YouTube is offering elite celebrities a free tool to ensure their likeness is not copied through AI or emerging deepfakes.
“Executives at the Google-owned platform [say] that their proprietary deepfake detection tool, years in the making, is now open to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused,” reports the far-left Hollywood Reporter. This includes “Actors, athletes, creators and musicians, whether they have a YouTube channel or not[.]”
“What YouTube’s offering is — and I don’t say this about many tech companies — but out of the graciousness of their hearts, they are doing the right thing by providing these tools at no cost to the talent, so they can protect their real estate,” Hollywood insider Jason Newman said. “Their real estate is their face. Their real estate is their body. Their real estate is who they are, what they do, how they say it.”
It will work this way…
“A celebrity, creator or public figure (or more likely their agent, manager or another member of their team) opts in, and uploads their likeness into the system,” the report explains. “The system then scans YouTube and flags potential replicas for that celebrity’s team to review. They can choose to leave it be, or request removal.”
Not everything will be removed merely upon request. YouTube says it will offer a wide berth to satire and parody.
It’s fine that such a tool was developed, but what a suck-up move offering it for free to the elite, while us proles are forced to sit through YouTube ad after YouTube ad after YouTube ad just to watch an old 1970s TV movie.
The freakout over AI reminds me a lot of the Y2K freakout. Back in 1999, the media ginned up a social panic over the fear that the apocalypse was imminent at the very moment the world entered the 21st century. Something about computer programming.
Well, nothing happened.
So far, as much as I hate to admit this, the only entertainment company handling AI correctly is the Disney Grooming Syndicate, and when I say “correctly,” I mean in the interest of their stockholders. Disney plans to monetize AI creations by taking advantage of the fact that you cannot copyright AI. It’s a brilliant strategy in how it accepts the reality that AI creators cannot be stopped while positioning itself to make money from that reality.
If the celebrities themselves are smart, they will start selling their personas for use in AI productions. A lot of money can be made this way, as well as a form of earthly immortality. Imagine the year 2057 and Top Gun 23 hits theaters, reuniting a young Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer … for the 23rd time.
Kilmer’s estate has already taken advantage of this.
The way to go, though, is to sell your likeness to a massive AI company that includes a contract specifying how that likeness can be used—no nudity, for example. That way, the celeb not only makes a buttload of money from this massive AI company, but also has the AI company policing that image and enforcing the rules the celeb stipulates for its use.
Celebrities might think it is better to have their likeness controlled by family members. I’m not so sure. If you think about it, many celebrities raise terrible children who might someday sell their likeness to a porn producer in exchange for a line of cocaine.
The AI genie is already out of the bottle. Might as well embrace it.
