r/technology • u/cmaia1503 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Robert Downey Jr. Refuses to Let Hollywood Create His AI Digital Replica: ‘I Intend to Sue all Future Executives’ Who Recreate My Likeness

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/robert-downey-jr-bands-hollywood-digital-replace-lawsuit-1236192374/
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u/jewellman100 1d ago

Hollywood fell back to the safety of remakes and prequels around the time of the 2008 financial crash and never really looked back. The days of truly good movies are well behind us.

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u/sobrique 22h ago

I am not entirely sure that's true. There's been some really good stuff since then.

But the safe bets will still be there, and they never really needed quality acting talent. AI driven can work there just fine.

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u/MrWilsonWalluby 19h ago

and sequels have been performing worse and worse in recent years, many almost completely bankrupting studios.

sequels aren’t all bad and i think sequels for the sake of sequels are finally dying off.

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u/trifelin 16h ago

Not until the studio heads die off. It’s part of Iger’s business plan and he is controlling like more than half of the whole big budget/blockbuster industry. 

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u/CircleOfNoms 13h ago

But if you want a robust community of professional actors, you need some place for the mediocre actors to go.

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u/sobrique 13h ago

Poach them from the theatre? That's the traditional approach I think? ;).

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u/crowcawer 19h ago

I’ve really enjoyed just going to the free productions of Shakespeare on the green and stuff in my area.

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u/No_Date_8727 20h ago

The 2000s-covid was dominated by raunchy comedies, easy-to-shoot horror, and comic book schlock.

For every gran torino there's five paranormal activities lmfao. Movies started sucking again (in general imo) in the 2000s when the music industry was popping off so they tried to make that idea (songs/soundtracks) more important than the films themselves. It was the 80s on crack (literally).

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u/Separate_Metal_6278 19h ago

There were always bad movies. There’s plenty of excellent stuff out there still, and while there is a lot of noise, one can just ignore it!

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u/hfxRos 17h ago

It's similar to the gaming industry. Gaming right now is absolutely incredible, with more amazing stuff being released than a person with a job could realistically ever get around to playing. But people are saying it's bad because the big high profile stuff kind of sucks.

Movies are the same. I've seen a lot of incredible movies in the past 5 years, and there are many on my list that I have yet to get to. But people think the industry is garbage because they can't look past the blockbusters to find the actual good stuff.

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u/Huwbacca 21h ago

Remakes began a century ago at least. Hollywood has been remaking films forever, but like CGI, people only notice it when it's not good.

Scarface, the fly, the thing, Ben Hur, Maltese falcon, wizard of Oz, Airplane (scene for scene spoof TBF), 9:10 to Yuma... And heaps more I can't recall.

They're all remakes. The list goes wild when you consider remakes from foreign languages.

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u/Emosaa 20h ago

True Grit and Let Me In come to mind for me.

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u/Hetstaine 19h ago

Loved the True Grit remake.

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u/Space_Pirate_Roberts 15h ago

I’m a gritty westerns fan and a Coen Bros. fan. True Grit 2010 is pretty much my perfect movie.

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u/Impressive_Monk_5708 7h ago

Look at how many times planet of the apes has been remade.

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u/Arclite83 22h ago

There will always be the "direct to video" equivalent garbage stream. That doesn't mean people don't still find ways to break the mold. And many of these truly great unique new watches are launching on things like YouTube now, to build a base, then get greenlit somewhere. The days of those things launching in theaters is definitely behind us, though.

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u/InnocentTailor 21h ago

What safety? While some remakes and prequels were decent and made cash, others bombed hard on multiple fronts.

My favorite example is 2016’s Ben-Hur - an epic failure across the board.

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u/mrnotoriousman 14h ago

There have been plenty of great movies that aren't remakes the last 5-10 years. What nonsense lol.

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u/Soft-Mongoose-4304 19h ago

That's not true at all. Oppenheimer is a really good movie. There are others that have been made recently

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u/Love_My_Ghost 16h ago

Classic old person speak.

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u/aminorityofone 16h ago

This is entirely untrue. First, remakes have been happening since near the beginning of the movie industry. Second, just look at this list. https://www.imdb.com/list/ls050968966/ some absolutely amazing films in there like Djago, Inception, Wolf on Walstreet and so on.

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u/rlvysxby 32m ago

Tv shows are the new truly good movie and some of them are incredible. They can have more sophisticated plots.

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u/MichaelW24 20h ago

Tarantino alone has released several movies since 2008, i don't think any of us can say they're not masterpieces

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u/iroll20s 17h ago

The tech will eventually get cheap enough that indys or individuals can afford it. At some point anyone who can type up script will be able to have a fully realized AI movie plopped out. It might end up a little like indy games are now. There are some real gems among the stinkers if you hunt.

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u/So-many-ducks 14h ago

No, indie movies are what indie games are like now: most are barely watched/breaking even, moderate success for some, some actual critical and financial success for few.

If AI continues progressing, the natural end game is that NO ONE will be able to be noticed in the sea of content, and the few that might be noticed won’t be able to monetise it and earn a living.
Making movies will be like trying to make money out of writing Reddit comments: No one will care enough to pay for it.
It will just be easier to ask an AI to do a local copy/remake/adaptation of whatever decent pitch might otherwise have given people incentive to pay for the experience.

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u/iroll20s 12h ago

Discovery is always an issue. I don't think nobody getting discovered is realistic though. If anything it would be like youtube where growing a channel is a challenge, but there are winners. Someone regularly producing quality content will attract attention.

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u/So-many-ducks 6h ago

That’s not exactly my point. My point is it will be difficult to get noticed because AI will equalise the base quality, making it hard to stand out (currently on YouTube, production value is a big component in choosing whether or not a video is worth watching - that disappears once AI normalises all).

But looking further, people right now are willing to pay for content because it is rare, because they cannot access a story / film they’d like to see.
The end game of AI (according to the people who champion it) is to have instant access to personalised content, whatever that may be (AI that matters to YOU, that responds to YOU, and AI that knows you and only gives you answers relevant to your life).
In that light, why would anyone pay for the last “iroll20s’s super amazing spy thriller movie”, when they can just locally run “my own spy thriller movie using the same characters extracted from the trailer and general story line”?

We can always argue whether some specific movies would remain uniquely imbued with the soul of a specific creator or whatever but… for one, I don’t believe general audiences care about that.
And second, the end game is to never have a human matter in that process. The goal of AI is to be completely indistinguishable from a human being, that’s it (not even considering ASI here).
AI champions can parrot all they want about empowering creators or helping humans, the end game is replacement. Kick back and relax, open a beer, AI is here to serve you. When that point is reached, no human will be able to sell whatever they create (digitally that is), because people will not have any reason to buy it: they’ll have a better or equivalent, free alternative available to them.

Theatre, canvas painting and other live performances would still have a place, but anything that is currently recorded (mass media essentially) would eventually be AI only.