Is AI Replacing Human Actors...?

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In the face acting space, AI is grabbing sensationalist headlines as an innovative wave surge that will disrupt the value of art created by real camera / screen actors. At first look, at this time.(Mar 2023) . Perhaps the best examples of this are the completely realistic AI avatars of models that have surprisingly large followings on such social media platforms as Instagram and Tik Tok. With a second look, it becomes noticeable that while large, these followings and interactions are perhaps not as large as could or perhaps should be expected, if AI avatars and models are really going to succeed in replacing real humans. Perhaps is it possible, that the real human viewers are not completely convinced that the avatars and models are completely real, and thus have less acceptance than the real thing?

In other words, the audience’s reluctance to believe the AI products are completely realistic is rendering these AI actors to be not completely believable, and reducing appeal. Suspending the audiences dis-belief during the viewing experience is, after all, a key function of the real actors craft - a facet AI may fail to master over the compete spectrum of performance delivery, for a multitude of reasons.. The audiences knowledge of the performer and/or performance being AI may itself result in this disbelief, rendering AI performances something of a curiosity novelty, rather than a viewing experience capable of being ingested deeply and emotionally. To succeed with the intuitive attraction of audiences, perhaps the AI performers must first progress to the capability to replicate the creative process of human actors and writers. Therein lies another conundrum- how can AI learn a creative process which the human creators themselves are most often at a loss to explain ? Without the ability to effectively replicate the creative process of an artist, the creative process of the entire team of artists, all contributing from their specific disciplines, is undermined and notably deficient, deprecating quality. Following this idea further, how shall AI learn and thus replicate the human processes which humans themselves can not comprehensively define... which may include intuition, instinct, 'sixth senses'. and emotional intelligence. With recent scientific recognition that the heart provides an additional neural network within human physiology, how shall AI learn to replicate this aspect of human intelligence, which ostensibly has some form of 'thought processes' human's themselves have yet to consciously verbalize in detail about, beyond abstract references ? A person may instinctively and intuitively know they followed their heart, but may not know the logic nor reasoning process of the heart- the very object of the quest of exploration for writers through-out the history of humanity.

While this conundrum evolves, perhaps we shall have AI actors take their place as a new form of character, in a new space between cartoon characters, and human actors, with a format entirely their own. This would seem to be ideal for encroachment into the world of adaptations of comic book science fiction into ‘movies' film and provides extensive scope for surreal creations in a form not yet ‘scened’, so perhaps that is one very likely future awaiting AI avatars. The undeniable truth is that human audiences love cartoon characters, animal stories, and wide range of stories about other objects of affection, in a different way than they love stories about themselves. For this reason it seems likely that AI actors’ inability to suspend dis-belief will continue to plague their attraction by audiences that are intuitively suspicious of being 'duped' into disbelief by characters that are themselves known to be unreal. Note: I did not use the word ‘fraud’… but it may be an uncomfortable subliminal intuitive inference within audiences’ minds.... That psychological dissonance is removed when the AI characters and world come alive as their own unique creations, with no pretense of imitating or being human... and audiences are interested in this realm of fantasy..

The Creative Concept…

At the core of the above presumption is an understanding of the creative concept as producing a result within the viewing audience that resonates deeply in a way that moves them from their present place of individual consciousness. Currently, AI creations are easily describable by a viewer in simple terms that may have simple appeal – perhaps pleasant, amusing, even trite. That simple generalization is not intended to cast aspersion on the talents of pioneering directors succeeding in stretching that envelope- and those exceptions are where the focus -and tribute - rightly needs to be . In comparison, human creations reach into and affect human viewers in ways that often defy description with a single universally accepted explanation. Truly great and timeless human creations embody deeply instinctive and intuitive chords that touch a haptic nerve within individual viewers, with the often seen effect of reverberating across the planes of the collective consciousness of the human race, otherwise separated by geography, culture, soci-economic status, and ideology. Attaining this capability, is not defined by the a priori requisite of being sentient...Instead, it derives from presently undefinable and indescribable stimuli of primordial nature that thus far has been as illusive a challenge for philosophers as the definition of other instincts, and emotional intelligence, such as love. Humans can produce this creativity despite being unable to conclusively define it, but machines can not produce what humans can not define- until and unless machines attain the capability of learning in a manner that extends beyond replication by example, which is the foundation of all present machine learning based AI. In these present circumstances, AI shall not succeed as a substitute for human creativity, and is thus another reason why AI creations are generally likely to evolve into a separate form on the spectrum of story telling, recognized as being 'different'. The exciting portent of AI 'evolution' may likely be accompanied by an entirely new descriptive shade of entertainment genre - the AI 'hallucination'... creativity origination from artificial intelligence.

To be continued and updated...

RYAN OL: Actor and Writer: TV & Film: Acting & Writing Credits and Social Media Links

Email: RYANOL.1@yandex.com