If the technology changes, the contracts must also change, so that the actors and actresses are protected: to avoid the economic exploitation of their image, but also to protect artists from a potentially harmful use of their face and voice. It is a hot topic that is being discussed a lot in Hollowood because the implications are significant.
Just a few years ago it would have been unthinkable to see the 70-year-old Mark Hamill regain youthful appearance to play a Luke Skywalker of the past: it happened in the TV series ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ and the impact, in visual terms, was credible (see the opening photo of this piece). In this case, the technological solution was positively received, because it was correctly contracted. But the question becomes more problematic if a production decides to use a digital image of an actor after his deathto insert her in her own film: it happened on the occasion of ‘Rogue One’ (2016), when the deceased Peter Cushing (1913-1994) “returned” to play the Grand Moff Tarkin thanks to digital animation.
Worse still: what if a famous face is the victim of a deepfake what makes him say, or do, things that do not represent him at all and indeed harm him? For example by expressing extremist political condemnations or support, or by appearing in a fake pornographic video. If the hypothesis may sound like science fiction, to convince yourself otherwise, just look at the video that director Jordan Peele made in 2018: a deepfake by former President Barack Obama that was already very credible at the time, demonstrating the growing difficulty of distinguishing what it is true from what is false.
Hence the discussion, in Hollywood, carried out by SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). That is to say the union that represents something like 160 thousand between actors and actresses, musicians and musicians, models and models, influencers and other media professionals. SAG-AFTRA is not dealing with deepfakes used in a politically misleading or sexually explicit way: partial legislation already exists for that. But he is trying to update collective agreementsin order to make it clear that the digital image of a performer must be protected and guaranteed.
Once again: it seems like a small thing, but it is not. In Hollywood it is now normal to create digital reproductions of the main cast of a movie or TV series, for example in order to create double stunds to be used in the design and implementation of special visual effects. SAG-AFTRA supports the need to include in the contract that those digital data can only be used for purposes written in black and white and adequately compensated. And that must be protected to avoid theft and improper, if not illegal, use.