Hollywood actors have been ringing the alarm bells over an industry that’s seemingly hellbent on replacing them with AI.
And the general public appears to be on their side. Last year, a talent studio drew enormous and near-universal backlash after announcing the creation of an AI-generated “actress.”
Even recently deceased Hollywood movie stars are fair game. During an ongoing industry trade show in Las Vegas, filmmakers behind an upcoming indie film featuring an AI-rendered version of iconic actor Val Kilmer, who’s set to take a prominent role in the film — despite having died from cancer at the age of 65 last year.
Kilmer was initially cast as a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist before his death, as Variety reports, but was too sick to be part of the movie. His estate stepped in, allowing the filmmakers to use generative AI to wrap up production of the film, which features the extraordinarily on-the-nose title of “As Deep as the Grave.”
“Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me,” the AI Kilmer tells a child in a trailer released at the trade show.
A clip shared by Variety and uploaded to YouTube shows Kilmer’s face conveniently cast in shadow underneath a deep hood while riding a horse. Other scenes also appear to be making liberal use of AI, resulting in a heavily-sharpened visual style that didn’t go unnoticed.
“The full trailer seems AI,” a commenter wrote.
“Very fitting that this trailer includes a scene where a corpse is unceremoniously yanked out of the ground,” another user joked.
The inclusion of the late actor reignited a fiery debate over the use of a celebrity’s likeness following their death. We’ve already seen plenty of other Hollywood stars posthumously returning to the sliver screen without their express consent, including Carrie Fisher, Paul Walker, and James Dean.
However, generative AI has supercharged this trend, greatly lowering the barriers to entry compared to CGI. Even everyday users are now able to generate videos of the dead, using toos like OpenAI’s since-discontinued text-to-video app Sora.
“This is truly the MOST disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” actor Jackson Rathbone, of “Twilight” fame, tweeted in an expletive-laden post.
“Hey SAG-AFTRA, about that strike we had…” he added, referring to the trade union Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, whose members went on strike for 118 days in 2023 to secure protections against AI. “You owe us an explanation.”
Rathbone also singled out Kilmer’s daughter, Mercedes, for assisting the filmmakers.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but this move begs the question… are you sorry for your loss?” he wrote. “Or are you capitalizing on your father’s death for your own financial gain?”
Kilmer’s daughter told Variety in a statement that her father “always looked at emerging technologies with optimism as a tool to expand the possibilities of storytelling.” Indeed, after he lost his ability to speak due to throat cancer, Kilmer dabbled in using AI technology to clone his voice.
“This spirit is something that we are all honoring within this specific film, of which he was an integral part,” she added.
But given the resoundingly negative reaction the early look at the film drew online, the filmmakers still have a lot of convincing to do.
“More grotesque digital necromancy,” analyst JP Gownder wrote in a scathing post on Bluesky.
More on AI and dead actors: “Alien: Romulus” Used AI to Bring Back Dead Actor
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