent actor. Surely there are many more faces that are currently unknown, or painted from scratch, that would be better-looking than Bruce, that are currently not appearing in the movies because they have the misfortune of being attached to people whose talent as actors is zilch. Or to nobody at all. Moviemakers could rent those faces more cheaply.

Maybe instead of going to see movies with Leo DiCaprio like their grandparents do, teenagers will rebel by going to movies whose stars' faces are the visual equivalent of punk rock and heavy metal: a congeries of multicolored eyes melting into a vaguely vulva-shaped head, or the uncannily precisely scanned faces of supercentenarians near death, or the bare skull of a unicorn. Or, DiCaprio having been canceled for his insensitive remarks about Tiananmen Square in 02049, the teenagers will want to go see movies starring someone they love and respect, like Former President Chloe Trump.

Or maybe 40 physical years from now you and I will look back on this conversation through tens of thousands of years of subjective history (32000 for me, 44000 for you, because you've been able to afford more cloud resources) and comment on how strange it was that biological humans used to go watch movies.

> Do you think acting talent matters, or will it be supplied by neural networks?

I think mannerisms are going to be easy to copy as well, probably easier than the looks. It will all boil down to the technical people behind the CGI , or (worse) in the talent of the younger actors who are doing the modeling for the old actor's CGI face.

I think people underestimate how much visual arts will change when almost everyone can create whatever they can imagine. Branding is going to be the only differentiator, as in fashion or abstract art. And most fashion brands are century old

Yeah, that isn't all they're underestimating.

I was surprised to hear that most fashion brands were a century old, so I checked:

Tiffany & Co.: 01837

Hermès: 01837

Louis Vuitton: 01854

Chanel: 01910

Gucci: 01921

Adidas: 01924

H&M: 01947

Nike: 01971

Zara: 01975

Lululemon: 01998

Zalando: 02008

It looks like a bit less than half of major fashion brands are more than a century old, and I couldn't find any more than two centuries old.

What if people's imaginations are the limit? That seems to be the case in written fiction, for example — anybody can create anything they can imagine already, they don't have to get a CGI budget approved, or justify their location scouting expenses to an executive producer, or sign a big star to play the leading lady. And certainly there's a strong branding or fashion component to people's fiction-reading choices; famous authors tend to sell many more books. But there are plenty of bestsellers that are "first novels", and famous authors tend to imagine things most people can't, so maybe it isn't as purely branding-driven as your model predicts.

The most prominent example of using tech like this is the re-creation of 1980s era Arnie in one of the early scenes in Terminator Genisys, released in 2015. They're showing a time travel modified version of the naked Arnie scene from Terminator and it looks fantastic. I think that use of the tech was really smart. I was meh about the film as a whole, but I really enjoyed those recreated scenes with additional time travel twists.

As in this case, the fact that the actor was closely involved in the process and supportive of the use case is really the way to go. Actors make a lot of creative decisions in a performance so I think that personal input is key. I suppose there's an argument that in the case of a commercial that aspect of it isn't as big a deal, the actor is basically just renting out their likeness anyway, the performance aspect of it isn't as important.

I think this will move the industry forward as a whole but I can't imagine this being very popular for most actors. Actors get new job opportunities using a portfolio of previous work. Deepfake technology is advancing but there still seem to be limitations in terms of what kind of shot can get past the uncanny valley.

Bruce Willis' situation is also unique, having expressive aphasia. Knowing Willis is alive and giving permission paints this in a positive light for me. I don't feel the same way when this technology is used to recreate the acting of a deceased celebrity.

Additionally, it's very easy to recognize the way someone speaks even when their voice is pitch shifted or altered. But there are also many celebrity voice impersonators that sound very believable to me. It'll be interesting to see what they do for his voice.

Reminds me of Stanislaw Lem’s The Congress film adaptation.

Would it be legal to market a film as "Starring Bruce Willis" if he hasn't actually acted in the film at all? I'd have thought it should be something like "Featuring the likeness of Bruce Willis".

Let me tell you about this author named "Tom Clancy"...

None of the Tom Clancy things claim to be by him or starring him. It's just "Tom Clancy's generic covert ops game". "Starring" definitely implies Bruce is actually in the film. I imagine an obvious work around would be "With Bruce Willis" or just "Bruce Willis" on the poster.

Pen names and ghost writing are really old. Most of the time it pretty clear who actually wrote the book.

They could market the film as "Starring 'Bruce Willis'".

You can get away with almost anything with skilful quote deployment.

Haha. I look forward to selecting my own favorite actor(s) for a movie.

And this is the point we arrived as 'humans': instead of promoting a new guy, we need the former guy because we remember him.

The Die Hard movie franchise very much has Bruce Willis as the protagonist. It wouldn’t really be the same without him.

The Star Wars franchise had Mark Hamil as the protagonist.

But Andor might be the best piece of Star Wars media.

We can move on past our initial actors. Dr. Who, James Bond... It's ok to let franchises evolve.

Nah, the best piece is The Mandalorian season 2. Not least because of Mark Hamill!

One could argue that still Sean Connery is the Bond for the older generation. The first era of Bond. Imho only Daniel Craig compares to Sean Connery from the second Bond era.

Trying to say, yes you can move past initial actors, but not all of them will be of equal quality.

A well known actor lends a certain credibility to a film. Big stars do big (or good) movies - at least that's what they want you to think. Of course if deep fake stars become the norm, maybe the credibility will go away

At this time the highest payed stars are not payed to act but to have a super muscular body with a pretty face (which is really hard work). Soon the muscles will be all digital though.

I usually just cut&paste a photo of my head over Ahnold's body. So far it's working great!

what is cheaper?

We need former guy because he’s good, not because he’s former.

Negative, I am a Meat Popsicle.

I think this is pretty cool. Franchises like Die Hard can now keep going indefinitely, with video and audio deepfaking. If you don't feel like that is artistically worthy, fine, don't watch it. Fans will appreciate it, like some people like to watch another Spiderman movie every other year.

Deepfake rights are about mass producing cheap content. The fans will be the first to jump ship.

How many fans appreciate The Simpsons being in its 35th season?

A relevant context if someone didn’t read the article

> Earlier this year, Willis announced he would be stepping away from acting following a career spanning over 40 years, due to aphasia, which he was recently diagnosed with. The condition affects controls language expression and comprehension over time.

Is he kind of ahead of the curve there? Soon it will be possible to generate a character who is a Bruce Willis like, so gives the viewer the same vibe, but not quite the same enough to have an IP claim. Maybe the only way is to sell the right to his likeness before they get it for free.

Now if Cybil Shephard would do the same we could get a really fresh Moonlighting sequel series. Or did that age as well as I did?

Honestly, I see potential in that kind of thing for a business that's incredibly risk averse.

Where is the marketplace so I can sell my deep-fake-twin for royalties/whatever extra/swarm-of-zombies/porn whatever?

Well there's YC's own Sam Altman founded WorldCoin paying the global poor to scan their eyeballs. Paying them with their homemade shitcoin, obviously.

I'm sure another innovative startup will come by soon enough to buy your deepfake rights in exchange for another not-cash scrip.

Uhhh... WhyTF is Saltman attempting to scan eyeballs?? ELI5

Now launching: make Bruce Willis act, sing and dance by simply entering text into our new AI created text to film generator.

Isn't Deepcake, the company he sold the rights to, a russian company?

Couldn't that be a problem?

Interesting that he was in that film Surrogates...

Can we bring Bruce Lee back too? He was taken too soon.

Brandon Lee more so

I think you can still se his twin in Once upon a time in Hollywood.

https://youtu.be/tlUuNg6PEXA

Funny thing is, there were a string of "Bruceploitation[0]" movies that came out of Asia to capitalize on his death.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruceploitation

I've written about the film "The Congress", based on Stanislaw Lem's book "The Futurological Congress", starring Robin Wright and Harvey Keitel, and featuring Paul Debevoc's Light Stage, which explores the issues of actors selling their likeness so their twin can star in movies:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8314622

DonHopkins on Sept 14, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: The Future According to Stanisław Lem

I just watched The Congress -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) -- and WOW, it was excellent. Quite different from the book The Futurological Conference that it's based on: for example, it had cockroaches playing poker instead of sewer rats playing bridge. ;) But well worth watching for its unique take on the entertainment dictatorship. If you liked Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Looker, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, you won't be disappointed! Something weird happens in the middle of the film, that's all I'll say...

It took longer than its length of two hours to watch, because I had to stop and rewind to replay and and freeze frames frequently. (Check out what's going on in the fish tank while she's saying "I wish you could see me animated, it's pretty sick. It's like a genius designer on a bad acid trip. Oh my god, I don't know, I look like a combination between Cinderella on heroin and an Egyptian queen on a bad hair day".)

I'm going to have to watch it many more times, because there were a lot of details to absorb -- time will tell if it's up there with Blade Runner as one of my favorite movies very loosely based on a great book.

https://culture.pl/en/article/ari-folman-on-the-genius-of-st...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15175516

DonHopkins on Sept 5, 2017 | parent | context | favorite | on: The sudden death and eternal life of Solaris

I really loved the movie The Congress, directed by Ari Folman, an adaptation of The Futurological Congress. Like Blade Runner's relationship to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it was a lot different than the book, but shares some deep ideas, and stands on its own as a great movie.

The scene in the USC ICT's motion capture studio was riveting, with Robin Wright playing a partly fictionalized version of herself, and Harvey Keitel playing her agent, baring their souls to the giant emotion capturing machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rNSTizOsws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30069100

DonHopkins 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Paul Debevec created the Light Stage to capture high dynamic range reflectance fields (including clean high resolution normal/bump/gloss/texture maps) of human faces. It uses hundreds polarized LED lights and cameras, plus lots of image processing, to separate the lighting effects of specular reflectance (glossy shine) from subsurface scattering (glowing skin), so you can reconstruct the 3D image and relight it under different conditions, environments, and viewing angles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Debevec

https://www.pauldebevec.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_stage

"The Light Stage With Paul Debevec" - 360 Video (captured with JauntVR panoramic camera):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujwI4dimDA

Digitizing Photorealistic Humans Inside USC's Light Stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6QJT5CXl3o

Paul Debevec: Light Fields, Light Stages, and the Future of Virtual Production:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAe2dUJxe3w

A Light Stage was featured in the 2013 film "The Congress", which is a 2013 film adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's book, "The Futurological Congress", directed by Ari Folman:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress

I really love that movie and the book it was based on, which both raised some interesting issues: Like Blade Runner's relationship to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it was a lot different than the book, but shares some deep ideas, and stands on its own as a great movie.

The Congress Official Trailer (2014) Robin Wright, Jon Hamm HD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rNSTizOsws

The scan scene in the Light Stage at USC ICT's motion capture studio was emotionally riveting and technically realistic, with Robin Wright playing a partially fictionalized version of herself, with Harvey Keitel playing her agent, baring her face and soul to the sparkling panoptic all encompassing emotion capturing machine.

The Congress (2013) Scan Scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPAl5GwvdY8

"Rouen Revisited" is an earlier interactive kiosk project that Paul Debevec and Golan Levin created in 1996 at Interval Research Corporation, based on photogrammetric modeling techniques he developed at UCB:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao3kf0YQ31c

https://acg.media.mit.edu/people/golan/rouen/

>Between 1892 and 1894, the French Impressionist Claude Monet produced nearly 30 oil paintings of the main façade of the Rouen Cathedral in Normandy. Fascinated by the play of light and atmosphere over the Gothic church, Monet systematically painted the cathedral at different times of day, from slightly different angles, and in varied weather conditions. Each painting, quickly executed, offers a glimpse into a narrow slice of time and mood. We are interested in widening these slices, extending and connecting the dots occupied by Monet's paintings in the multidimensional space of turn-of-the-century Rouen. In Rouen Revisited, we present an interactive kiosk in which users are invited to explore the façade of the Rouen Cathedral, as Monet might have painted it, from any angle, time of day, and degree of atmospheric haze. Users can contrast these re-rendered paintings with similar views synthesized from century-old archival photographs, as well as from recent photographs that reveal the scars of a century of weathering and war.

>Rouen Revisited is our homage to the hundredth anniversary of Monet's cathedral paintings. Like Monet's series, our installation is a constellation of impressions, a document of moments and percepts played out over space and time. In our homage, we extend the scope of Monet's study to where he could not go, bringing forth his object of fascination from a hundred feet in the air and across a hundred years of history.

Here's a paper about "Multifocus HDR VIS/NIR hyperspectral imaging and its application to works of art" that references his work, about how you can capture the 3D texture and hyperspectral reflectance field of artwork in a way that you could dynamically relight in different conditions and environments, interactively view in VR, use in high quality computer games and renderings, etc:

https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-27-8-11...

>Multifocus HDR VIS/NIR hyperspectral imaging and its application to works of art

>Abstract: This paper presents a complete framework for capturing and processing hyperspectral reflectance images of artworks in situ, using a hyperspectral line scanner. These capturing systems are commonly used in laboratory conditions synchronized with scanning stages specifically designed for planar surfaces. However, when the intended application domain does not allow for image capture in these controlled conditions, achieving useful spectral reflectance image data can be a very challenging task (due to uncontrolled illumination, high-dynamic range (HDR) conditions in the scene, and the influence of chromatic aberration on the image quality, among other factors). We show, for the first time, all the necessary steps in the image capturing and post-processing in order to obtain high-quality HDR-based reflectance in the visible and near infrared, directly from the data captured by using a hyperspectral line scanner coupled to a rotating tripod. Our results show that the proposed method outperforms the normal capturing process in terms of dynamic range, color and spectral accuracy. To demonstrate the potential interest of this processing strategy for on-site analysis of artworks, we applied it to the study of a vintage copy of the famous painting “Transfiguration” by Raphael, as well as a facsimile of “The Golden Haggadah” from the British Library of London. The second piece has been studied for the identification of highly reflective gold-foil covered areas.

[...]

>5. Conclusions and future work: In this study, a complete framework is introduced for the hyperspectral reflectance capture of a painting in situ, and under high dynamic range conditions. Both the high dynamic range and the focusing problem due to chromatic aberrations have been overcome by using multiple captures with different focus positions and exposure times. A final hyperspectral reflectance cube has been computed using weighting maps calculated for both sample and flat fields and the quality of this cube has been tested and compared with a spectral cube captured in the usual LDR and single focus way. Our results show that the proposed method outperforms the best low dynamic range capture acquired. The sharpness index, as well as the color and spectral metrics show that it is possible to achieve good quality spectral reflectance images using a hyperspectral scanner in non-controlled illumination conditions. Moreover, as an example application, highly reflective golden material has been segmented from a facsimile. Our results show that by applying the proposed framework for capturing and processing, those areas which saturate the sensor in the usual capturingway, can be correctly exposed and segmented using the HDR multifocus capture. In future research, a new version of this framework will be developed including piecewise cube stitching for blending different cubes captured in different regions of big paintings. This will allow us to get closer to the painting and retrieve higher spatial resolution data, whilst still maintaining the spectral resolution and performance achieved in this study. Moreover, we will use the spectral reflectance images computed in this study, together with X-ray fluorescence measurements for the non-invasive pigment identification, in order to help the dating of ancient paintings and other works of art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging

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