We Don’t Have to Show You No Stinkin’ Actors

It was only a matter of time from an art form that at its inception began applying special and practical effects to fool and delight audiences, and later by a massive industry that has enthusiastically embraced computer animation and CGI to create fantastic but very realistic settings that sank the Titanic again, brought dinosaurs back to life and invented a menagerie of other terrifyingly realistic creatures. Yes, the clock was ticking on actors themselves, who, like reliable horses replaced by automobiles, would be replaced by AI creations that can convincingly emote, move, and don’t require a make-up artist, a trailer, an exorbitant salary, points of the gross, and won’t embarrass the studio with outrageous comments that kill the business for a new movie even before it’s released.

Meet Tilly Norwood (photoed), an AI actor/actress who (or perhaps that) is upsetting the Hollywood applecart. Members of the Screen Actors Guild are beside themselves and outraged that an artificially created actor could replace them. Automation in other industries didn’t appear to disturb them over the years, whether in the automotive industry or fast-food, and my guess is that quite a number of them interact routinely with ChatGPT. But replace actors with AI actors? This cannot happen!!

From a studio perspective, the AI actor never needs to age, or the artificial human actor can be aged via AI for any role that calls for a more mature or elderly version. The AI actor will never go on strike. Never be arrested for DUI or other crimes. Never be a headache for the studio or a publicist. Never pontificate and spout leftist drivel from an Academy Awards podium…uh…unless programmed to do so.

Will network weekday morning news/talk shows no longer have actors to interview? Eventually…but not necessarily. AI actors can certainly carry on unscripted conversations with interviewers…and they may be a lot more interesting than some of the idiotic thespians who are currently booked.

For several years, actors, the real human ones, have been performing opposite tennis ball stand-ins for other characters, whether human, alien, or fantasy creations. Motion capture allowed actors to assume roles like the big blue Na’Vi Pandorans, King Kong and Gollum. Now, with AI, there is no reason to rely on human actors at all to portray a CGI character’s human or human-like emotions. There is no reason that entire movies can't be made with very realistic AI-generated scenes and actors.

Of course, the very dark side in all this would be if a leading politician, say an AI POTUS, was created to play out the role of the human president while the real human president was reclining on a remote beach in the South Pacific or strapped to a hospital bed in a high security setting with an IV and an oxygen tube up his nose. No, what am I thinking? That would never happen.