Hard pass. (Destiny)

by Coaxkez, Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 10:50 (163 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by Coaxkez, Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 11:21

Human mimicry is quite different from the automated variety because you're still filtering the performance through the lens of an honest-to-God human actor. For example, when Nolan North had to fill in for Nathan Fillion as Cayde-6 in Forsaken, it's true that he was doing an impression, but it's also true that he was putting his own spin on the lines. He had to make hundreds of small, yet important decisions on things like inflection, cadence, and emotion in order to maximize the impact of his performance, and those decisions were made by an artistic intuitive human mind.

AI cannot replicate that.

I do have some general concerns about AI technology, but I'm certainly not against it categorically. I don't want to be that Luddite who stands in the way of progress because he's afraid of the ways that things might change. I'm just very against this seemingly-popular notion that it is desirable to use AI as a tool to resurrect the dead or recapture the past. To invoke a specific example for illustrative purposes, I feel like general audiences were very favorable toward the Mark Hamill deepfake in The Mandalorian, but to me, it rang hollow. I felt like I was watching a sort of inhuman zombie version of Mark Hamill. Listen, the guy was 32 years old when Return of the Jedi was released. That person no longer exists. The passage of time has changed him. He's 40 years older now and you cannot turn back the clock and manifest this lifeless avatar of his younger self without running headlong into the uncanny valley. The cameo would have been much more effective if they had simply recast the part because, at the very least, we would been watching an actual human being with his own interpretation of the role.

Mmm...

To put it succinctly, when I watched Cayde-6's death scene in Forsaken for the very first time, I thought to myself, "This is a damn good performance by Nolan North, who is doing a damn good impression of Nathan Fillion." When I watched Luke Skywalker take Grogu away for his Jedi training at the end of The Mandalorian Season 2, I thought to myself, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIS FACE?!"

Lance Reddick is gone. May he rest in peace.

... May he?