this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Antiwork/Work Reform

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Date Created: June 15, 2023

Date Updated: July 17, 2023

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Don't know if this content belongs here, but I just think this is awful in so many levels. (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

We kinda knew this was going to happen. New Hollywood really wants to be classic Hollywood, where the studios own the lives of the actors and control every aspect. But I expected them to start by cyber-thesbianning Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Jean Harlow and Clark Gable.

But yeah, the studios are going through a creativity crisis, now decades into a best practices run of avoiding new ideas for less risky sequels and high concept films, preferring spectacle over introspection and character study.

The copyright maximalism and Hollywood accounting isn't really about piracy or greed so much as desperation to keep old promises of exponential dividend growth.

Every bubble eventually pops, and the longer they try to keep it intact, the more disastrous the outcome.

In the meantime, I look forward to when small indie directors can star Bogart and Harlow in their concept film.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In our lifetime we’re going to see a lot of stuff become public domain and there’s going to be remixes, scene clipping and overdubbing of all kinds. I’m trying to figure out how to cash in.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The moment I saw the hologram of 2pac singing at coachella I knew that this was inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ditto

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Oh boy, the identity and copyright laws will be chaotic as ai gets more and more advanced. I'm all in for abolishing copyrights but I have no idea what to think about your identity being duplicated/recreated. When is something your identity and when it stops being it? It will be obvious with 1:1 copies of popular people/actors but what about situations where copies are tinkered with to resemble someone less or when you do a mix of multiple people to create one person? What about people that are not known by everyone? What if the virtual person resembles someone by accident?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

One of the easiest ways to make consistent characters using stable diffusion is to combine two celebrities with different weights. How do you deal with stuff like that under copyright. Hey this person is 3/4 Jennifer Lawrence and 1/4 Salina Gomez, but it's not either of them it's a new character.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also eventually we will (if not already) be able to generate brand new fake people anyway, so they won't even need the extras. Obviously that won't work for the actual main cast, but for background actors it makes sense. Crowds and far away people have already been done in CGI for over a decade now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Copyright doesn't cover elements that are not the product of human labor, which means it does not cover physical bodies or faces or voices or anything like that.

What you're describing falls under the classification of personality rights.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I take a modicum of comfort in the fact that no one will want to watch “half this actor and half this one with a dash of this one thrown in” because that’s weird and not enticing. After the initial novelty, I imagine those films will struggle.

Hollywood spent a very fucking long time cashing in on celebrity and name recognition and the lives and loves of these beautiful people, building them up to tear them down…they won’t suddenly build a new and flourishing market of not real people but cheap store brand knockoffs of the ones they’ve convinced us we give a shit about. That just won’t work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

ai denial spotted in the wild

Edit: Imagine having characters that are not played by a real person. Your movie won't be ruined just because the actor is controversial. Just an example.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Well, as someone who works in film, this actually does affect me. This is a very real and very imminent threat. I would love to have no work and be able to survive. But that’s not the world we live in. And I think that being cavalier about letting massive corporations’ AI amass all the power they want while we all use it for fun is incredibly foolish. This isn’t the vanguard of the revolution. This is the elite creating a system that doesn’t replace us so we can live free. It’s about creating competing software that can do the fucking creative work. (a.k.a., those of us that found something we can stomach doing for our living in this backwards ass system.)

How can anyone—especially people in antiwork—be supportive of AI built by the most massive and dangerous tech companies going after the artists that have managed to make a living creating that art first? How is the concept of AI the good guy here? Writing, digital art, acting? Literally some of the only creative endeavors we have to survive on in this fucking capitalist hellscape.

Did you see the deadline article, where an executive said the current negotiating tactics for the writers is “wait until they start losing their apartments?” And you’re…supportive of this?

Also: your last argument is about…the ongoing profitability of films? Not about human enjoyment or surviving in a capitalist dystopia or the human experience of creating and appreciating art, but…the vampiric studios’ ability to continue profiting after an actor gets canceled? The fuck?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And I think that being cavalier about letting massive corporations’ AI amass all the power they want while we all use it for fun is incredibly foolish.

Open Source FTW

This isn’t the vanguard of the revolution. This is the elite creating a system that doesn’t replace us so we can live free. It’s about creating competing software that can do the fucking creative work. (a.k.a., those of us that found something we can stomach doing for our living in this backwards ass system.)

This is why fast transition from the current world to post-work world is important. If the transition will be slow it will be very unpleasant for everyone. And again, open source FTW.

How can anyone—especially people in antiwork—be supportive of AI built by the most massive and dangerous tech companies going after the artists that have managed to make a living creating that art first?

Open source FTW and we need to push the governments for UBI and such as a transition to post work world.

How is the concept of AI the good guy here? Writing, digital art, acting? Literally some of the only creative endeavors we have to survive on in this fucking capitalist hellscape.

Uhhh, you can still write and draw whatever you want, it's just that the art will be available to more people. More people will be able to create characters, worlds, images etc. more easly which is very cool.

Did you see the deadline article, where an executive said the current negotiating tactics for the writers is “wait until they start losing their apartments?” And you’re…supportive of this?

Why would I support this?

Also: your last argument is about…the ongoing profitability of films? Not about human enjoyment or surviving in a capitalist dystopia or the human experience of creating and appreciating art, but…the vampiric studios’ ability to continue profiting after an actor gets canceled? The fuck?

Bruh, just bruh... The argument was about not having a fictional character tied to the real world person which will allow you to disconnect from the real world and immerse into the medium even further.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your clinging to open source as some life raft just isn’t as buoyant as you might think. The leaders of AI are still Meta and open AI, both of which have talked about closing their code.

And look at the mastodon vs. Threads scenario. Mastodon was more established, federated, and free. But FB decides it wants to eat Twitter’s lunch, and threads becomes the fastest growing app in history.

If the two assholes behind both twitter and Facebook decide they want to “disrupt” the current sharing of code, they both have their hands on the lever the close those floodgates and hoard the AI advancements. Look how far AI has come lately. And we’re still in the early stages.

If in the next, say, two years, (which is an incredibly long time in tech), both open AI and meta’s AI both close up shop to protect their primary driving force (profit…and they absolutely will as soon as they want), the open source revolution you’re clinging to will more or less become irrelevant. Look how much the internet changed from its early days. And social media is similar. As soon as the power is realized, the market is cornered and money talks. How can you imagine anything different will happen this time?

You read this article, it was saying very clearly this tech was attempted to be used for evil. AND ITS STILL BRAND NEW. They were trying to screw all future actors out of their faces and voices. And these are still very early days.

I just don’t have any faith in favorable laws being written to protect us, I don’t have faith in the companies with their hands on the trigger, I don’t have faith in our current world ever transitioning to a post-work world. How can anything in the past…forty years make you think this is possible without revolution? Look at every single trend.

I dunno where you are located, but in my country, thinking we can get the government to seriously look out for us in the face of massive paradigm shift is…foolish. And in your country, maybe that’s possible, but this tech will hurt a lot of people because of the state of politics in a lot of the world. Capitalist mindset just won’t let go so easily.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The leaders of AI are still Meta and open AI, both of which have talked about closing their code.

I'm not talking about CORPO open source but the actual open source software. Fuck corporations indeed, noone should trust them.

And look at the mastodon vs. Threads scenario. Mastodon was more established, federated, and free. But FB decides it wants to eat Twitter’s lunch, and threads becomes the fastest growing app in history.

This is simple because facebook had an established userbase and a lot of people knew about it. Now that they are in the fediverse a lot more people will learn about other fediverse apps and will check them out.

As soon as the power is realized, the market is cornered and money talks. How can you imagine anything different will happen this time?

Corporations will absolutely try everything they can to monetise stuff. Thats why need to watch them, talk about their actions and advocate to regulate them in a way that makes sense. The future is going to be very chaotic and I don't know how we will solve those problems when most of the people are not in the ai space and are uneducated on this topic. Because of lack of knowledge about that stuff people will be advocating for and talking about the wrong stuff which will bury the actually good talks, concers, benefits etc.

You read this article, it was saying very clearly this tech was attempted to be used for evil. AND ITS STILL BRAND NEW. They were trying to screw all future actors out of their faces and voices. And these are still very early days.

Fuckers shouldn't be able to own their identities. Especially the virual ones. Even more so if the stuff is ai generated and not hand made in the computer because ai generated stuff shouldn't be copyrighted no matter what. And if they do? Then I'm with you, we will be fucked by corporations again.

I just don’t have any faith in favorable laws being written to protect us, I don’t have faith in the companies with their hands on the trigger, I don’t have faith in our current world ever transitioning to a post-work world.

As we very well know the corporations care about the profit and the profit only. They will ditch naturally grown meaty cheap machines to artificially created ones as soon they are good enough or better than humans at doing tasks while being cheaper and having no rights. Once too many people lose their jobs and there won't be nearly enough available then people will start protesting. I can see governments reacting by creating more bullshit jobs in the short term but in the medium-term they will have to introduce universal basic income because there will be no other way to keep people alive and not angry. They UBI will be only a temporary solution and I have no idea how the next steps of the process would look like but this scenerio is probably what will happen in some countries. The transition to the ai/robot workforce needs to be fast to avoid many people suffering because of lack of the jobs over a longer period of time because things were moving too slow to make people react to the change. If something bad happens to many people in a short period of time people are very probably to organise and protest. But that's not that much probable if things move slowly and gradually because the moment when people will react/organise will be when things are worse and affect more people than if it affected less people but in a very short amount of time. At the same time things need to move slowly to allow for regulations to catch up and for general public to be able to follow the topic and advancements in the ai/robotics space. Hopefully we hit this spot where we have a great balance of both but I doubt that such a thing exists when governments are very behind with regulations and they react very slowly to a new stuff (or any stuff in general).

I dunno where you are located, but in my country, thinking we can get the government to seriously look out for us in the face of massive paradigm shift is…foolish.

Oh boy, now I understand all your concerns. Everything I just said will very probably not apply to you then. EU is much better when it comes to reacting to such stuff. EU still has it's problems but still does "good enough".

Capitalist mindset just won’t let go so easily.

It won't but it's something that we need to go through unless we want for the things stay as they are. If we don't move our society forward then we are pretty much guaranteed to end up in a dystopia where corporations have all the power and people are miserable.

I'm open to further discussion and being pointed out my mistakes. My mind is not good at putting out long complex arguments so there's a very high chance that I missed some obvious stuff, started talking about something different mid argument or something else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You’re definitely right, EU regulations are always much, much better. But look at every tech advancement. The internet is the most readily comparable advancement, yes there is a time where things look bright and like advancement will help us all, but every single technological advancement since the Industrial Revolution has burdened us more: less is never expected of us, it’s always double because of the advancement. We never find more time because of groundbreaking tech. We’re expected to utilize the tech to advance capitalism.

Capitalism is always the end goal. Even in the EU, governments acts as a sort of guardrail, but the drive of humanity isn’t ever diverted from keeping markets rising. They would wipe us all off the face of the earth before they did anything big that wasn’t utilized to advance markets and streamline productivity and expect more.

I just don’t have any faith that tech will ever set us free. AI, I cannot imagine, will be any different. I wish I had your optimism. But I just find no basis in reality for it.

Edit: and I’ve diverted from my original point, but the fact that they’re going after art first seems incredibly troubling. It’s just a sign of what’s to come, in my eyes. How can we expect them to eliminate work and keep us fed if the first major advancements that seem to be on a runaway train are creative writing and art? And now acting? That’s such a sad statement on the state of humanity.

You’re definitely right about the EU having stronger regulations by comparison, but the problem is curbed a little, it’s not gone. There is consideration for people over there, but people still are an afterthought after capitalism is firmly on its course. It’s always people being protected after we realize something is wrong (and it’s never fully protected, because the businesses concerned still have a huge say in the matter). Our entire society is upside down, we live to serve capitalism, capitalism is no longer serving us. And the next advancement will serve industry before it is curbed to protect us from it. And again,if you can imagine a world in which people are allowed to live without contributing to capitalism with our time (even in the EU), I just don’t see how you can be so optimistic when nothing about the world in 2023 seems to warrant it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I take a modicum of comfort in the fact that no one will want to watch “half this actor and half this one with a dash of this one thrown in” because that’s weird and not enticing. After the initial novelty, I imagine those films will struggle.

What are humans and their personalities other than just a mix of other people (genetics) and some random stuff thrown in? The ai generated humans and real humans are not different. It's just that the ai generated humans wouldn't exist physically in the real world. But that doesn't matter though, movies are all about selling the illusion of the world they represent, you don't need real stuff to represent fictional worlds. Take books for example, books don't have actors and they sell pretty damn well, we still immerse ourselves into those worlds and see each character as a separate entity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

what are humans and their personalities other than just a mix of other people (genetics) and some random stuff thrown in?

Wow. I…

They’re human. Individual. AI generated humans and real humans are different. Very different. I don’t know how we could ever come to any sort reconcilable middle ground if we can’t agree on that much.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Your argument was that nobody would be interested in the mix of looks and personalities of multiple humans and I pointed out that it's the same for real humans an ai generated that we are just "randomly generated". I watch things for the illusion and not the actors that are trying to sell that illusion. I'm not saying that ai generated videos of humans will be humans, absolutely not. I'm only talking about the illusion on the screen. Maybe we are arguing about completely differnet things idk.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's probably going to get instantiated by the law suits like Sarah Silverman vs OpenAI. Zero chance that will be the final word, but it will set the stage for the ongoing arguments and what the studio's try to get away with. The basic argument that me and mine being ingested by your algorithm is a copy protected transaction makes sense on multiple levels, but would absolutely crush all of the internet. So it's going to end up being a very ugly fight.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What makes copyright bad but identity protection good? Copyright prohibits the unauthorized duplication of your actual labor. To my mind that's more egregious than simply copying the shape of your face.

I'd be a lot less pissed off if someone copied my face than if they copied something that actually took me effort to produce.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wasn't my point. It's more about WHAT someone does with your "identity" in public media. In the long term I can see it being abolished too but in the short term there will be a lot of drama about it for sure.

Edit:

Wasn't my point.

Yeah, it seems like it was my point in my original comment, my bad.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Seriously fuck the executive who thought this up. Literally just taking money away from folks because they can - shit like this leads to drastic change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

as a consumer, i am having a hard time convincing myself that this material, conjured inside a computer, would be of any interest.

i like to think that only the real deal will have real value.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In the future, how would you know? We're not far off from AI content being indistinguishable from the real thing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Also, CGI. It's eveywhere and noone minds as long it's well done.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

This is a valid concern.

However, if you are somewhat more observant, you can usually tell when something is off.

For example, in music, the sounds of synthesized orchestras can be distinguished from real ones. Autotune can be detected and it tends to give an "uncanny valley" / annoying effect on the attentive listener.

Then again most people don't usually care about those things.

Guess time will tell.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Many sides to this for one there’s a lot of people in the world who simply don’t care where their entertainment comes from as long as it makes them happy.

Another side is. I’ve never met most celebrities, I’ve seen them in movies and on tv and read about things they did. If someone creates a perfect recreation of a well known celebrity acting in a movie, then go on to show that recreation showing up at red carpet events and doing interviews with other perfect recreations of well known personalities, write articles about things they did etc, and no one ever told me that they were not the real person, how would I ever know?

Same goes for double if they just create a new set of celebrities, the fact is that new people appear in this space every day, someone I’ve never seen before suddenly makes it big with a new song or something and it’s the first I’ve ever heard of it, I have no way to verify if it’s a real person or not. Sure I can look it up but all I find is a bunch of generated articles, tweets, interviews etc designed specifically to convince me that they are real.

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