Welcome to Hollywood AI, the weekly newsletter covering the latest AI developments in the entertainment industry.

• 💬 Talk to famous movie characters

• 🎮 Actors’ Strike???

• 🍿 AI Kernels

Talk to Famous Characters (OR CREATE YOUR OWN)

“If you could have dinner with 1 person dead or alive, who would it be?” We all know this game. Well, now with the help of AI, you can make it happen.

There’s a cool new app called Character.AI that’s been topping the App Store charts. You can create characters and talk to them or chat with characters created by other users. There’s everyone from real-life thinkers like Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius to fictional characters like Hermione Granger and Iron Man. Here’s my convos with AI Tony Soprano and AI Jay Gatsby 😂

What’s interesting is that the AI doesn’t base the conversations on the name of the character, but rather your inputs about the character.

So let’s say you wanted to talk to an irreverent R-rated version of Dumbledore, you could do that. You simply create a new character, give some descriptions, and then create a fake conversation for the AI to learn from.

How can this help you in Hollywood? let’s say you’re writing a screenplay about an angry teenager named Charlie — you could have a conversation with Charlie to play out what “he” might say on the big screen.

I wrote a quick thread showing you how to make your own character. Give it a try on Character.AI!

Are Actors Gonna Strike Too?

While Tom Hanks is saying he would like AI to play him after death, many actors and actresses are scared AI will replace them while they’re still living!

The hype/fear around AI may lead to an actors’ strike on top of the current writers’ strike. Negotiations happen every three years. It would be the first actors’ strike since 2000.

Generative AI will be one of the main topic of talks within contract negotiations this year for the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). “Considering how far [AI has] advanced in the last 18 months, it’s hard even to imagine where it’ll be in three years,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA executive director and chief negotiator.

“It’s not hard to imagine a future in which a wide-eyed actor signs up for one season of a vampire TV show, and then two seasons later their AI replacement busts out of a coffin,” wrote Will Bedingfield at WIRED. “Meanwhile, they receive no additional compensation, even if the AI-generated character was based on their likeness and performance.”

Bedingfield explained that actors, like all Americans, are protected against commercial appropriation of their identity by the right of publicity—also known as name, image, and likeness rights. Understandably, SAG-AFTRA wants to strengthen these rights for actors and make sure the vampire example can’t happen without the actors’ consent getting compensated.

If I was a famous actor right now, I’d be happy as a clam about the potential of generative AI. You mean an AI version of me can do the prison scene in the Siberian winter? You mean I could be on the other side of the earth and still be making money from “acting”? For big actors, generative AI may mean huge leverage and paydays.

We’ll see what happens. The deadline for the guild to strike is June 5, so be sure to expect an update next week.

AI Kernels

Here’s a round-up of interesting news and stories that caught our attention this week:

Photoshop released a new Generative AI tool. Head over to Creative Cloud and update your Photoshop to Photoshop Beta! → Quick Tech

Tom Hanks may be around forever. He says he could see letting studios use an AI avatar of him “from now until kingdom come” → BBC

James Cameron is working on the next Terminator. But he said he wants to see how AI plays out before finishing it up. → MovieWeb

AI-Themed Content of the Week

Every week, we’ll hit you with a piece of content centered around AI. It might be a book, movie, whatever.

Altered Carbon is one of the coolest shows ever. Centered around a futuristic society where you can store your soul on a chip, the rich keep on living forever while the poor struggle to survive.

Check out Altered Carbon on Netflix.