Carla Slavey: There should be more talk of ethics with AI

Oct. 4—While the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, better known as SAG-AFTRA, continue their strike against American production companies, one of the stipulations on striking actors is that they are not allowed to promote their work.

It, therefore, struck me with some curiosity this week when I started hearing about one particular actor going out of his way to not-promote something containing his image.

Tom Hanks grabbed headlines as he put out a warning that an unnamed dental plan company had used a computer-generated, artificial intelligence (AI) video of him to promote their product — without his permission.

"Beware!!" the Oscar winner told his fans in an Instagram post. "There's a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it."

The funniest headline about the fiasco that I've found is from Decider.com which said "Someone is lying through Tom Hanks' teeth."

If that is true, and if it is also true that Hanks has not in some way signed away rights to his voice and image, it makes me wonder how the people behind the video thought it would work without severe backlash.

To add to the fire, tech website Gizmodo tracked down the image that is used in the video, stating that it was from a photo owned by the Los Angeles Times, which could make the copyright issues even more confusing.

But it's one thing to take the image and voice of a still-living actor and use it for someone else's gain (and possibly, the actor's loss). But what happens when the actor is deceased?

Robin Williams's daughter, Zelda Williams, has been vocal recently in her hatred of the use of her father's likeness in newly-produced videos or voice-over work. She went on record as saying AI creates either "a poor facsimile of greater people" or "a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is."

Robin Williams famously voiced the character of the Genie in the Disney film "Aladdin," and then, possibly just as famously, got into a dispute with the studio over his voice and likeness, leading him to have to be replaced in the film's first sequel, although he came back for movie number three.

The question of how to responsibly use AI gets even more complicated when the actor died before the concept of AI could even be fathomed. BBC.com reported back in August about a film company that has plans to cast James Dean in a sci-fi film called "Back To Eden."

Yes, that James Dean. The one who was in 1955's "East of Eden" and who died in a car crash that same year.

Shouldn't film companies be considering more closely the ethics of using an actor's likeness that had no way of predicting it could be used in that manner? Just the concept of AI in general would have been sci-fi to him, yes?

I'm not saying that all AI usage is bad. If used correctly, it can be a useful tool for a content creator. For example, I recently read about a YouTuber who was having reoccurring trouble with his vocal cords, so in order to continue making his videos while he was recovering, he trained an AI to use his voice to read out the scripts he had written, so his real-life voice could rest and heal.

That seems like an acceptable use of such amazing technology, and I'm never going to argue that the technology isn't astounding.

What I will argue, however, is there needs to be more discussion about the ethics and moral limitations of using such technology.

One of the sticking points for the SAG-AFTRA strike is actors' concerns over studios taking their likenesses and using it in other productions without having to pay them again. That indicates that someone could be earning money off of their unique voice work without paying the voice actor. In these cases, who owns the voice? Who owns the face? Who owns the actors themselves?

Or, as David Essex said in his hit "Rock On," Where do we go from here? Which is the way that's clear?

Jimmy Dean, indeed.

Carla Slavey can be reached at cslavey@somerset-kentucky.com