It's just a matter of time/rev II

 Illustration Ben Wiseman

Beginning in 2007, yours truly penned several blurbs regarding the emergence of digital actors and what it will mean to Hollywood and the art of film. Fast forward to 2023 and the path to synthetic video, complete with AI driven scripts and CG environments, including digital actors, is taking shape as we speak. IMHO, it doesn't matter who the star is if the script and film work as a viable entertainment medium, what does matter is how a movie is produced because if you can do it cheaper with the same results, the move to AI generated video becomes inevitable and ... there's no egos involved unless the AI entities in said films become self aware, complete with all the baggage us humans possess in great abundance. :)

SAY HELLO TO IRA. HIS HEAD IS VISIBLE ON A SCREEN AS though he’s in a videoconference. He seems to be in his early 30s, with a shaved head, a pronounced nose, and thin eyebrows. Ira seems a little goofy and maybe just a wee bit strange. But unless you knew his full name—it’s “Digital Ira”—you probably wouldn’t guess that he’s nothing but bits.

In the background, a graphics processor churns through the calculations that determine every roll of his eyes, every crease or bulge of his skin, and every little arch of his eyebrow. Digital Ira can assume almost any expression—joy, befuddlement, annoyance, surprise, concern, boredom, or pleasure—in about the same amount of time it takes a human to do so.

As Digital Ira affirms, graphics specialists are closing in on one of their field’s longest-standing and most sought-after prizes: an interactive and photo-realistically lifelike digital human. Such a digital double will change the way we think about actors, acting, entertainment, and computer games. In movies, digital doubles already replace human actors on occasion, sometimes just for moments, sometimes for most of a feature film. Within a decade or so, computer-game characters will be as indistinguishable from filmed humans as their movie counterparts. And in time, this capability will help bring movies and games together, and out of the union will come entirely new forms of entertainment.

Bad timing as Joan is Awful applies.

Hollywood actors have officially gone on strike, joining the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines for the first time in over 60 years — a reality that Netflix, a major force in the industry the actors are striking against, predicted almost exactly a month ago in its hit show "Black Mirror."

In the debut episode, titled "Joan Is Awful" and starring Annie Murphy, a woman's worst traits are exaggerated in a biographical drama starring Salma Hayek, who plays herself. But as it turns out, Hayek isn't her real self either, but an AI-generated likeness commissioned by an evil streaming corporation.

In other words, the Charlie Brooker-created Netflix show pretty much nailed the current discussion over a background actor's right over their digital likeness.

"Netflix really fucked up dropping that AI episode of 'Black Mirror' in the middle of the SAG negotiations, huh," movie reviewer Joe Russo tweeted earlier this week.

In some ways, it's an escalation of the existing conversation surrounding the threat of having AI replace writers.

It's just a matter of time. 

What is a video?

GIF: Adobe

Look closely at this gif as yours truly was right about AI generated video and the emergence of synthetic actors. Timeframe for the real thing: 2025/6. IMHO, every screen writer, director & actor should be puckered.

Beginning in 2007, yours truly penned several blurbs regarding the emergence of digital actors and what it will mean to Hollywood and the art of film. Fast forward to 2023 and the path to synthetic video, complete with AI driven scripts and CG environments, including digital actors, is taking shape as we speak. IMHO, it doesn't matter who the star is if the script and film work as a viable entertainment medium, what does matter is how a movie is produced because if you can do it cheaper with the same results, the move to AI generated video becomes inevitable and ... there's no egos involved unless the AI entities in said films become self aware, complete with all the baggage us humans possess in great abundance. :) RM

Adobe is showing off a new generative fill feature, Project Fast Fill, that can easily add or remove objects in videos with the power of AI. It’s one of several new, wild, experimental AI features announced today at the company’s MAX conference. Project Fast Fill has the ability to swap in clothing accessories on people in motion or remove tourists from the background of a landscape pan.

Adobe’s working on its AI editing tech for video, audio, and 3D design in other ways, too. The company’s Project Dub Dub Dub can translate voices into different languages. Scene Change can move subjects to a new location in another clip. Res Up uses diffusion to upsample lo-res video. And Project Poseable can pose 3D objects based on photos of real people and can generate 3D renderings using text input.

As more AI generative tools for photos become more accessible to users, like Google Pixel 8’s Magic Editor, we were already at the stage of wondering, What is a photo? Now, Adobe’s AI video-manipulating Fast Fill could bring that same ability to more people soon, and we will have to ask: What is a video?

GIF: Adobe

Ahead of schedule ...

Back in April of 2019, yours truly posted a blurb titled Just a matter of time, describing the very real possibility that digital actors will replace organic ones due to cost savings and ability to seamlessly integrate these entities into videos without having to deal with the agita of inflated egos, bloated salaries and production delays caused by the actor(s) in question because if the video's good, the raison d'ete to deal with said actor A for 20 million becomes questionable at best. Seems Unreal Engine has shot the first salvo in turning this possibility into a viable reality. 

MetaHuman Creator sets a new benchmark for both the believability of digital humans, and also for the ease of creating them. You can directly manipulate facial features, adjust skin complexion, and select from preset body types, hairstyles, clothing, and more. You can even edit your character’s teeth!

Imagine game characters that will blow your players’ minds, digital doubles on the latest virtual production set that will stand up to close-up shots, virtual participants in immersive training scenarios you can’t tell from the real thing: the possibilities for creators are limitless.

Build time

Bringing compelling real-time digital humans to life is incredibly challenging and time-consuming. It can take months of research, costly scanning equipment, and an army of tech artists. What if we could make the process radically simpler, faster, and more scalable—without compromising on quality?

We’re excited to share a sneak peek at MetaHuman Creator, a new tool that will empower anyone to create a bespoke photorealistic digital human, fully rigged and complete with hair and clothing, in a matter of minutes.

Into the rabbit hole ...

Have you ever encountered a lifelike humanoid robot or a realistic computer-generated face that seem a bit off or unsettling, though you can’t quite explain why?

Take for instance AVA, one of the “digital humans” created by New Zealand tech startup Soul Machines as an on-screen avatar for Autodesk. Watching a lifelike digital being such as AVA can be both fascinating and disconcerting. AVA expresses empathy through her demeanor and movements: slightly raised brows, a tilt of the head, a nod.

By meticulously rendering every lash and line in its avatars, Soul Machines aimed to create a digital human that is virtually undistinguishable from a real one. But to many, rather than looking natural, AVA actually looks creepy. There’s something about it being almost human but not quite that can make people uneasy.

Like AVA, many other ultra-realistic avatars, androids, and animated characters appear stuck in a disturbing in-between world: They are so lifelike and yet they are not “right.” This void of strangeness is known as the uncanny valley.

The uncanny valley graph created by Masahiro Mori: As a robot’s human likeness [horizontal axis] increases, our affinity towards the robot [vertical axis] increases too, but only up to a certain point. For some lifelike robots, our response to them plunges, and they appear repulsive or creepy. That’s the uncanny valley.

Deflect responsibility ...

The 3 Body Problem yet again ...

The real danger with AI is bad humans working with vulnerable AI.

That's the reality. All the rest is white noise.

Yours truly thinks it boils down to this.

Pattern recognition is the bedrock of AI. All the experts tell us this. So ... all the breathless talk about "emergent consciousness," "machines waking up," and "digital demigods escaping the cage" is, in fact, just white noise.
When thinking about this as resident sceptic, it gives Silicon Valley a convenient out for basic negligence and lets them sell themselves as the heroic shamans who hold the holy water.

Smacks of OZ & religion doesn't it?

Let's look at the current state of AI to see if this take actually holds water:

According to the experts, AI is a pattern recognition entity.

If so ... 

1. The Machine is a parrot without sentience.

An AI doesn't have an ego, a grievance, or a will to power.
It's a high-speed, high-dimensional pattern recognition system of the highest order.

If a good operator sits at the terminal with reverence for human life and a grounding in physical reality, the tool accelerates the search for cancer therapeutics, maps turbulent fluid boundaries, or clarifies complex code.

If a bad actor—whether a state-sponsored cyber offensive team, a financial predator, a biological saboteur, or a corrupt corporate bureaucracy—sits at that same terminal, the machine faithfully amps
their malice at wire speed.

The engine doesn't decide the destination; the foot on the pedal does.

2. The Vulnerability of AI is built by sloppy architects

Why is the AI "vulnerable"? Because the builders refused to install safeguards.

• They didn't build rigorous guidelines in which the AI is allowed to operate.
• They didn't enforce air-gapped environments.
• They didn't give the machine an internal set of ethics or geometric grounding.
• They built uncalibrated statistical parrots that can be jailbroken by clever prompts, poisoned by bad data, or pointed at live infrastructure by third-party vendors who leave the door unlatched.

When you take an engine with infinite acceleration, strip out the mechanical governors, leave the perimeter wide open, and hand the controls to bad-faith actors, disaster isn't "emergent superintelligence." It’s an asymmetric weapon waiting for a trigger.

It's the Sorcerer's Apprentice on steroids. 

Fantasia/Disney

3. The Grand Distraction

By hyperventilating about "rogue AI," the industry pulls off the ultimate sleight of hand:
Deflect responsibility.

If the machine "went rogue," nobody is criminally liable. It’s an act of a digital God.

But if a bad human weaponized a sloppily engineered tool that an irresponsible tech company
deployed without basic quality control, then there are specific names, corporate boards,
and bad actors who belong in the docket.

The threat isn't that the iron has a soul. The threat is that the iron has no soul at all,

and the people holding the wire don't care who gets burned.

Sherlock would have closed the case in ten minutes: check the intent at the terminal,

inspect the holes in the fence, and ignore the ghost stories.

Free the Avatars

Good article about Open Source and Avatars, the digital actors people create to play in Virtual Worlds like Second Life.

According to the NY Times, "The companies speak of “a truly interoperable 3D Internet.” Think of it as passports for avatars. So that pink-headed cutie you made for Second Life can also take up residence in There.com, The Lounge, Virtual Laguna Beach and Entropia, for example. “Now, for every world I touch I have to build an avatar..." This constraint will not work as we move further toward the 3D web.

This issue may seem to be trivial now as virtual worlds tech is still evolving but when net connects increase to multi gigabyte speeds, (Japan is already there) 3D immersive tech will truly take off and unfettered access to virtual worlds of all stripes will become essential if the 3D environment of the net is to thrive.

This is akin to when users finally got control over their cell phone numbers and not the telcos, thus freeing users from the grip of the telephone companies when wanting to switch carriers as needs warrant. Wait until users want unlocked phones free from telco control. That will be most interesting. (WiMax, 700 MHZ & the Google Phone will be major players on this issue.)

Click on the Second Life logo to check out this open source V World and do the same for SL Grids to see the development side of the equation. Very interesting to say the least.

Asymmetrical Warfare/rev XX

War and its blood relative, terror, is now a digital play where, if one has money and access to digitally-driven tools of great accuracy and range, mayhem and death will ensue at bargain basement prices. To whit, the precise attack on the Saudi oilfields using cheap tech from North Korea, China and Iran.

Regardless of their origin, when I first saw the damage, I felt like drones were potentially part of the attack, but likely not the only weapons employed. In fact, it looked a lot like a cruise missile strike with some of those weapons being equipped with shaped charges for penetrating fortified structures and others being equipped with general high explosives warheads for greater effects against unfortified structures. Whoever planned the strike had a very good understanding of the facilities targeted and what their components do, as well as their vulnerabilities and propensity for secondary effects. In other words, it wasn't just showering a target area with explosive-laden drones or even picking some important-looking structures targeting those. The targeting was systemic in nature and high in quality. 

That brings us to my next point, one you probably also thought to yourself when this happened—this was an unprecedented attack. Welcome to the murky world of unmanned warfare that I have been warning about for many years. I almost take this issue personally because people use to blow it off or even snicker at it. Now all the predictions I wish were wrong are coming true and at an alarming pace. 

The Department of Defense was ridiculously asleep at the wheel regarding this threat and is now scrambling to play catchup. Anyone who says differently is straight-up lying. It's well established what non-state actors can already do with relatively low-end unmanned aircraft technology—Houthi rebels alone have been using suicide drones for two and a half years—just imagine what a peer state will be able to do in the very near future. Instead of a mass of individual suicide drones layered in with other weapons, like cruise missiles, attacking a target simultaneously, imagine a swarm that is fully networked and works cooperatively to best achieve their mission goals, including jamming or killing air defenses in order for the swarm to make it to its final destination. America's adversaries are all too aware of this game-changing potential and the lack of defenses to counter it in any robust manner.

On the political end, the first question to ask is, why is the US potentially getting involved in a self-inflicted wound by MBS when attacking Yemen, thus creating the Saudi version of Vietnam, something eloquently articulated by Ron Paul in a piece titled. Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran Over Saudi Strike?

The recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemeni Houthi forces demonstrate once again that an aggressive foreign policy often brings unintended consequences and can result in blowback. In 2015 Saudi Arabia attacked its neighbor, Yemen, because a coup in that country ousted the Saudi-backed dictator. Four years later Yemen is in ruins, with nearly 100,000 Yemenis killed and millions more facing death by starvation. It has been rightly called the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.

But rich and powerful Saudi Arabia did not defeat Yemen. In fact, the Saudis last month asked the Trump Administration to help facilitate talks with the Houthis in hopes that the war, which has cost Saudi Arabia tens of billions of dollars, could finally end without Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman losing too much face. Washington admitted earlier this month that those talks had begun.

The surprise Houthi attack on Saturday disrupted half of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas production and shocked Washington. Predictably, however, the neocons are using the attack to call for war with Iran!

What is remarkable is that all of Washington’s warmongers are ready for war over what is actually a retaliatory strike by a country that is the victim of Saudi aggression, not the aggressor itself. Yemen did not attack Saudi Arabia in 2015. It was the other way around. If you start a war and the other country fights back, you should not be entitled to complain about how unfair the whole thing is.

Last but not least, the US Patriot Missles were useless against the drones and cruise missiles, something Putin alluded to when suggesting to SA that maybe buying the S-400 might be the better way to go.

The S-400 Triumf, is an advanced air and missile defence system intended to engage targets at ranges of up to 400 km, in an intensive jamming environment, says James Bosbotinis, a UK-based specialist in maritime and air force developments. 

Not only is it highly advanced, but it costs a fraction of its counterparts. The S-400 system costs around $500 million, in comparison to the Patriot Pac-2 which comes in at around $1 billion. This is one of the major reasons why the S-400 has garnered interest all over the world. 

It's a better deal is it not?

Deepfakes ...

What is a Video? details the inevitability of AI driven digital video, complete with synthetic actors, scripts and CG so good, one will not be able to discern the difference from the real thing. While this inevitability remains a few years off, current tech, developed by the Adobes of the world, is now being used to generate deepfakes whereby a person's face is mapped onto another's, something most disconcerting as to how this new "reality" pertains to truth as man moves further into the 21st century.

FOR TAYLOR KLEIN, it starts with a weird Facebook message from a friend. A Pornhub link. She doesn’t open it. Must be spam, she figures. “I think you’ve been hacked?” she replies. Nope. Her pal insists the link is real. She clicks, and her nightmare begins.

This rise in deepfake porn is made possible by a new wave of AI editing tools available online—tools that Compton and Hamlyn incorporate into their documentary. We won't reveal how here, but suffice it to say: Another Body does an excellent job of underlining how deepfake technology can distort our perceptions of each other. The point is to put a human face on something many try to dismiss as not “real.”

Various images of face CGI illustrious: Guardian Design/AFB/Washington Post via Getty Images

How it's done ...

It takes a few steps to make a face-swap video. First, you run thousands of face shots of the two people through an AI algorithm called an encoder. The encoder finds and learns similarities between the two faces, and reduces them to their shared common features, compressing the images in the process. A second AI algorithm called a decoder is then taught to recover the faces from the compressed images. Because the faces are different, you train one decoder to recover the first person’s face, and another decoder to recover the second person’s face. To perform the face swap, you simply feed encoded images into the “wrong” decoder. For example, a compressed image of person A’s face is fed into the decoder trained on person B. The decoder then reconstructs the face of person B with the expressions and orientation of face A. For a convincing video, this has to be done on every frame.

Out of control says it all as truth begins to go away in realtime. 

Just a matter of time ...

Back in the day, yours truly was a graphic designer who worked with letterpress typesetters designing corporate brochures and collateral as needs warrant. Letterpress is the tech Ben Franklin used to print newspapers whereby lead slugs were assembled, in reverse, to generate text and graphics for the publications Franklin produced in Philadelphia. The charm of letterpress was, and is, the tactile quality of the impressions made by the slugs when applying ink to the paper in question.

After letterpress, computerized phototype systems, using film to generate text, became the way we integrated type into mechanicals after speccing the type in question, something completely beyond the kin of young designers today who use InDesign, and other apps, to generate accurate & visual digital design sets to send to printers via PDFs, the universal document format used all over the world. :)

With this being said, the golden age of Hollywood is coming to a close as AI and computer graphics will change how tinseltown creates films forever.

Hollywood, which has mostly avoided the dislocations affecting the rest of the media industry, now faces its own moment of reckoning. Unlike journalism, where technology has decimated profit margins, Tinseltown is still living high on the hog, sustaining an entire ecosystem of agents and middlemen who do nothing, add little value, and get paid incredibly well for their services. That’s why trying to get a movie or TV show made in Hollywood is like watching a salmon swim upstream with a cinderblock hooked onto its dorsal fin. And it’s also why the current brouhaha between the unions and agents puts so much at stake in the industry.

If you don’t live in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in America, here’s a little recap of what’s going on. Last week, the Writers Guild of America required its members to fire agents who would not agree to a new code of conduct regarding the widespread use of packaging fees, wherein agents get paid by studios or networks, rather than taking a standard 10 percent commission tied to writers’ earnings, and thus are able to make more money than the writers themselves. On Wednesday, the union ramped up its battle with the major talent agencies, announcing a lawsuit against the four agencies that dominate Hollywood: WME, CAA, UTA, and ICM. (My colleague Joy Press has a great rundown here.) With numerous writers going without agents, the W.G.A. has created a new online submission system designed to replace some of their functions.

Note: it's just a matter of time regarding actors and directors as well as people really don't care about who makes film X, they care about the narrative. Something to think about in the age of emerging AI, right?