Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda says AI recreations of her dad are ‘personally disturbing’::Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda says AI recreations of her dad are ‘personally disturbing’: ‘The worst bits of everything this industry is’

  • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Disturbing is an understatement. I’d call them repulsive. Relatives should be the only ones with this power, if at all.

    Sure as shit not corporations. Fuck.

    • whatwhatwhatwhat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Agreed, we desperately need regulations on who has the right to reproduce another person’s image/voice/likeness. I know that there will always be people on the internet who do it anyway, but international copyright laws still mostly work in spite of that, so I imagine that regulations on this type of AI would mostly work as well.

      We’re really in the Wild West of machine learning right now. It’s beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.

        • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Copyright IS too strong, but paradoxically artists’ rights are too weak. Everything is aimed to boost the profits of media companies, but not protect the people who make them. Now they are under threat of being replaced by AI trained on their own works, no less. Is it really worth it to defend AI if we end up with less novel human works because of it?

            • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The “circle of life” except that it kills the artists’ careers rather than creating new ones. Even fledgling ones might find that there’s no opportunity for them because AIs are already gearing to take entry-level jobs. However efficient AI may be at replicating the work of artists, the same could be said of a photocopier, and we laws to define how those get to be used so that they don’t undermine creators.

              I get that AI output is not identical and its output doesn’t go foul under existing laws, but the principles behind them are still important. Not only Culture but even AI itself will be lesser for it if human artists are not protected, because art AIs quickly degrade when AI art is fed back into it en masse.

              Don’t forget that the kind of AI we have doesn’t do anything by itself. We don’t have sentient machines, we have very elaborate auto-complete systems. It’s not AI that is steamrolling artists, it’s companies seeking to replace artists with AIs trained on their works that are threatening them. That can’t be allowed.

                • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  It’s sad to see how AI advocates strive to replicate the work of artists all the while being incredibly dismissive of their value. No wonder so many artists are incensed to get rid of everything AI.

                  Besides, it’s nothing new that media companies and internet content mills are willing to replace quality with whatever is cheaper and faster. To try to use that as an indictment against those artists’ worth is just… yeesh.

                  This is the kind of stuff AI can produce just by itself, within seconds, the idea is from AI and so is the actual image.

                  You realize that even this had to be set up by human beings right? Piping random prompts through art AI is impressive, but it’s not intelligent. Don’t let yourself get caught on sci-fi dreams, I made this mistake too. When you say “AI will steamroll humans” you are assigning awareness and volition to it that it doesn’t have. AIs maybe filled with all human knowledge but they don’t know anything. They simply repeat patterns we fed into them. An AI could give you a description of a computer, it could generate a picture of a computer, but it doesn’t have an understanding. Like I said before, it’s like a very elaborate auto-complete. If it could really understand anything, the situation would be very different, but the fact that even its most fierce advocates use it as a tool shows that it’s still lacking capabilities that humans have.

                  AI will not steamroll humans. AI-powered corporate industries, owned by flesh and blood people, might steamroll humans, if we let them. If you think that will get to just enjoy a Holodeck you are either very wealthy or you don’t realize that it’s not just artists who are at risk.

                  • brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s sad to see how AI advocates strive to replicate the work of artists all the while being incredibly dismissive of their value. No wonder so many artists are incensed to get rid of everything AI.

                    It’s such a shame too. Like you can have a million sensible takes and opinions and views on the topic, pro-AI, but the discussion revolves around the same shit on both sides.

                    It is an amazing tool, and could be used (and is used, it’s just obscured by the massive amount of shit and assholes trolling other people/artists) in so many creative ways. I’d been in a bit of a rut for quite a few years (partially because my brain no make happy chemicals or sleep), but I haven’t been as excited about the possibilities and inspired maybe ever in my life (at least not for a decade or nearly two) with art and my own stuff. I’m finally drawing again after way too many years of letting my stuff gather dust.

                  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    I used to think techno supremacists were an extreme fringe, but “AI” has made me question that.

                    For one, this isn’t AI in the scifi sense. This is a sophisticated model that forms an algorithm to generate content based on patterns it observes in a plethora of works.

                    It’s ridiculously overhyped, and I think it’s just flash in a pan. Companies have already minimized their customer support with automated service options and “tell me what the problem is” prompts. I have yet to meet anyone who is pleased by these. Instead it’s usually shouting into the phone that you want to talk to a real human because the algorithm thinks you want a problem fixed instead of the service cancelled.

                    I think this “technocrat” vs “humanities” debate will be society’s next big question.

            • wanderingmagus@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Steamroll us? Not if I have anything to say about it. I look forward to setting condition 1SQ for strategic launch of thermonuclear weapons. Hooyah navy. If this is to be our end, then let it be SUCH an end, so as to be worthy of remembrance. I would rather this entire planet and all things upon it burn in radioactive fire than be sacrificed on the altar of technology.

        • vidarh@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Just a few years back, Vernor Vinge’s scifi novels still seemed reasonably futuristic in dealing with the issue of fakes well by including several bits where the resolution of imagery was a factor in being able to analyze with sufficient certainty that you were talking to the right person, and now that notion already seems dated, and certainly not enough for a setting far into the future.

          (at least they don’t still seem as dated as Johnny Mnemonic’s plot of erasing a chunk of your memories to transport an amount of data that would be easier and less painful to fit in your head by stuffing a microsd card up your nose)

      • _number8_@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        yeah i don’t think it should be legislated against, especially for private use [people will always work around it anyway], but using it for profit is really, viscerally wrong

        • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You know I’m not generally a defender of intellectual property, but I don’t think in this case “not legislating because people will work around it” is a good idea. Or ever, really. It’s because people will try to work around laws to take advantage of people that laws need to be updated.

          It’s not just about celebrities, or even just about respect towards dead people. In this case, what if somebody takes the voice of a family member of yours to scam your family or harass them? This technology can lead to unprecedented forms of abuse.

          In light of that, I can’t even mourn the loss of making an AI Robin Willians talk to you because it’s fun.

      • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        IMO people doing it on their own for fun/expression is different than corporations doing it for profit, and there’s no real way to stop that. I think if famous AI constructs become part of big media productions, it will come with a constructed moral justification for it. The system will basically internalize and commodify the repulsion to itself exploiting the likeness of dead (or alive) actors. This could be media that blurs the line and proports to ask “deep questions” about exploiting people, while exploiting people as a sort of intentional irony. Or it will be more like a moral appeal to sentimentality, “in honor of their legacy we are exploiting their image, some proceeds will support causes they cared about, we are doing this to spread awareness, the issue they are representing are too important, they would have loved this project, we’ve worked closely with their estate.” Eventually there’s going to be a film like this, complete with teary-eyed behind-the-scenes interviews about how emotional it was to reproduce the likeness of the actor and what an honor it was. As soon as the moral justification can be made and the actor’s image can be constructed just well enough. People will go see it so they can comment on what they thought about it and take part in the cultural moment.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We need something like the fair use doctrine coupled with identify rights.

        If you want to use X’s voice and likeness in something, you have to purchase that privilege from X or X’s estate, and they can tell you to pay them massive fees or to fuck off.

        Fair use would be exclusively for comedy, but still face regulation. There’s plenty of hilarious TikToks that use AI to make characters say stupid shit, but we can find a way to protect voice actors and creators without stifling creativity. Fair use would still require the person’s permission, you just wouldn’t need to pay to use it for such a minor thing – a meme of Mickey Mouse saying fuck for example.

        At the end of the day though, people need to hold the exclusive and ultimate right to how their likeness and voice are used, and they need to be able to shut down anything they deem unacceptable. Too many people are concerned with what is capable than with acting like an asshole. It’s just common kindness to ask someone if you can use their voice for something, and respecting their wishes if they don’t want it.

        I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but I’ll stand by it either way – using AI to emulate someone without their permission is a fundamental violation of their rights and privacy. If OpenAI or whoever wants to claim that makes their product unusable, tough fucking luck. Every technology has faced regulations to maintain our rights, and if a company can’t survive without unbridled regulations, it deserves to die.

    • Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      What about the third option, everyone gets to have the power?

      I’ve seen what Marvin Gaye and Conan Doyle’s relatives have done with the power. Dump it in the creative commons. Nobody should own the tonalities of a voice anyways, there quickly wouldn’t be any left.