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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

> “In that ground breaking AI proposal, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation,” he said. “So if you think that’s a ground breaking proposal I suggest you think again.”

I mean... it is ground breaking. Just in the worst possible way.

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This was part of the plot of "Joan is Awful" (Black Mirror S06E01). I sorta expected some sort of AI proposal but I didn't think it would be so drastic, so soon. Then again, it might just be the tactic of asking for a mountain to get the hill you really want (I'm sure there's a name for this).

It's also a key plot point of The Congress (2013), the scanning process of the actress is even in the movie trailer.

"Looker" is a Michael Crichton film from 1981 that features actors getting scanned and replaced with cheaper & more compliant CGI equivalents.

This was among the first mainstream major 3D rendering in a motion picture.

Black mirror surprisingly accurately captured the human consequences of the ultra-capitalistic-tech future.

Still remember the episode where the guy runs on a treadmill to collect points and uses it on porn. Not too different from tech workers running hard everyday and yet, spending all their money on only-fans, living in a studio apartment in a VHCOL city.

IMHO it's great that tech money is being redistributed to sex workers who work their butts (and other parts) off just to make a living. They might want families someday too, and their industry is way harsher. Better they get paid than tech workers hoarding money and driving up housing costs for everyone.

It is good that tech money is getting redistributed but it is also important to recognize how stupidly trivialized tech worker life has become.

Stupidly trivialized how?

Just to be pedantic but in that episode the main character does not use it on porn himself although that is a common use of points in that world. The episode is about his love interest falling for that side of producing income however.

Yes, term your thinking of is 'ambit claim'.

> I'm sure there's a name for this

Anchoring[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)

What's interesting is that it's actually a secret technique, as described by asciimov: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36212944

From an end-user's point of view, though, that's actually really great.

I love Star Trek The Next Generation. They're never making any more than those seven glorious seasons. If I could subscribe to a streaming service that offered an infinite number of AI-produce believably-authentic episodes featuring the original characters, and plot that could plausibly have been real episodes, I'd subscribe in a heartbeat. I'd just watch that and skip the rest of what passes for TV today.

I'd love for that subscription money to go to the original cast and crew as royalties, instead of buying the president of Paramount a seventh house. But I don't have a choice about that.

Pink Floyd [maybe!], Yes, Rush, they're never making any more music. Would I pay for an AI-based infinite album maker? You bet!

Toss in the 100+ novels with a lower weight to account for the more spotty quality and you have another 5-6 seasons.

For anyone wondering where to start, this chart is helpful (if you can read it): https://www.thetrekcollective.com/p/trek-lit-reading-order.h...

This is great, thanks!

> Would I pay for an AI-based infinite album maker? You bet!

it sounds like you don't even like art

what exactly do you feel when you listen to music? what makes you want to listen to music? what drew you to rush and pink floyd in the first place? i ask because my subjective answers to those questions are diametrically opposed to some theoretical generative AI album maker

I would pay good money for an AI generator of Children of Bodom music featuring Alexei, or an AI rendition of his style. It's the only way I'd be able to hear new things of his very specific style now that he is dead.

What is an "AI" other than a coverband?

Can a human not imitate a style?

Should I like art only if they're made by humans? If I did a blind test between AI and humans and I like the AI, does that make me suddenly not like "art?" Face it, I (along with most people) like the outputs of art, not the inputs. We simply don't care whether a human or a computer or a dog made it, as long as the output is good. If you want to define "art" as only a human thing, go ahead, but I will still watch and listen to what I like, regardless of its creator, and if that's not true "art," then I don't really care.

Then you don't like art, you like the product of art, the form or topography of art, the presentation of it, but not art itself. You like to consume a product.

Some people do actually like the art, the process, the artist, the questions that art open (even if mundane such as "how did they think of this?"). Remove that and it's just a shell, a hollow product without soul. It's ok if you like that but then you don't actually like art.

Sounds good, I don't actually care about "art" then, based on your definition.

It's not my definition, it's by definition art is:

> the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects

Conscious use of skill, there's no conscience in AI hence no art.

If we're getting into the definition of art I feel like it's a hard sell that an actual episode of TV, with plot and actors and everything, isn't art because no creative impulse went into it, yet a plain orange canvas is art that's worth $80 million [1] just because a human touched it.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/arts/design/rothko-painti...

You’re conflating economic value with artistic value. The worth of a painting is a highly speculative number based on a few rich people deciding they want to trade in art. Artistic value is independent from it. Art may resonate with you, yet be economically worth nothing.

This reminds me of how when Rush retired, they started then selling all sorts of re-hashed or knick knacks that aren't really new music or tours. It just feels like a cash grab now.

It'll be the same with these generated media. Consuming art is fundamentally an experience of humanity, of connection. The more generated it is, the more it loses its purpose.

Jet Li famously turned down The Matrix because he was worried about what they might do with his motion capture in the future.

Previous discussion of the topic right here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27852017

It probably won't be long before algorithms can mocap just from the recorded footage and then transpose those movements to arbitrary 3D models :/

That doesn't take away from the beauty of martial arts though. You can have an exact definition of all the moves you'll ever do, but still spend decades refining them.

For actors though... yeah I can see why they're worried

It's already very possible with off-the-shelf OpenPose. I can only imagine that the proprietary systems are more powerful and have better performance.

Good to know. Thanks for sharing!

They can do that today

It's definitely rudimentary possible.

During covid I was working on a paintball video game and I took pro paintball footage and ran some university research skeleton modeling program on it and got reasonably good results. I was going to use that for crouch and bunker hugging animations. And that was just me an HN reader playing around.

EDIT: Sibling posted and I was using that project -- OpenPose!

I’ve seen the new Indiana Jones last week, and found the (clearly) animated opening scenes quite unrealistic. There was constantly something wrong with Indy’s sudden movements and other tells. Felt more like a really good cutscene. And they did have mocap available for that. I don’t think you‘ll get believable virtual actors (outside of action scenes) without mocap anytime soon.

The Avatar films, the latest Planet of the Apes, and some of the Gollum scenes from the LOTR films seem like peak mocap. I'm guessing it's partly do to the actors, the director, the digital artists, and the fact they aren't all truly human. Things not being human make it easier to fool our eyes because we look at humans every day since birth.

I would love to hear from a primatologist who's decades into their career to see if they think Planet of the Apes holds up.

The Simpsons: Meep

https://youtu.be/kTxeM_s8-D0

Who would want to be an extra then? Aren't most extras people who want to break into the film business? If you are an extra for one movie and the studio owns your likeness forever, how will you get another job as an extra or a cast member? They wouldn't need you since they already have your likeness to use as they please in any film they want. I mean owning the your image within the movie is understandable. But owning your likeness which is transferable across films and mediums is rather amazing. I can't imagine extras are paid that much to begin with that it'll be worth it to sell their likeness for one days pay.

> owning the your image within the movie is understandable

I don't think it's at all reasonable to own someone's image for an entire movie, to manipulate it for as many scenes as they want, if the actor was only paid for one scene on one day. Actors should be paid for every scene they are in, whether real or virtual IMO.

It would seem reasonable to pay actors, including their likeness, by the second multiplied by factors such as the actor's experience, importance of their part to the film, etc. Maybe they get paid a little less for using their likeness, but that's a pricing negotiation between the actor and the studio. It could be that the actor's likeness is more valuable than the actual actor performing if the studio needed to do a lot of manipulation.

I found Rick and Morty LLC based out of LA listed as a production company for the show for two seasons. It's probably owned by Warner just like other production companies like Williams Street which does a ton of other shows for cartoon network or adult swim.

Not sure it's that groundbreaking since we've already effectively decided as a society this is exactly what we're going to do with art and writing and probably a whole bunch of other stuff.

And in general, we've long decided privileging capital is much more important than compensating labor.

I'm not saying this is right. I'm saying we didn't just cross this line. This is the logical extension of some trendlines we've been riding for a while.

If it feels uncomfortable, it's possible we should look back for the root of the mistake.

i think that as labour remains expensive and increasingly inefficient for companies to utilize they will naturally use capital to replace labour. the irony may be that the strength of the unions here hve driven studios to invest millions in cheaper technological solutions to get movies made. labour organizing only has power as long as there is no viable alternative to that human labour.

>Not sure it's that groundbreaking since we've already effectively decided as a society this is exactly what we're going to do with art and writing and probably a whole bunch of other stuff.

We didn't decide this as a society. Billionaire capitalists and the tech sector decided this on behalf of society, which is why society despises both tech and AI.

well, alternative they will just create non-existing actors with generative AI. my guess in 50 years, almost everything will be extremely cheap including human labour. except land maybe?

i guess we are about to embark on a grand experiment to see if Marx was right

Please let me know when the next ML-generated movies are available:

* Kill Bill 3 with Uma Thurman by Quentin Tarantino

* Moon Race saga by James Cameron with 45 y.o. Clint Eastwood

* H.P.Lovecraft screen adaptation by Guillermo del Toro

* Alexander The Great biopic by Peter Jackson in three or five installments

* Master and Margarita by Steven Spielberg with 35 y.o. Angelina Jolie as Margarita

Add your dream movies in replies!

There is an Al Pacino movie called "S1m0ne" - thought this is the sad future of movies.

How does it have anything to do with AI? Most mocap / 3d capture stuff is just hard number crunching. Games have had automated animation software good enough for background characters for a while...

Manually putting pre-scanned extras with fluid arm, leg, and mouth movements would be very difficult. (I mean they do that with CGI shots of crowds, but imagine a close-up shot in a restaurant, all the background is pre-scans).

With AI it can make them automatically look lifelike, and you can just pull from your database of scans. Furthermore, you can use AI to create new extras from your existing training data.

I don't really understand that idea of scanning live extras. Today they can be entirely ML-generated. They actually are since Titanic and LoTR.

> their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation

Thats how science works globally! Do you think scientists should be striking, or are they too stupid to realise how they are being used by the global population?

There is also one other deer in the headlights which I havent seen mentioned yet, and thats the financial system. Financiers dont realise their days are numbered and I certainly dont see nay VC's or bankers striking yet, but then I dont get paid for pointing out their demise.

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