With AI On Everyone's Mind, Samuel L. Jackson Talks About His Contract
With the rise of AI, many workers and actors are asking themselves what’s next, especially after Marvel’s new Disney+ series Secret Invasion used AI art for the opening credits. Although the technology is more prominent today, Samuel L. Jackson, Marvel’s own Nick Fury, revealed that it had been a source of his worries since the Star Wars prequels.
The actor explained, “The first time I got scanned for George Lucas [for The Phantom Menace] I was like, “What’s this for?” George and I are good friends so we kind of had a laugh about it because I thought he was doing it because he had all those old guys in Episode I, and if something happened to them, he still wanted to put ‘em in the movie. Ever since I’ve been in the Marvel Universe, every time you change costumes in a Marvel movie, they scan you. Ever since I did Captain Marvel, and they did the Lola project where they de-aged me and everything else, it’s like, “Well, I guess they can do this anytime they want to do it if they really want to!” It could be something to worry about. Future actors should do what I always do when I get a contract and it has the words “in perpetuity” and “known and unknown” on it: I cross that shit out. It’s my way of saying, “No, I do not approve of this.”
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The latest Flash movie used AI to bring Christopher Reeves, an actor who passed away nearly a decade ago, into the film. Recently, there’s been a wave of actors caught in deep fakes that are pretty easy to spot, but there’s a more insidious nature to the technology. Other than removing jobs and forcing some loyal workers out of the industry, the technology could allow studios to use any actor as an unwilling spokesperson or resurrect a long-dead cast instead of hiring real and living actors. Jackson’s worries certainly have merit, but he’s found a way to avoid that fate and encourages other actors to do the same.
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Source(s): The Hollywood Reporter, Gizmodo