this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Robin Williams' daughter Zelda says AI recreations of her dad are 'personally disturbing'::Robin Williams' daughter Zelda says AI recreations of her dad are 'personally disturbing': 'The worst bits of everything this industry is'

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[–] Blapoo@lemmy.ml 139 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Disturbing is an understatement. I'd call them repulsive. Relatives should be the only ones with this power, if at all.

Sure as shit not corporations. Fuck.

[–] whatwhatwhatwhat@lemmy.world 46 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Agreed, we desperately need regulations on who has the right to reproduce another person’s image/voice/likeness. I know that there will always be people on the internet who do it anyway, but international copyright laws still mostly work in spite of that, so I imagine that regulations on this type of AI would mostly work as well.

We’re really in the Wild West of machine learning right now. It’s beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.

[–] trachemys@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It would be a shame to lose valuable things like there I ruined it, which seem to be a perfectly fair use of copyrighted works. Copyright is already too strong.

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Copyright IS too strong, but paradoxically artists' rights are too weak. Everything is aimed to boost the profits of media companies, but not protect the people who make them. Now they are under threat of being replaced by AI trained on their own works, no less. Is it really worth it to defend AI if we end up with less novel human works because of it?

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago

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[–] lloram239@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

but international copyright laws still mostly work in spite of that, so I imagine that regulations on this type of AI would mostly work as well.

The thing is, people still don't grasp the ease with which this will be possible and to a large degree already. This doesn't need hours of training anymore, you can clone voices with three seconds of audio and faces from a single image. Simple images can be clicked together in seconds with zero effort. Give it a few more years and you video can be created with equal ease.

You can regulate commercial use of somebodies likeness, which it largely already is, but people doing it for fun is unstoppable. This stuff is here today and it will get a whole lot more powerful going forward.

[–] vidarh@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Just a few years back, Vernor Vinge's scifi novels still seemed reasonably futuristic in dealing with the issue of fakes well by including several bits where the resolution of imagery was a factor in being able to analyze with sufficient certainty that you were talking to the right person, and now that notion already seems dated, and certainly not enough for a setting far into the future.

(at least they don't still seem as dated as Johnny Mnemonic's plot of erasing a chunk of your memories to transport an amount of data that would be easier and less painful to fit in your head by stuffing a microsd card up your nose)

[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yeah i don't think it should be legislated against, especially for private use [people will always work around it anyway], but using it for profit is really, viscerally wrong

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You know I'm not generally a defender of intellectual property, but I don't think in this case "not legislating because people will work around it" is a good idea. Or ever, really. It's because people will try to work around laws to take advantage of people that laws need to be updated.

It's not just about celebrities, or even just about respect towards dead people. In this case, what if somebody takes the voice of a family member of yours to scam your family or harass them? This technology can lead to unprecedented forms of abuse.

In light of that, I can't even mourn the loss of making an AI Robin Willians talk to you because it's fun.

[–] banneryear1868@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

IMO people doing it on their own for fun/expression is different than corporations doing it for profit, and there's no real way to stop that. I think if famous AI constructs become part of big media productions, it will come with a constructed moral justification for it. The system will basically internalize and commodify the repulsion to itself exploiting the likeness of dead (or alive) actors. This could be media that blurs the line and proports to ask "deep questions" about exploiting people, while exploiting people as a sort of intentional irony. Or it will be more like a moral appeal to sentimentality, "in honor of their legacy we are exploiting their image, some proceeds will support causes they cared about, we are doing this to spread awareness, the issue they are representing are too important, they would have loved this project, we've worked closely with their estate." Eventually there's going to be a film like this, complete with teary-eyed behind-the-scenes interviews about how emotional it was to reproduce the likeness of the actor and what an honor it was. As soon as the moral justification can be made and the actor's image can be constructed just well enough. People will go see it so they can comment on what they thought about it and take part in the cultural moment.

[–] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We need something like the fair use doctrine coupled with identify rights.

If you want to use X's voice and likeness in something, you have to purchase that privilege from X or X's estate, and they can tell you to pay them massive fees or to fuck off.

Fair use would be exclusively for comedy, but still face regulation. There's plenty of hilarious TikToks that use AI to make characters say stupid shit, but we can find a way to protect voice actors and creators without stifling creativity. Fair use would still require the person's permission, you just wouldn't need to pay to use it for such a minor thing -- a meme of Mickey Mouse saying fuck for example.

At the end of the day though, people need to hold the exclusive and ultimate right to how their likeness and voice are used, and they need to be able to shut down anything they deem unacceptable. Too many people are concerned with what is capable than with acting like an asshole. It's just common kindness to ask someone if you can use their voice for something, and respecting their wishes if they don't want it.

I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I'll stand by it either way -- using AI to emulate someone without their permission is a fundamental violation of their rights and privacy. If OpenAI or whoever wants to claim that makes their product unusable, tough fucking luck. Every technology has faced regulations to maintain our rights, and if a company can't survive without unbridled regulations, it deserves to die.

[–] whatwhatwhatwhat@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

This was very well stated, and I wholeheartedly agree.

[–] Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What about the third option, everyone gets to have the power?

I've seen what Marvin Gaye and Conan Doyle's relatives have done with the power. Dump it in the creative commons. Nobody should own the tonalities of a voice anyways, there quickly wouldn't be any left.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 3 points 1 year ago

In the context of close relatives being very disturbed by what is made with the person's image, I really don't think legally allowing absolutely everyone to do as they please with it will help.