Tyler Cowen has his unique take on the actors strike and the issue of ownership of the images of actors. As happens frequently, he centers very different considerations than anyone else would have, in a process that I cannot predict (and that thus at least has a high GPT-level). I do agree that the actors need to win this one.
I do agree with his conclusion. If I got to decide, I would say: Actors should in general only be selling their images only for a particular purpose and project. At minimum, any transfer of license should be required to come with due consideration and not be a requirement for doing work, except insofar as the rights pertain narrowly to the work in question.
I’m...not sure what you envision this looking like?
While I don’t think AI is there yet, and it may not get there before larger disruptions occur, if you imagine a hypothetical world in which one day of video and motion capture of a person lets you make an infinite amount of AI-generated video of them, acting cannot realistically be a long-term career in that world. Attempting to set up rules governing images to make acting remain a long-term career will be massively wasteful (using years of person-work to do one day of person-work) for no reason other than to provide employment to a legacy profession.
First, I agree with your general conclusion : laws to protect a limited number of humans in a legacy profession are inefficient. Though this negotiation isn’t one of laws, it’s unions vs studios, where both sides have leverage to force the other to make concessions.
However, I do see a pattern here. Companies optimizing for short term greed very do often create the seeds of larger problems:
In engineering fields, companies often refuse to hire new graduates, preferring mid level and up, as new graduates are unproductive on complex specialized technology. This creates a shortage of mid level+ engineers and companies are then forced to pay a king’s ransom for them in periods of tech boom.
996 in China, and the “salaryman” culture in Japan, create situations where young adults cannot have many children. This means in the short/medium term companies extract the maximum value per dollar of payroll paid, but create a nationwide labor shortage for the future when future generations are smaller.
Companies who pay just $200 for someone’s digital likeness in perpetuity, and who intend to eliminate all the actor roles except for “A list” show-stealer stars who bring the most value to the project, eliminate an entire pipeline to allow anyone to ever become famous again. It will mean a short term reduction in production costs, but the stars created under the old system will age, requiring more and more digital de-aging, and they will demand higher and higher compensation per project.
(3) bothers me in that it’s excessively greedy, it doesn’t come close to paying a human being to even come to LA at all. It’s unsustainable.
Theoretically capitalism should be fixing these examples automatically. I’m unsure why this doesn’t happen.
By eventually having no choice but to hire new grads
By eventually offering roles that pay more due to a labor shortage with less hours
This one can stay in disequilibrium forever as animated characters can be immensely popular and generative Ai combined with modern rendering has crossed the uncanny valley after approximately 28 years. (Toy story 1,1995)
So the animated actors would appear to be real.
Actually on reflection assuming AI continues to improve, 1 and 2 also can stay in disequilibrium.
True, but I definitely don’t expect such a flawless AI to be available any soon. Even Stable Diffusion is not stable enough to consistently draw the exact same character twice, and the current state of AI-generated video is much worse. Remember the value of the long tail: if your AI-generated movie has 99% good frames and 1% wonky frames, it will still looks like a very bad product compared to traditional movies, because consumers don’t want movies where things look vaguely distorted once per minute (maybe the stunt doubles should be more concerned about being replaced by AI frames that the actor themselves?).
I’m...not sure what you envision this looking like?
While I don’t think AI is there yet, and it may not get there before larger disruptions occur, if you imagine a hypothetical world in which one day of video and motion capture of a person lets you make an infinite amount of AI-generated video of them, acting cannot realistically be a long-term career in that world. Attempting to set up rules governing images to make acting remain a long-term career will be massively wasteful (using years of person-work to do one day of person-work) for no reason other than to provide employment to a legacy profession.
First, I agree with your general conclusion : laws to protect a limited number of humans in a legacy profession are inefficient. Though this negotiation isn’t one of laws, it’s unions vs studios, where both sides have leverage to force the other to make concessions.
However, I do see a pattern here. Companies optimizing for short term greed very do often create the seeds of larger problems:
In engineering fields, companies often refuse to hire new graduates, preferring mid level and up, as new graduates are unproductive on complex specialized technology. This creates a shortage of mid level+ engineers and companies are then forced to pay a king’s ransom for them in periods of tech boom.
996 in China, and the “salaryman” culture in Japan, create situations where young adults cannot have many children. This means in the short/medium term companies extract the maximum value per dollar of payroll paid, but create a nationwide labor shortage for the future when future generations are smaller.
Companies who pay just $200 for someone’s digital likeness in perpetuity, and who intend to eliminate all the actor roles except for “A list” show-stealer stars who bring the most value to the project, eliminate an entire pipeline to allow anyone to ever become famous again. It will mean a short term reduction in production costs, but the stars created under the old system will age, requiring more and more digital de-aging, and they will demand higher and higher compensation per project.
(3) bothers me in that it’s excessively greedy, it doesn’t come close to paying a human being to even come to LA at all. It’s unsustainable.
Theoretically capitalism should be fixing these examples automatically. I’m unsure why this doesn’t happen.
Huh? Why?
By eventually having no choice but to hire new grads
By eventually offering roles that pay more due to a labor shortage with less hours
This one can stay in disequilibrium forever as animated characters can be immensely popular and generative Ai combined with modern rendering has crossed the uncanny valley after approximately 28 years. (Toy story 1,1995) So the animated actors would appear to be real.
Actually on reflection assuming AI continues to improve, 1 and 2 also can stay in disequilibrium.
True, but I definitely don’t expect such a flawless AI to be available any soon. Even Stable Diffusion is not stable enough to consistently draw the exact same character twice, and the current state of AI-generated video is much worse. Remember the value of the long tail: if your AI-generated movie has 99% good frames and 1% wonky frames, it will still looks like a very bad product compared to traditional movies, because consumers don’t want movies where things look vaguely distorted once per minute (maybe the stunt doubles should be more concerned about being replaced by AI frames that the actor themselves?).