Studios Recognize Danger of ‘Wholesale Shift’ to AI in Entertainment Industry
By Movieguide® Contributor
The CEO of a leading AI company says American studios are aware of the dangers of making a “wholesale shift” to the technology.
“The studios are precious about this and are conscious of rattling relationships with others around the world,” Jesse Shemen, the head of Papercup, explained to Deadline. “It’s hard to pin down their consensus, but if there is one simple thing that does matter most, it’s commercial, and right now, commercial sense is dictating that you need to tread carefully and can’t just make a wholesale shift to AI. And that goes for everything — scriptwriting, CGI or images.”
Papercup is a dubbing service that uses AI to “create synthetic voices that match the vocals of the actor in a chosen language.”
Shemen explained that, while he works with the technology, he also advocates for regulated use of AI, including obtaining an actor’s consent before re-using their vocals.
“You should not be able to use someone’s voice without their permission,” he said. “We ask for explicit permission from the artists we work with and the use case has always been clear to them.”
This has already become an issue, as many creatives have discovered AI technology has made use of their work without permission.
TechWire Asia reported, “In the US, several music artists, writers, poets and such have already filed lawsuits against AI companies for using their work to generate new content without giving them proper credit or even paying royalties.”
Shemen also said he will continue to advocate for reasonable AI use.
“By the time governments have intervened the technology will be outdated,” he explained. “But there are other paradigms and protocols that can help contain it and a key one is in the form of self-regulation.”
The U.S. government is working on regulating AI, but Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif, says they can use the existing framework instead of establishing a new agency.
“We’re going to need to stand up federal resources to help our agencies regulate this space,” he explained, adding that these agencies will require “highly-trained workforces, a consensus on AI industry standards and sandboxes to test risk AI models,” per Government Executive.
Movieguide® previously reported on the threat of AI in Hollywood:
Actress Charisma Carpenter recently shared a surprising area in the entertainment industry where AI is infiltrating and replacing jobs.
“Welp, AI is coming for Casting Directors, Agents and Managers too. Seen as ‘intermediaries.’ AI protections across the board,” she wrote on Instagram.
Carpenter took to Instagram after receiving an email inviting her to join the 100 Actors Program, a casting opportunity organized by Swiss company Largo.ai. The actress was concerned because she knows how important casting directors have been in her own acting career.
“They may take data and statistics and spit out a formula that says this person is right for this part, but there’s no foresight…AI doesn’t know me, they don’t know the richness of my soul. They don’t know my life experiences. They don’t know the books I’ve read. They never had those conversations with me to glean how right I am for the part that maybe data would not foresee,” Carpenter said.
“I have had wonderful casting directors that have brought me back time and time again to get me employed,” she continued. “I am really hard pressed to see what the advantage is to actors going this route.”
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