Technology

I’m Incredibly worried about AI deepfakes and voice cloning for a whole host of reasons. It’s one of the things I think we are collectively least prepared to deal with. The privacy concerns, national security, cyber security - to say nothing of disinformation and yeah, labor impacts — we are fucked and not at all ready for this.

Name and likeness rights, rights of publicity though and privacy rights don’t stem from copyright and don’t require an expansion of copyright to further protect. There’s case law already preventing a business from cloning someone without their permission, and everyone will be paying very close attention to those parts of contracts moving forward, I’d wager. As to wholesale replacing actors and talent with generated content — yeah, I’m very worried a lot of artists and creative people are as fucked as the lawyers and the accountants and writers and everyone else when it comes to job displacement.

Again, despite your really aggressive tone, I’m telling you: we almost certainly agree more than we disagree. It is ghoulish watching studios rush to replace extras and voice actors and resurrect dead actors. True cyberpunk dystopia necromancer shit. I’m hoping that we see more victories won in this genuinely encouraging resurgence of labor (todays SAG AFTRA deal notwithstanding) and legislation directly addressing the labor impacts of AI more broadly. Different kinds of guard rails and safety nets. I just don’t think copyright is the answer you think it is to the horrors that we both agree are coming.