Who Owns an Actor’s Face After They Die?
AI Actors and Hollywood’s Resurrection Economy
Who Owns an Actor’s Face After They Die?
Artificial intelligence can now recreate an actor’s face, synthesize their voice, make them appear younger, generate new dialogue, and place them inside performances they never physically recorded. In some cases, the result can feel like cinematic magic. In others, it raises difficult questions about consent, ownership, labor, identity, and exploitation.
In this episode of Network Issues, Destinee Day and Jamie Cohen examine the rise of AI actors and Hollywood’s growing “resurrection economy.” Their conversation moves from Val Kilmer’s posthumous digital performance to young Luke Skywalker, James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader voice, Tupac’s hologram, Audrey Hepburn advertising, deepfakes, celebrity estates, and the future of acting.
What Is an AI Actor?
An AI actor is a digitally generated or altered performer created using technologies such as machine learning, facial replacement, voice synthesis, motion capture, computer-generated imagery, or generative artificial intelligence.
The term can describe several different practices:
Recreating a deceased performer
Making a living actor appear younger or older
Cloning a performer’s voice
Replacing one actor’s face with another
Generating new dialogue in an existing voice
Creating an entirely synthetic performer
Reusing a digital scan in later productions
Altering a performance after filming
Translating dialogue while preserving a performer’s voice and appearance
Not every digital performance uses generative AI. Hollywood has been recreating, de-aging, compositing, and altering actors for decades through traditional visual-effects techniques.
What has changed is the speed, realism, accessibility, and potential scale of the technology.
What Is AI Resurrection?
AI resurrection describes the digital recreation of a deceased person’s face, voice, appearance, movements, or personality.
In entertainment, this may involve placing a dead performer into a new movie, commercial, game, concert, or interactive experience.
The phrase is dramatic because the technology does not actually restore the person. It creates a representation using available materials such as:
Film footage
Photographs
Voice recordings
Facial scans
Motion-capture data
Previous performances
Biographical information
Written material
Estate-approved reference files
The resulting character may resemble the performer, but it does not contain their consciousness, judgment, experience, or artistic intent.
It is a digital likeness—not the person.
How Was Val Kilmer Recreated With AI?
Val Kilmer was attached to the film As Deep as the Grave before his death in April 2025 but did not film a physical performance.
The filmmakers later created an AI-generated version of Kilmer for the movie. According to the producers, Kilmer’s estate approved the project, was compensated, and contributed materials used in the recreation.
That makes consent an essential part of this particular example.
It was not simply a studio deciding after Kilmer’s death to place his face into a film without authorization. Kilmer had been connected to the project, and his estate participated after his death.
Even with those protections, the result creates a strange viewing experience. The audience sees a younger, digitally generated Val Kilmer rather than the actor as he appeared near the end of his life.
The performance therefore sits somewhere between casting, visual effects, posthumous tribute, and synthetic creation.
What Is Hollywood’s Resurrection Economy?
The resurrection economy is the growing commercial market built around recreating or licensing the identities of deceased public figures.
That can include:
Posthumous film appearances
AI-generated voices
Concert holograms
Commercials
Video-game characters
Audiobook narration
Virtual influencers
Interactive chatbots
Branded experiences
Museum installations
Digital avatars
Synthetic social-media content
A famous performer’s economic value may continue long after their death.
Their image, voice, characters, gestures, and cultural associations can remain commercially powerful. AI makes those assets easier to recombine into new material.
The central question is whether a performer’s legacy should be treated as a finite body of work or an endlessly renewable content library.
Who Owns an Actor’s Digital Likeness After Death?
There is no single universal answer.
Control may depend on:
The actor’s contracts
The rights granted to a studio
The laws of the relevant jurisdiction
The performer’s estate plan
Rights of publicity
Copyright ownership
Trademark rights
Union agreements
Character ownership
Previously completed scans or recordings
The specific purpose of the new use
An actor may own rights connected to their identity while a studio owns the character they played, the original footage, or a digital scan created under contract.
After death, certain rights may pass to an estate or designated representative. The duration and strength of postmortem publicity rights vary by location.
This means a deceased actor’s face is not simply “owned” by one person or company. Different parties may control different pieces of the performance.
The actor’s estate may control the likeness. A studio may control the character. A production company may own the footage. A technology vendor may hold the digital model. A contract may determine how and when that model can be reused.
What Is a Digital Replica?
SAG-AFTRA uses the term digital replica for a digital version of an identifiable performer’s voice or likeness used to generate new material.
The union distinguishes digital replicas from synthetic performers that are not recognizable as a specific real person.
Modern performer agreements increasingly address:
Informed consent
Description of the intended use
Compensation
Reuse
Voice replication
Visual replication
Background performers
New dialogue
Strike protections
Control over future generated material
The 2023 film and television agreement established protections involving consent and compensation for digital replicas. SAG-AFTRA’s later Interactive Media Agreement also includes consent and disclosure requirements for AI replica use. (SAG-AFTRA)
These protections are significant, but they do not eliminate every concern. A performer still has to understand the scope of the rights being granted, and future uses may be difficult to anticipate when technology is evolving rapidly.
Why Actors Are Worried About Digital Scanning
A digital scan can preserve far more than a single day’s performance.
It may capture:
Facial structure
Skin texture
Body proportions
Movement
Expressions
Voice characteristics
Emotional delivery
Physical mannerisms
Once that information exists as reusable data, a studio may no longer need the performer to produce every future shot.
That creates several labor concerns:
Can one day of scanning replace years of employment?
Does the performer receive payment for every reuse?
Can a scan be used in a different production?
Can the performance be altered into something the actor never approved?
Can a background performer be digitally duplicated?
Can the studio generate new dialogue?
What happens when the performer dies?
Can the actor withdraw consent?
Who safeguards the files?
The fear is not merely that AI will create fake movie stars. It is that studios may convert human performers into reusable production assets.
How James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader Voice Became an AI Asset
James Earl Jones authorized Lucasfilm to use artificial intelligence to recreate the voice of Darth Vader.
The technology company Respeecher was used to synthesize the voice for later productions, allowing the character to continue sounding like Jones without requiring him to record every line. In 2025, Jones’ family worked with Disney and Epic Games on a conversational Darth Vader experience in Fortnite using the recognizable voice. (Forbes)
This is an example of authorized voice preservation.
Jones made a decision about how one specific part of his legacy could continue. But even authorized use raises questions about context.
A performer may approve a voice for a character without being able to predict every sentence that an interactive AI character might eventually generate.
Traditional acting involves reading and approving a script. Conversational AI may produce lines dynamically in response to users.
That makes the boundary of consent much harder to define.
Is an AI Voice Still a Performance?
An AI-generated voice can reproduce tone, rhythm, pronunciation, and recognizable vocal qualities.
But it may not contain the original performer’s interpretation.
Acting is not simply producing words in a familiar sound. A performer decides:
Where to pause
Which word to emphasize
How much emotion to reveal
Whether a line is threatening or playful
How a character responds to another performer
When to breathe
How to change the delivery across multiple takes
A synthetic voice can imitate the result of those choices without necessarily recreating the artistic process behind them.
That distinction matters when companies describe generated material as a continuation of an actor’s performance.
How Audrey Hepburn Was Digitally Recreated for Advertising
Audrey Hepburn was digitally recreated for a Galaxy chocolate advertisement released decades after her death.
The production used visual-effects work, body doubles, facial reconstruction, and computer graphics to create a new performance that resembled Hepburn.
This happened before the present wave of generative AI, but it established many of the same ethical questions:
Did the celebrity ever imagine this use?
Does an estate’s approval equal the person’s approval?
Is the performance a tribute or an advertisement?
Is nostalgia being used to transfer trust from the celebrity to a product?
Does the new performance alter the public memory of the person?
The technology was different, but the commercial logic was similar: a familiar identity could be revived to make an audience feel something. (The Guardian)
Was the Tupac Hologram Really a Hologram?
The famous Tupac performance at Coachella in 2012 was commonly described as a hologram, although it relied on an updated version of an older stage illusion involving projection and reflective material.
The effect created the appearance that Tupac was performing onstage with living artists.
At the time, the event felt novel and spectacular. It was clearly presented as a special theatrical illusion rather than an ordinary living performance.
That distinction is becoming less obvious.
Modern AI could generate new speech, movements, interactions, songs, or performances that the artist never recorded. The digital figure might respond in real time or continue releasing new content.
The question shifts from “Can we create the illusion that the artist is present?” to “How much new work can we attribute to someone who is no longer here?”
Why Nostalgia Marketing Works
Nostalgia marketing connects a product or story with memories that already carry emotional value.
It can evoke:
Comfort
Safety
Childhood
Community
Familiar characters
Shared history
Cultural identity
A simpler remembered past
The past does not have to have been objectively better. It only has to feel meaningful in memory.
A digitally recreated actor gives a studio immediate access to that emotional connection. The audience does not need to build a relationship with a new performer. The relationship already exists.
Destinee argues that this can produce genuinely magical moments.
Seeing a younger version of a beloved character can restore part of an unfinished story, create continuity, or allow viewers to experience something they believed was impossible.
The marketing works because the emotional foundation is real.
Why Young Luke Skywalker Felt Magical
The appearance of a younger Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian allowed audiences to see a version of the character positioned closer to the original trilogy.
The moment depended on digital visual effects, performance work, voice technology, and audience nostalgia.
For many fans, the result did not feel like a technical demonstration. It felt like a missing scene from their relationship with the franchise.
This illustrates why debates about AI actors are complicated.
A viewer can understand the ethical and labor concerns while still experiencing the finished scene as emotionally powerful.
The technology can be artistically effective and ethically difficult at the same time.
When Does Digital Restoration Become Historical Revision?
Digital technology can correct production errors, improve damaged footage, restore sound, and complete effects that were previously impossible.
It can also alter completed media after audiences have already experienced it.
Jamie raises the example of the disposable coffee cup that appeared accidentally in Game of Thrones. The object was digitally removed from later versions of the episode.
The correction seems minor, but it reveals an important feature of streaming media: the version available today does not have to remain the version audiences originally saw.
Studios can potentially:
Remove mistakes
Replace actors
Change visual effects
Add dialogue
Insert franchise connections
Update product placement
Alter controversial material
Reconstruct performances
Replace an original cut
When the original version becomes difficult to access, viewers may remember something that no longer exists in the official file.
Can Hollywood Rewrite Old Movies With AI?
Technically, Hollywood can increasingly alter existing films.
Whether it should is a different question.
Studios could potentially use digital replicas to:
Replace an actor after a scandal
Insert a new character
Remove an old character
Add scenes connecting a sequel
Change an actor’s age
Generate missing dialogue
Modify continuity
Recast a role without reshooting
Change a film to fit a new franchise strategy
This could help complete unfinished productions or solve legitimate continuity problems.
It could also turn every movie into an editable platform rather than a completed cultural artifact.
A film would no longer necessarily represent the creative, technological, and historical conditions in which it was released. It could be continually modified to serve the needs of the present.
A Necessary Correction About Jonathan Majors
The episode discusses Marvel’s decision to move away from Jonathan Majors after his criminal case.
Majors was convicted in December 2023 of one misdemeanor count of reckless assault and one harassment violation. He was acquitted of other charges and later received probation and a domestic-violence intervention program rather than prison. The conviction should not be described as a sexual-assault conviction. (PBS)
For the published transcript, revise that section so it accurately says:
Jonathan Majors was convicted of misdemeanor reckless assault and harassment.
Marvel’s business pivot remains relevant to the discussion. The legal description should simply be precise.
Could Studios Digitally Replace a Disgraced Actor?
Digital replacement is increasingly possible, but it can be expensive, artistically difficult, and legally complex.
A studio would have to consider
Existing contracts
Ownership of footage
Consent requirements
Union protections
The rights of other performers
Audience reaction
Technical quality
Cost
Credit
Residuals
Historical integrity
Replacing a performer may prevent an abandoned project from collapsing.
It may also erase the work of everyone who acted opposite that performer or contributed to the original production.
The ability to revise a performance does not make revision neutral.
What Happens When an Actor Becomes a Digital File?
A digital performer can be stored, copied, licensed, modified, backed up, transferred, or stolen.
That changes how society understands a performance.
A human actor has physical limits. They age, change their minds, reject roles, negotiate contracts, interpret scripts, and eventually stop performing.
A digital likeness does not have those limits.
It can potentially:
Work indefinitely
Appear at any age
Speak any language
Perform simultaneously in multiple productions
Generate personalized dialogue
Be licensed globally
Be edited without fatigue
Continue after deal
That makes the digital replica commercially attractive.
It also removes the human boundaries that traditionally gave performers leverage.
Can a Celebrity’s Digital Likeness Be Stolen?
Yes.
A high-quality digital model may have substantial commercial value. If files containing a celebrity’s face, voice, or movements are stolen, they could potentially be used to create unauthorized media.
Destinee jokingly proposes a heist movie in which thieves steal celebrity likeness files and map famous faces onto themselves.
Jamie points out that the joke describes a real threat.
A stolen likeness could be used in:
Fraud
False endorsements
Political propaganda
Pornographic deepfakes
Identity theft
Fabricated evidence
Fake interviews
Financial scams
Unauthorized films
Disinformation
The entertainment value of digital resurrection can make the underlying identity technology seem less threatening than it is.
What Is the Connection Between AI Actors and Deepfakes?
AI actors and deepfakes can use overlapping technical capabilities.
Both may involve:
Facial replacement
Voice cloning
Lip synchronization
Image generation
Performance mapping
Motion transfer
Identity reconstruction
The difference often lies in consent, context, disclosure, and purpose.
An estate-approved film performance may be authorized and clearly presented as fiction. A malicious deepfake may impersonate a person without permission and attempt to deceive viewers.
The technology itself does not determine the ethics. The critical questions are:
Who approved it?
Who benefits?
Is the audience informed?
Is the person being harmed?
Can consent be withdrawn?
Is the material clearly labeled?
What happens to the underlying data?
Why Deepfakes Disproportionately Harm Women
Nonconsensual sexual deepfakes are one of the clearest examples of how identity-generation technology can be weaponized.
A person’s face can be mapped onto explicit material without their permission. The resulting image or video may be fake, but the humiliation, harassment, professional damage, and emotional consequences are real.
Women, girls, public figures, students, and private individuals can all become targets.
This is why the glamorous use of AI likenesses in movies cannot be separated entirely from wider questions about image-based abuse.
The same ability to make a beloved actor appear in a new film can also be used to place an unwilling person into a fabricated scene.
Will People Have to Hide Their Faces?
The episode asks whether people may eventually begin obscuring their faces or limiting recordings to prevent identity theft.
Complete avoidance may be unrealistic.
Most people already leave extensive visual and audio records through:
Social media
Video calls
Podcasts
Security cameras
School photographs
Public events
Professional websites
Livestreams
Family videos
Public figures and content creators generate especially large datasets.
As cloning improves, personal security may depend less on hiding every image and more on establishing reliable methods of verification.
People may need stronger systems for proving that a video, call, voice message, or digital performance is authentic.
Can an Actor Consent to Every Future AI Use?
Probably not in a fully informed sense.
A performer can approve specific uses, but no contract can perfectly anticipate every future technology, distribution method, cultural context, or interactive product.
A broad clause granting rights “in perpetuity” may eventually cover applications that did not exist when the agreement was signed.
This is why consent should be:
Specific
Informed
Compensated
Documented
Limited by purpose
Renewable where appropriate
Reviewable by representatives
Revocable in defined circumstances
The ethical standard should not simply be whether a company obtained a signature.
It should be whether the performer meaningfully understood and controlled the use of their identity.
Are AI Actors Good or Bad for Hollywood?
AI actors are not inherently one thing.
Potential benefits include:
Completing a performance with consent
Preserving a voice
Improving accessibility
Translating performances
De-aging characters
Restoring damaged media
Creating new fan experiences
Helping performers work after illness or disability
Preserving culturally significant performances
Potential harms include:
Replacing human work
Exploiting deceased performers
Weak or overly broad consent
Unauthorized deepfakes
Historical revision
Identity theft
Reduced artistic agency
Concentrating power with studios
Turning actors into perpetual digital assets
The strongest standard is not whether the technology looks impressive.
It is whether the use preserves consent, compensation, transparency, artistic integrity, and human control
Key Takeaways
AI can recreate or alter an actor’s face, voice, age, movement, and performance.
Val Kilmer’s estate approved and participated in his AI-generated appearance in As Deep as the Grave.
A digital replica is a reusable representation of an identifiable performer.
James Earl Jones authorized AI-assisted continuation of Darth Vader’s voice.
Celebrity estates may control some posthumous likeness rights, but studios and vendors may control other assets.
Nostalgia makes digitally resurrected performers commercially powerful.
A magical audience experience can still carry labor and consent concerns.
Interactive AI makes it harder to predict every line or action attributed to a performer.
The same technology used for authorized performances can enable deepfakes and identity theft.
Hollywood needs clear rules governing consent, compensation, disclosure, storage, reuse, and posthumous control.
Questions Answered in This Episode
What is an AI actor?
An AI actor is a digitally generated, recreated, or altered performer produced through artificial intelligence, visual effects, voice synthesis, motion capture, or related technologies.
What is AI resurrection?
AI resurrection is the digital recreation of a deceased person’s voice, face, movement, or likeness for new media.
Did Val Kilmer agree to appear in As Deep as the Grave?
Kilmer was attached to the project before his death. The filmmakers later said his estate approved the digital recreation, received compensation, and provided materials.
Who owns an actor’s likeness after death?
Ownership and control depend on contracts, local publicity-right laws, estate planning, copyrights, trademarks, character rights, and other agreements.
Can a studio use an actor’s face forever?
Only if the relevant agreements and laws allow the intended uses. Union contracts increasingly require consent and compensation for digital replicas, but disputes can still arise over scope and future applications.
What is a digital replica?
A digital replica is an identifiable digital recreation of a real performer’s voice, face, body, or performance characteristics.
Did James Earl Jones approve AI use of his Darth Vader voice?
Yes. Jones authorized Lucasfilm to recreate the Darth Vader voice using AI-assisted voice technology.
Are AI actors the same as deepfakes?
Not necessarily. Authorized AI performances and malicious deepfakes may use similar technical tools, but they differ in consent, disclosure, context, and purpose.
Why is nostalgia marketing so powerful?
Nostalgia connects new products or stories to existing emotional memories, familiar characters, and a remembered sense of comfort.
Can deceased actors appear in new films?
Yes, when the necessary rights and approvals are secured. Ethical concerns remain even when the use is legally authorized.
Are Hollywood contracts protecting actors from AI?
SAG-AFTRA agreements now include important digital-replica consent and compensation provisions, but protections depend on the applicable contract and specific production.
Episode Chapters
00:00 — Another “did you see this?” internet moment
Destinee introduces a posthumous Val Kilmer performance.
00:40 — Val Kilmer and a very shallow grave
The hosts react to how quickly Hollywood can digitally revive a deceased actor.
01:10 — Film, television, internet culture, and marketing collide
The topic connects both hosts’ professional backgrounds.
01:37 — What AI resurrection means
Jamie explains how a performer’s likeness can outlive their physical career.
02:57 — Audrey Hepburn and Tupac return digitally
Earlier forms of celebrity recreation established the appeal of digital nostalgia.
04:19 — Cinematic possibility vs. performer rights
Destinee and Jamie weigh the creative promise against threats to actors.
04:49 — The resurrection economy
Celebrity likenesses become commercial assets that can continue generating revenue
05:40 — Darth Vader and AI voice rights
James Earl Jones’ voice becomes an authorized, reusable part of the character.
06:30 — Why the younger Val Kilmer feels uncanny
The digital performance does not resemble the actor near the end of his life.
07:28 — Why AI nostalgia can feel magical
Destinee explains the consumer experience of seeing a beloved character return.
08:52 — AI slop vs. meaningful AI craft
High-quality cinematic work demonstrates capabilities often buried beneath disposable content.
09:47 — Why nostalgia marketing works
Audiences bring existing emotions and memories into the new experience.
10:30 — Young Luke Skywalker and immersive fandom
Digital recreation allows fans to see scenes that could not otherwise exist.
11:20 — George Lucas and revising old media
Digital tools have long allowed filmmakers to update completed work.
13:15 — When resurrection becomes retconning
The ability to revise actors also creates the ability to rewrite narrative history.
14:20 — Deleted mistakes and the Mandela effect
Streaming files can be replaced, leaving the original version difficult to prove.
15:00 — Franchise history and newly added footage
Jamie considers what happens when studios continually modify familiar movies.
16:16 — Jonathan Majors and Marvel’s business pivot
A real-world legal and casting crisis forces a franchise to change direction.
17:37 — Can studios reconstruct the past to fit the present?
Digital performers make retroactive continuity changes easier.
18:10 — Estates, contracts, and approval
Destinee considers the long-term rights actors may sign away.
19:51 — When a deceased actor becomes a file
Jamie examines the ownership, environmental, and philosophical consequences.
21:26 — An AI celebrity heist movie
Destinee turns the digital-likeness problem into a surprisingly plausible film pitch.
22:14 — Deepfakes and identity theft
The playful concept exposes a much darker technological risk.
23:10 — Will people hide their faces?
The hosts consider whether identity protection will change public behavior.
24:45 — Immersive marketing still works
Destinee argues that people want experiences that make them feel something.
25:48 — The good, the bad, and the future of AI actors
The episode concludes without reducing the technology to a simple answer.
About the Hosts
Jamie Cohen
Jamie Cohen is a media scholar, professor, writer, and expert on artificial intelligence, internet culture, digital media, technology, and media literacy.
Learn more about Jamie:jamesncohen.com
Destinee Day
Destinee Day is a marketing strategist and founder of Rudy & Company. Her work focuses on communications, branding, digital strategy, content, immersive marketing, and consumer culture.
Book Destinee’s services:rudyandcompany.com
Continue the Conversation
Would you watch a new performance from an actor who died years ago? Does estate approval make the experience ethical—or should an actor’s body of work end when their life does?
Follow Network Issues for more conversations about artificial intelligence, Hollywood, internet culture, media, privacy, marketing, and the systems shaping modern life.
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Destinee Day (00:01.395)
Hey Jamie, what's up?
Jamie (00:02.806)
Hey Destinee, how are you?
Destinee Day (00:04.565)
Oh, I am bringing you another crazy, did you see this on the internet information piece today? So, let me see if you've seen this.
Destinee Day (00:39.733)
Did you see that?
Jamie (00:40.846)
Yeah, that's a shallow ass grave. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Val Kilmer is dead.
Destinee Day (00:47.125)
you
Destinee Day (00:51.861)
Pretty sure Val Kilmer died because it's, he won't be in the new Top Gun movie.
Jamie (01:00.942)
No, I don't think he will. I did, unfortunately, he was a very, he's a very interesting actor, but I know he passed away, yes.
Destinee Day (01:10.769)
So we both have backgrounds in television production and I worked on movie sets. I have a lot of actor friends. I know what things like this are doing to the industry, but yet you study the internet and my job is marketing. So I think this sits at a crazy intersection of all of our experience.
Jamie (01:37.006)
Yeah, I think recently the term that's been coined or tossed around for this type of production thing is called AI resurrection, which is morbid at the to say the least, think, like, I think you and I, I mean, we spent like the last couple of weeks or months at this point kind of talking about the grim nature of this. And I don't one of the things that like really kind of like I know collectively upsets us both is like the whole AI replica thing, which is like
using your data to replica a loved one or something like that. So this is it to its final form. mean, Val Kilmer, from what I understand, to be clear here is that I know that he never made it to the set. So seeing him in the movie is quite a jarring experience, I think, when you're looking at him because we're in 2026, which means CGI.
slash AI has come to a point where it recreates at least vividly as somebody who would be like, that looks like Val Kilmer, but it is not Val Kilmer. As far as I could tell, that is his literal likeness. And that is so funny because like we did, we've spent so much time talking about likeness and branding. And now there's a point where it's like, wait, likeness can be like on a hard drive.
Destinee Day (02:57.461)
Well, it reminds me of when they resurrected Audrey Hepburn for like a chocolate commercial. Really reminds me of when they did the Tupac hologram, which at the time seemed cool, seemed nostalgic.
Jamie (03:07.331)
Yeah.
Jamie (03:22.754)
Bye.
Destinee Day (03:24.129)
Now that we're in a world that involves AI though, I mean.
Jamie (03:30.447)
Yeah, I think you're right. it was like seen, it was novel, right? Like was very cool. You go to a concert and you get to watch Tupac dance on stage, though he is long dead. But the way they simulated that with the dark screen and the mirror glass and everything was like, kind of cool. Like it was genuinely cool. And it wasn't anything he had done before. a quotes here, original content. So it was an, it's more of like an immersive experience for an audience member. And it is something that like is neat.
But I think now, like, to me, I have complicated feelings about that I'd love to talk to you about because it makes me feel kind of torn a bit about what I understand as like an artifact of media versus like its infinite possibilities.
Destinee Day (04:15.989)
Hmm.
Jamie (04:17.698)
Ha ha ha!
Destinee Day (04:19.509)
I struggle between like, wow, the possibilities. And there are really cool possibilities. And then flipping it with things like the writers and actors strikes that have been going on because things like this are dangerous and you know, your likeness is in danger.
Jamie (04:49.25)
Yeah. So this is, so I have this, I was asked recently about this by Max Noblock who is one of, as a writer for the outlet Sherwood News. And he wrote this piece about this subject matter, but he wrote it from like, it's fairly business oriented. He writes, it's a live AI live, like dead ringers, which is a great title. Like dead ringers is a good one.
AI is giving life to the resurrection economy, he writes. And that term, I had never heard before. So it was very, very unique in my life experience to be like a resurrection economy, excuse me. So he wanted to ask me my thoughts, which probably you and I may differ a little bit on them, but he wants to ask my thoughts on what I considered to be the idea of AI reproductions of living people or dead people.
In particular, I think the examples he gave me was like James Earl Jones. James Earl Jones is a state. Now I'm gonna bring that in. James Earl Jones's estate allows Jones's voice to be used in any property where Darth Vader requires James Earl Jones's voice. Which means currently James Earl Jones, at least his likeness exists in the Fortnite game as Darth Vader.
has been forced to say the word skibidi toilet all too often in James Earl Jones' voice, which, side note, you should cut that in right here. It's there. That is interesting because I'm pretty sure, although I'm not a completist, but I'm pretty sure Darth Vader never said it. And then the other examples are, I think there's a service where you could download audio books.
and listen to different famous people read them to you. And like the most popular one is Jerry Garcia, which I think says a lot about the readership people. And then the other one was this Val Kilmer movie, which up until like that trailer, like I didn't really like look at and it looks just like him because I was like, the weird part about the trailer is that it's a younger Val Kilmer. And like, it's not Val Kilmer that was like near his death who was seen most recently in Top Gun Maverick, you know, so.
Jamie (07:08.11)
That's pretty unique to me. That makes me somewhat uncomfortable. But it does lean into like my current thoughts on AI. Like what is AI? Well, how powerful is AI? What does AI do and what is it doing to us? So it is a unique moment in our cultural history to like be talking about this.
Destinee Day (07:28.873)
mean, Val Kilmer is credited in the credits after the trailer. So I think to take a slightly different take than yours, I think it's kind of cool that we can see younger versions of actors, right? I think about when we saw younger Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian. I think things like that as a fan.
as someone that when I go to watch something beloved like Star Wars, I go to tune out and just be an audience member. And I'm someone that when I watch things like that, I let it consume me so much that I feel a part of the story. And seeing things like that is an incredible experience. It's only if you let
yourself go down the rabbit hole of what does this mean and have an existential crisis on it that I try to avoid because then it ruins that experience for me. But I also think as a marketing person, this is an incredible moment of nostalgia, right? I think especially given the bigger dangers of AI given
Jamie (08:27.854)
Thanks
Destinee Day (08:52.905)
The fact that a lot of marketing seems to sound the same because of AI, that people have been flooded with AI slop. Moments like this stand out because it shows the true capability that we're using to slop around. It's like finding a beautiful gemstone in a pig yard full of crap. You know what I mean? It's like,
Jamie (09:17.622)
Yes, yes, yes.
Destinee Day (09:19.077)
it has the strength and the capabilities to be something really cool, we're all using it at its lowest denominator. And I think when I take all of that into context is where I struggle with it because we're obviously searching for something or harkening back to a different time and searching for something in the past that we're missing right now.
Jamie (09:23.95)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (09:47.425)
Yeah, I think everything's so overwhelming. so there's, mean, nostalgia is such an important part of marketing, because it does sell you on an idea of comfort that kind of technically didn't exist, but exists in your memory. so yeah, like revisiting, seeing young Luke Skywalker like bust in at the end of the Mandalorian was like, kind of nuts. You're right. Like it was cool. And there's part of it that's like, that's a scene that was never able to be produced. So we're able to like recreate that later.
and then nostalgia can be like basically exploited for any enter for entertainment purposes. And I like, I listen, I'll be honest, like, yeah, I sort of differ in our perspectives, but I do like when people watch movies immersively, that's what it's supposed to do. You're supposed to fall into the story. You're supposed to be, you're not supposed to engage in the way that like, my brain can't turn off. You're supposed to enjoy that movie, you know? So like if that increases an enjoyment factor, like that makes the medium work, right? Like,
But I guess I'm talking from like a perspective like medium, medium, it works for me. But like I have like comfort movies where I watch the same ones over and over again, because they're so crazy that like I can only lean into them. But I haven't yet really sat down and thought about the feeling connected to the AI representation of things. And when I was using the term like the infinite, what I mean is like, technically, once they're AI, they could do anything like you make them do literally anything.
Max was telling me that like, there's an AI Hagrid like from Harry Potter that you can make him do anything. And he like was trying to stay vague about that. Cause I was like, I don't want to know anymore, please. there's something about the idea of manipulating a character that is allowed inside of a digital space that isn't. But the, guess, I guess here's where I kind of like differentiate from that. Cause I do agree with your perspective on that. And I agree that like nostalgia is part of this.
But it brings me to two points. One is like when there was like a, there's like kind of an, I don't want to call it an uproar, but there's a kind of an audience backlash in the 1990s when George Lucas decided to use CGI to update the Star Wars films because the technology then existed. Now, George Lucas, I mean, you and I both know like his role in this. He helped develop the software known as Avid, the hardware and software known as Avid. So.
Jamie (12:12.686)
He was one of the first people to lean into digital nonlinear editing. While everybody else was just like, we still have to cut on flat beds. He was just like, no, if the technology exists, we should use it. Which is like such a pro unique and creative perspective. Like that's a very forward looking perspective, which I appreciate wholly. Seriously, do. And so when he updated it, it really didn't bother me because he basically had these very practical miniature explosions that were updated to like space explosions, a little bit more realistic and ties into the prequels that were being produced at that moment.
So it's like, oh, okay, so the aesthetic itself had to be updated. Side note, I still have the laser disks that show the original one, laser disk that show the original before the edit. So at least I can go back and look at it, but most anybody cannot find the original explosions.
Destinee Day (12:45.491)
Yeah, but...
Destinee Day (12:59.059)
Yeah, but we're also like, it's George Lucas and he also kind of ruined the prequel trilogy and like, kinda destroyed it and Disney had to come in and fix it for a little while before then they ruined it in a completely different way.
Jamie (13:05.44)
That's true.
Jamie (13:15.832)
That's fair. That's a criticism that's easy to use too is just like, maybe I'm using a poor example here. There's other examples that like make a little bit more sense, but mine is about, I think the second part of this is like the consequences of AI resurrection. I don't think it's as damning to the idea of the cool novel effects of like having Audrey Hepburn or like Tupac or like even Val Kilmer in a film. Like that is less.
problematic for me, then people like retconning, people doing like fixing movies that you've already seen by using AI actors to basically make updates. I think that messes with that. Not only the uncanny valley-ness of like what I would call the aura of an actor not being produced through the digital presence of it, but I think AI does a fairly good simulation of it in context. So like when built in context of the movie, they're not, obviously the actor's not talking to nothing. There's an actor.
they're speaking to you, it's just AIs mapped onto them. I think what I get bothered by is like, do you remember when in the last season of Game of Thrones, which we don't try to speak about that much anymore, there was, think Emily Clark, or one of the characters left a Starbucks cup in a shot and then they're like, oops. And so they just use CG. I don't think it was AI, but they use CG to delete it. But because Game of Thrones is technically a digital file, they just replaced it.
They just uploaded the new one and it disappears it. That creates like a weird paranoia, schizophrenic type of like Mandela effect in people's mind, which is like, how do you prove that existed when somebody's deleted the original evidence? And so I think my only, my big worry here, I think is like, what does this do to the future? What does this do to like people's minds in the future? The example I want to give here is like the Avengers movie end game.
which just so you know, I love, okay, I love the Avengers movies. Okay, so I'm part, I'm not free of any of these criticisms because like, this is like, I love movies too, okay? And this is one of my like comfort films. Avengers Endgame is getting re-released. It'll be re-released in September ahead of the Doomsday movie that's coming out this December. And one of the weird things that they're doing is that they're releasing it with brand new footage.
Jamie (15:39.373)
Okay, so they're editing a movie that is more memorized, memorable. And now when you go see the movie in the theater, it will have parts that are new to tie this directly into the Doomsday plot because Robert De Niro, Robert De Niro, my God, because Robert Downey Jr. plays both the role of Tony Stark and now Dr. Doom, but in different universes. I don't know yet, whatever.
but now they have to have some sort of connector, which is retconning, okay? Because the whole plot was originally supposed to be about the multiverse with Jonathan Majors, but they switched it. So in a way it helps companies figure their things out.
Destinee Day (16:16.661)
But why did they switch it? Why did they switch it? Because Jonathan Majors done effed up.
Jamie (16:24.974)
done f-ed up bad, yeah, real bad. not only did he like sexually abuse, that's he wait before that, was convicted, was he convicted or like found or is it like, I don't wanna like say it, it has to be alleged if it's the wrong.
Destinee Day (16:37.525)
Hold on. gonna Google search.
Jamie (16:38.572)
Yep. I want to use the right language so I don't get sued.
Destinee Day (16:51.189)
He was convicted in December 2023 of misdemeanor, third degree assault and second degree harassment against his former girlfriend.
Jamie (16:57.732)
yeah. It's not, it's not alleged he did it. Okay. So, sexual, what was it? Sexual abuse?
Destinee Day (17:06.837)
assault and harassment.
Jamie (17:08.792)
Sexual assault. Okay, I'll just say sexual assault. So Jonathan Majors was convicted, let see. Wow, wow, that's fucking great. So Jonathan Majors was convicted of sexual assault and like that is obviously terrible. And on top of that, now he's like a crazy like right-wing movie character guy, but like that you can't basically continue a many movie plot with a character like that when Disney owns Marvel.
Destinee Day (17:15.957)
Convicted.
Jamie (17:37.827)
So what they had to do is pivot. And like, that's not my problem with that business. It's the fact that when you've done that now with digital technologies, you have the power to literally retcon, reconstruct the past to match the present. And so those types of things are what I worry about because when you resurrect one, it gives you the power to resurrect anybody like if you want to, but then it's also the estate has to make a decision on those things. Like what's the limitation? What can Val Kilmer do? What can't Val Kilmer do?
What is he allowed to do? Like if James Earl Jones can say skibbity toilet, can like.
Destinee Day (18:10.921)
that's a failure on the part of James Earl Jones estate. know, I mean, a few things, think on that front, I love that you think it was, I don't know, as a Marvel fan and as a marketing person, I'm thrilled because what a power move. One,
Jamie (18:14.466)
Hahaha!
Destinee Day (18:33.767)
Marvel has built an entire situation off of the multiverse. They're obviously going through with it because it will make them more money, not necessarily because the audience wants it, which I do think are two different things in this scenario. But I also think actors going forward are, when they get these massive movie deals, because why wouldn't you want a superhero contract right now? You would.
Jamie (18:46.254)
100%.
Destinee Day (19:01.567)
have a ton of residuals, you'd have a ton of opportunities. These superheroes show up in a bunch of different TV shows, movies, you know, look at all the rides at Disney. There are so many ways to make money off of becoming a superhero. But now the downside is, it probably says it in those contracts that your likeness can be repurposed for future use. So then you have to have
a ton of trust in your estate, or maybe you don't, maybe you're like, I'm dead and I don't care. I don't know, maybe James Earl Jones would have a sense of humor about skibbity-doo, I don't know. Skibbity-toilet, I'm sorry. It's just ridiculous, I can't.
Jamie (19:43.95)
Let's give it a toilet.
Jamie (19:51.823)
And you're right, maybe that is like the thing like who like Val Kilmer obviously doesn't care, you know, but his estate like had but in this case, Val Kilmer has signed on to the film. What was the name of film again? It was as deep as the grave. So he signed on before the film was made. He passed away. They the agreement was made before he made the agreement. So it's not like it's this like it was the actor themselves. There are is some agency, so to speak, from the person who is
resurrected slash reproduced in AI spaces. But here's my last, this is my last point for this is that all of this is to say that if we lean into this and like make it, it's like, first off, you understand like having to store an actor like that means like, you're not storing their soul, you're just storing their likeness. And we're also using like a lot of like drinking water to make that happen. So it's kind of like
Actors drink water, of course they do, but they do it to like make sure that they can like act and sustain themselves. But like when you've resurrected an actor in a film, like from AI, you're definitely using more resources in a weird way than the actor actually would. Even though they're cheaper because they're literally a file, but it's just such a different way of looking at it. I think we're by the coolness factor of this. It like obfuscates the idea that like there's more to it, that it has a technological property. Property is weird too. Like
Destinee Day (21:14.581)
huh.
Jamie (21:15.234)
the idea that they're owned by a corporation then, like it does change the way that we see like the digital shadow or the digital remnant of a human being.
Destinee Day (21:26.133)
That's so crazy. As you're talking, I'm thinking movie idea script for us to write is that we should do some kind of an Ocean's Eleven themed hijack or break in of all of these digital movie stars and celebrities. And then the whole purpose is to steal millions of dollars, but to map the celebrities.
Jamie (21:41.813)
Ow.
Destinee Day (21:51.603)
back onto our faces so that it just looks like a bunch of celebrities are robbing, where this data is. That's a fun one.
Jamie (21:57.027)
That is pretty good. I like that. That is a fun one, but that as a metaphor is exactly what I'm warning you about. That's it. If you're dealing with digital technologies, you could map AI onto anything that is a file and like...
Destinee Day (22:04.979)
I know.
Destinee Day (22:14.239)
Deep fakes, man.
Jamie (22:15.68)
Who's to say Val Kilmer hasn't robbed every bank when we look at the footage, you know, like there's, yeah, so in the end, there's 11 labs and deep fakes and all these things, like we've been warning about them. And now it's almost like in my weird cynical way, it's like, once Hollywood makes it cool, it just seems less bad. And you know how I feel about this. Cause like typically when we look at Val Kilmer, we're thinking about an actor that we've, we've come to love from the past, even though he's done some weird ass work. But we don't think about the
ideas of the harms that it does to women when they could be deep faked in those ways to onto bodies and mapped onto things that may be terrible and pornographic, especially teenage girls or anything. like, there's this technology has its double sword that is oftentimes like looked at as like cool. And instead of like being cool, it's like, it's actually just burying the horrors.
Destinee Day (23:10.165)
So do you think we're gonna end up living in a world where we're all masking our face so that our identity isn't stolen?
Jamie (23:18.06)
Wow, great question. I don't know, but that is a really interesting thought about how to avoid the mapping onto your face or like how to avoid capture or reproduction of yourself. I guess when it comes to 11 Labs, in order to clone voice, you need a large amount of voice data. So it's like us doing this, I'm sure we've created, the two of us have created enough data to reproduce ourselves digitally if we needed to.
And so we could, if we wanted to start archiving materials and create this show as AI, eventually it will degrade when it runs out of content, but the more you have, the less degradation it has and the more computing power. So I guess the only question then is like, do you just avoid cameras entirely? Like, I don't know. That's a really fantastic thought question. That is like something that we should continue to consider, not just in terms of privacy, but like your question from before, can you trust your estate?
Like, can you trust the your kin to not want to profit off your likeness in case you have signed away some part of your potential agreement to your likeness? I don't know. That is interesting. And that's an that's an ongoing one. But I think it's important for like people just to recognize that like sometimes cool is also technology that isn't cool. And like that coolness should be enjoyed in immersive settings like when you watch movies. But it also like does have implications to a future. That's my opinion.
Destinee Day (24:45.395)
Yeah, yeah, I do agree with it at the end of the day. I mean, I do sit in the cool pool a little bit and I'm taking a little bit more of a consumer view of it because at the end of the day, works. Nostalgia marketing works. Selling off of...
Jamie (25:05.174)
And to give you credit, like it's true, you should enjoy movies. You should, you really should.
Destinee Day (25:12.159)
Well, and also immersive marketing nowadays is the way to go. The immersive marketing techniques, do you remember a few years ago when they did the Westworld experience at South by Southwest? Things like that are taking off in a way that is way more substantial than social media ads because people want to feel something and immersive,
experiences do it better than staring at a video at the end of the day.
Jamie (25:45.742)
100 % true.
Destinee Day (25:48.819)
Well, a little bit of a good and a bad today.
Jamie (25:51.532)
Yeah, agreed.
Destinee Day (25:54.069)
As always, follow network issues on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, the TikTok, subscribe to Jamie's YouTube channel here, find him on LinkedIn, and we will see you next week.
Jamie (26:09.785)
See you soon.