Welcome to Virtual Hollywood
Unlike members of BTS, musicians in one of Korea’s latest music sensations won’t have to worry about getting drafted into the military. Not because they aren’t men, but because they aren’t real. K-Pop band Mave is a quartet of incredibly lifelike AI characters created by Korea’s Kakao Entertainment. They are just one of the myriad examples author Robin Raskin found in her deep dive into the virtual humans industry.
Paul McCartney returns forever to his mop-top vigor in a recreation by HyperReal. The startup is allowing stars to establish verifiable, licensable virtual likenesses to combat the proliferation of celebrity deepfakes—like a sham Tom Hanks hawking dental plans on social media. Another company, Metaphysic, has signed on a number of A-listers to create digital doppelgangers, including Octavia Spencer, Anne Hathaway, and the actual Tom Hanks. Many performers are warming up to the idea that, rather than fight AI mimicry, they need to stake a claim to the tech—and royalties.
At the Techonomy Promise and Peril of AI conference last month, Kerry Washington expressed her own enthusiasm, with caveats. “It’s that idea of proving that it’s worthwhile, proving that it’s true, proving that I gave my consent,” she said, “that this AI that’s been created utilizing my talent is something that I gave permission for; and that I should be compensated for it.”
Charting an equitable path for AI in entertainment was one of the main challenges facing Fran Drescher as she led the Hollywood actors' strike to a beneficial conclusion for the SAG-AFTRA union. Dresher earns a spot on our Worthy 100 list of people doing the most to make the world better for her leadership in that effort and her inspirational writing, producing, and acting.
(We’ll be honoring more women pioneers with our Groundbreaking Women awards. You can submit your own nominations online.)
Turning from the virtual to the physical world, author Rob Pegoraro describes how new and not-so-new technologies can help to stem the much-hyped (though perhaps overhyped) epidemic of retail theft in the U.S. Security cameras have been around for decades, but machine-vision-powered cameras can gather a lot more information for catching would-be thieves. Other measures include power tools that function only after the cashier unlocks an RFID tag.
But tech alone won’t solve urban problems. Much of it comes down to rediscovering the mixed-use cityscapes that existed for centuries before cities were sectioned off into office, retail, and residential segments. That way, a decline of in-office work doesn’t create ghost towns (but it can substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions, as a new study by Cornell and Microsoft finds).
Let’s end 2023 on that note. Technology can enhance our lives and work—if we exercise responsibility and creativity in how, when, and where we use it.
—Sean Captain, executive editor
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This year, we are celebrating the women who push our society toward new levels of progress with our annual Groundbreaking Women List.
Worth Media Group returns to Davos to host a series of conversations on the impact of AI on business and society. (Learn more or register.)
All sessions of our recent conference on “The Promise and Peril of AI” are available to watch for free. Here’s a sampling:
What we’re reading