Is that Tom Cruise?
Can synthetic content and generative AI be a force for good?
Hello!
How was your summer? A distant memory like mine?
I’ll be honest with you: I was very happy with those five days of sun we had in London recently, which were nicely warm despite the UK media summargeddon headlines warning of a heatwave because themperatures got close to 28 degrees. Those days are long gone anyway and the torrential rain that has been the background noise of 2023 is back in full swing.
While I don’t often complain about the British weather, I do miss the sun and having proper summers with consistently good weather from May until September and temperatures averaging 32/33 degrees. It just brings you joy and makes you feel alive. I guess it’s one of those things that can only be understood by those who grew up with them.
Weather disasters apart, I’m very excited about being back with the newsletter and the change of platform. LinkedIn, for all its convenience to share content with people already in my network, had some obvious limitations and I honestly don’t think was the right match for my content.
Out with the old and in with the new, right?
What better way to resume this weekly updates than to tell you that at the time of writing I’ve now seen Barbie three times and Oppenheimer twice. A colleague was really surprised given the length of Oppenheimer. Well, I was training for Killers of the Flower Moon.
In my defence, and in case you had forgotten, there were hardly any movies being released over the summer due to the writers and actors’ strike in the US, which may be coming to an end soon as there’s talks about studios and writers hoping to reach an agreement by close of play today.
This glimpse of light was hinted at during a breakfast we hosted this week with UK Screen Alliance, Film London, ILM, Epic, Mo-Sys, Charisma, NBC Universal, Metaphysic, Territory Studio, and the Greater London Authority to discuss the ripple effect of the Hollywood strikes across the industry worldwide, which highlights the interconnection of film productions and the domino effect on the supply chain.
The impact of AI on the industry was quickly addressed, especially in regards to deepfakes and the concern of actors not being able to own their image or writers being replaced by AI. This could have been just one of our regular creative industries breakfasts had it not been for the presence of Metaphysic, the London-based company that was born out of the viral success of the Tom Cruise deepfake videos that appeared during the pandemic.
And here allow me a brief detour to talk about Metaphysic in order to understand that the historical moment in which the Hollywood strikes are taking place is one of rapid technological change where AI has radically transformed the world of entertainment and content creation.
Metaphysic in fact didn’t exist three years ago and now it is one of the main players in the generative AI video creation, with an impressive range of high-profile projects in the cinema industry.
It all began with the striking resemblance of Miles Fisher, co-founder of Metaphysic, with Tom Cruise, which hasn’t always been easy to accept for Fisher but which he eventually embraced, which led him to create a spoof video impersonating Cruise as a presidential candidate for the US General Elections in 2020. The gods of the internet landed this video in the screen of Chris Ume, a visual effects artist who at the time lived in Thailand. Noticing the resemblance with Cruise, Ume decided to apply a deepfake filter on Fisher’s face as he had been playing around with the technology for a while to understand better how it worked.
When Fisher came across that modified video he couldn’t believe his eyes. He knew it was him who had worn that suit, ran on those shoes and delivered those lines without breaking a sweat, but the image he was looking at reflected the face of one of Hollywood’s most famous actors, not him. Intrigued, Fisher got in touch with Ume and they went on to create videos together.
They conceived them as an art project of sorts and never monetised them, but seeing the reactions to each new TikTok the potential of synthetic media for visual storytelling was obvious. As were the challenges. Enter London-based Tom Graham, co-founder and CEO of Metaphysic, whose background is on media content and generative AI and the plus of a solid legal training and strong interest in the ethics of synthetic media. Tick, tick, tick.
Graham by the way made headlines earlier in April as the first person to submit for copyright registration his AI likeness with the U.S. Copyright Office, which perhaps has inspired Keira Knightley’s recent statement about her plans to copyright her face to futureproof herself and the use of her image in the industry.
To end this detour, my pragmatic self can only think of the sleep streamers who monetise being disturbed while asleep – imagine how much more rested they would be if only they could create a deepfake of them. I bet no one would notice the difference.
Back to our breakfast.
While the threat of AI was clearly acknowledged by all attendees – from the rise of synthetic media to automation of entry-level jobs in the industry as well as the importance of clear ethical guidelines to protect one’s own likeness, preventing people having their image recreated via AI technology without consent and ensuring the immediate removal of deepfakes - our guests felt that the technology is being weaponised, ignoring its enormous potential to foster creativity.
Most interestingly, our attendees believed that AI can also raise the creativity bar and motivate people to think outside the box. As it was noted, we live in an increasingly polarised world there’s a strong tendency to label AI as good or bad, but it is necessary to have a much more nuanced conversation when it comes to its impact on the creative industries, which can help with a faster delivery of some tasks to free up time for more creative work.
At a time where the wider film industry is undergoing a profound transformation, our guests were in agreement that generative AI has limitations when it comes to being a creative tool on its own and therefore it is an enhancer and not a substitute of human creativity. It has great potential to allow creators to reach new frontiers in storytelling, visual effects or animation for engaging experiences -ABBA Voyage being the perfect example of this - as well as to design and deliver highly personalised content, but the nuance, the tone, the emotional reaction that those experiences will elicit can only come from a human.
Let me get back to Metaphysic for a second. Fisher and Ume weren’t the first ones to generate a deepfake of Tom Cruise. Back in 2019 a Slovakian video creator already morphed Ben Hader’s face into Tom Cruise as he’s telling an anecdote about the later. However, blame it on the technology not being yet there or on Hader not resembling Cruise enough, this didn’t make international headlines worldwide.
The reason why the Deep Tom Cruise videos became an overnight sensation is often credited to Fisher’s acting and his great impersonation of Cruise’s mannerisms and voice. That and his choice of content for the videos combined with the technology made people question if that really was Tom Cruise overjoyed at discovering there was a chewing gum inside his lollipop or narrating a surreal conversation with Mikhail Gorbachev while keeping everyone entertained and watching.
As our guests highlighted on several occasions, echoing the insights from a breakfast we hosted in June on immersive technologies and the metaverse, while generative AI has quickly disrupted the way we think about content creation and in the future synthetic media will be integrated into our lives on a regular basis, when it comes to creating high quality and engaging experiences the human touch will still be needed, no matter how perfect the technology is.
I hope that remains the case for many years before I’m replaced by an AI bot that has been trained to reproduce my content and I miss my chance to run a global media empire now that Rupert Murdoch has announced his retirement.
Or maybe I can also follow the New York Times and The Guardian’s example and block ChatGPT from trawling my content. At least Amazon has taken one for the team and self-published authors on their platform must now declare if their content is AI-generated.
If I write fast enough to build an audience, I can still become the next uber media mogul. Mind you, I have a few newsletters going at the time of typing - I may as well consider making a living out of them. Once success is a sure thing, and with my new understanding of synthetic media and how to leverage AI as a creative tool to free up space for what matters, I’ll create a deepfake of me and train it to churn out content 24/7 to keep the money machine running while I enjoy at last the fruits of my labours.
Ideally in Sicily, surrounded by people who also believe that 28 degrees are never a heatwave.
One can only hope.
Tech news
The UK has officially rejoined the EU’s Horizon research programme
The new Frontier AI Taskforce has set out its workplan while the government has appointed Dr. Dave Smith as its National Technology Adviser following the departure of Sir Patrick Vallance.
TikTok’s revenue in the UK and Europe increased by 164% last year. However, they social media giant recently received a $345 million fine for breaching EU data law on children’s accounts.
The iPhone 15 arrives today to shops and it has a USB-C charging port
British chip maker Arm stock has drastically dropped below IPO price only a week after going public in the US
Creative and Cultural news
Applications are open for the UK Games Fund’s £5m Content Fund to help people turn their game idea into a successful product
Over 80% of UK musicians have reported a loss of earnings due to Brexit. The average professional UK musician earns £20,700 annually, with 43% making less than £14,000, according to the first ever Musicians’ Census.
University of the Arts London has launched a new commission to understand how to keep the UK’s creative industries globally competitive
The London Royal Ravens, Europe’s only Call of Duty esports team, is moving to the US.
The Design Museum is hosting a new exhibition exploring 30 years of London fashion sponsored by Alexander McQueen.
Last but not least
Since this week the focus has been on the film industry, I would like to end by strongly recommending you to hurry to your closest cinema and watch Past Lives by Celine Song.
Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro are superb and succeed in making you empathise with each of their narratives and feel the weight of their unique doubts and dilemmas as if they were your own.
If you’ve ever been in a long-distance relationship, or have felt the language you speak in a relationship influences how you love, this is a must-see. Be warned you may shed a tear or two at random moments.
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Have a good weekend!