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Comment by CSMastermind | Hacker News Reader

> I like that this technology has the potential to lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar.

Why would it lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar?

If anything wouldn't it increase the value of being one? Because now Megastar Jim Bob Jones or whoever can "appear" in hundreds of movies a year and collect checks from all of them for using their likeness. Instead of those roles going to smaller actors who would presumably get the part today.

Also it makes the value of that mega superstar more valuable because their deepfake won't age nor will it be encumbered by their death. We could start seeing Marilyn Monroe in movies again. And if you're someone like Brad Pitt, it means suddenly you have an entirely new revenue stream from licensing your likeness for years, decade, etc.

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Because you prompt the AI to generate Chad Britt who looks and sounds an awful lot like Brad Pitt, but not enough so to infringe on his likeness rights.

Not a chance. Blurred Lines lost a copyright case for seeming like it could have been a Marvin Gaye song. You won't be able to use Chad Britt unless it is a satire of Brad Pitt that every judge thinks is funny.

Quite a bit of that judgement is slowly being unwound and walked back.

Doesn't mean you're wrong about likeness cases, but the Blurred Lines/Gaye ruling is far from canon at this point.

It was an absolutely terrible judgement. It only happened that way because it was a jury. The law doesn't justify it.

The "Blurred Lines" judgment is a good example of "Be an excessive jackass and the system will smack you down regardless of facts."

Had they been even slightly reasonable, it never would have gone that far.

That was a copyright case though. The legal basis for lawsuits over misappropriation of artistic likeness are in privacy and right of publicity laws, and these vary a lot from one jurisdiction to the next.

Songs are copyrighted. Are faces?

Yes. Well, not copyrighted, exactly, but one gets to control the commercial exploitation of ones likeness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

Wouldn't it come down to proof of intent to exploit? Surely an actor who happens to look like Brad Pitt can't be prevented from working in the film industry on that basis alone? I agree that calling themselves Britt Pad or whatever might be crossing the line!

Seems like it is one thing to hire a look-alike of Brad Pitt (or your selected star), a very different thing to hire another actor and then replace his/her face with synthetic animated images of Brad Pitt.

The first would get laughed out of court. The latter would be an obvious ripoff to anyone (perhaps excepting some soverign-citizen-level pedants).

An interesting test would be a taking someone who looks extremely similar to Brad Pitt, but can’t act, and buying the rights to their likeness, and pasting it over an actor.

You could train the model on a lookalike and have him sign over rights to his (the lookalike's) likeness.

That’s why we can have fake Matt Damon (a.k.a. Jesse Plemons)

If your intention is for people to confuse this person with Brad Pitt then you already have issues that will probably get to court, at least for the first few times to be decided should this be legit or no.

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