I can honestly say that technology improves my life in ways that surprise and delight me every day.
My phone doubles as a flashlight, the TV remembers what part of a show I'm at even if I don't, the bus stop (sometimes) knows when my bus is coming, and I can see the entire process of preparing and delivering my pizza. Frankly, these are modern marvels.
But ever since the little purple AI guy showed up on Snapchat, the creation of artificial intelligence has scared and baffled me. I once asked the AI if it was going to overthrow humanity and take over the world, to which it replied, “Wow, that sounds like a plot from a sci-fi movie.” Maybe it was just a fantasy, but the AI never said “no”…
So you can imagine my astonishment a few weeks ago when I saw the first stills from Tom Hanks' latest film, Here, due for release early next year.
Using AI, Hanks will be able to play both the boy and the young man in a film, instead of borrowing the talents of younger actors — a move they're calling “de-aging.”
Certainly, there are enough anti-aging ads touting the virtues of peptides and hyaluronic acid that we know the idea of turning back the clock and “looking younger” is something many people find desirable. To me, it seems like the kind of thing that could be used as an alternative to the usually ineffective, and sometimes disastrous, cosmetic surgery, bold hair dyes, or heavy makeup that veteran celebrities sometimes resort to in a desperate attempt to hang on to their youth.
But looking at images of Hanks looking as if he's just finished filming Forrest Gump (and the fact that the new film also sees him reprising his role as Jenny with a rejuvenated Robin Wright, who played the 1994 classic), it feels like a bit of a stretch for me.
Hanks and Wright aren't the first actors to undergo digital cosmetic surgery — Martin Scorsese's 2019 film “The Irishman” made Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, who were in their mid-to-late 70s at the time of filming, look 40 years younger. But “The Irishman” didn't pull it off well, and the characters were sometimes unconvincing, distracting and creepy. I fear the same will happen with “Here.”
Artificial intelligence is moving us ever closer to what we're calling the Black Mirror era of deepfakes and disinformation.
The premise behind the visual effects is that the audience won't notice them and that they won't detract from their enjoyment of the film. The problem is that making celebrities like De Niro, Pacino, and Hanks look younger than they are in their 20s inevitably distracts fans from the story.
AI’s impact on verisimilitude won’t be limited to the film industry. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, digital rejuvenation could go from something that requires months of work and a team of highly skilled artists to something anyone with a smartphone can do on their own, as the buzzy AI chatbot ChatGPT threatens to upend journalism, speechwriting, and school essays. This brings us ever closer to what I call the Black Mirror era of deepfakes and disinformation.
AI has the potential to bring about dramatic and even detrimental changes to the way we live our lives. For example, if someone created an AI version of President Biden that was gaffe-free, the US election campaign might seem less of a one-on-one fight, but how dangerous would it be to suppress all evidence of human error and fallibility?
That said, I believe there is room for AI to have a positive impact on society in areas like finance, medicine, and climate science, and perhaps Hanks would be better off literally playing his age on this occasion and giving the younger generation a chance.
