There were a lot of problems with “Solo: a Star Wars Story,” a subject Doomcock covered quite adequately. One of the problems was that the actor hired to play Han Solo in no way resembled the Han Solo we know and love. He wasn’t written like Han, and that was a fault of the writers. He didn’t have Han’s charisma, and that’s the actor and director. He didn’t sound like Han, nor did he look like Han; these are problems but not necessarily blame-worthy, though a different choice of actor would have solved those.
But we’re entering a new era where some of the unsolvable problems just might be solvable. The actor you’ve hired doesn’t look like the actor they’re replacing? You can fix that in post. The video below (maaaaybe… youTube seems to be working now, but who knows) shows the results of Just Some Guy processing some scenes from “Solo” through the “Deep Fake” AI system which replaces faces. The results here are kinda deep in uncanny valley, but the results are also based on One Guy with no budget to speak of, using an early version of the system.
Imagine what Disney would be able to achieve if they put their mind to it. Or imagine what the average schmoe would be able to do five to ten years from now. Or a little disturbingly, imagine what political operatives, blackmailers, scumbags of all stripes will be able to do in creating fake videos of people doing things they didn’t do. Couple the video capability to a computer voice synthesizer that can do a proper job of Rich Littling a recognizable voice, and you can finally attain those yearned-for halcyon days when video evidence is no longer in any way reliable. So Joe Schmoe is running for office and suddenly a video comes out showing him kicking puppies, worshiping Satan and talking ina theater. One side will automatically Just Know that the video is true. the other side will Just Know that the video is an AI-produced fake. Huzzah. And even betterer thought: imagine an AI system that just cranks fake vids out all by its lonesome and floods the internet with ten thousand clips an hour. Some will be nonsensical, but the sheer volume will make video evidence of *anything* untrustworthy. Russians walking on the moon in ’68. Hitler strolling the streets of Beunos Aires in 1953. JFK and Elvis meeting President Reagan at a strip club.
Same feller did the video below which swaps out various James Bond characters with different actors. Most are… meh. the “Clint Eastwood” version, for example, looks terrible. But Elon Musk as James Bond in Goldfinger? Friggen’ brilliant. And my brain is still smarting over Rowan Atkinson…
“You’ll release the…” Snerk.