Why This Star Urges Actors to Fight Back Against AI
Movieguide® Contributor
Nicolas Cage is taking a stance against AI and wants young actors everywhere to put up a fight too.
“The veteran A-Lister was making a speech ahead of his Icon Award reception [the 25th Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday] during the fete’s Honors Brunch taking place at the Balboa Bay Resort,” Deadline reported, “which also featured honorees like June Squibb, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Colman Domingo and more.”
“Film performance, to me, is very much a handmade, organic, from-scratch process,” the NATIONAL TREASURE actor said. “It’s from the heart, it’s from the imagination, it’s from thoughts and detail and thinking and honing and preparing.”
He went on to discuss how AI takes from authentic acting and moviemaking.
“There is a new technology in town,” Cage said. “It’s a technology that I didn’t have to contend with for 42 years until recently. But these 10 young actors, this generation, most certainly will be, and they are calling it EBDR.”
“This technology wants to take your instrument. We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums,” said Cage, who previously won a Movieguide® Teddy Bear Award® for his performance in KNOWING.
EBDR stands for employment-based digital replica. It’s one of the two digital replica tools that was allowed in the SAG-AFTRA strike deal with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers last year.
“This type of generative AI is created through the performer’s physical participation for a specific project under the terms of employment,” Deadline said. “While EBDR’s rules negate the draw of cost-saving measures for AI — as in, employees who work less days as a result of EBDR will still be paid for the EBDR days — there are differing rules for Schedule F performers who make over 80,000 for a film and are assumed to have the leverage necessary to negotiate their own terms.”
“The studios want this so that they can change your face after you’ve already shot it — they can change your face, they can change your voice, they can change your line deliveries, they can change your body language, they can change your performance,” Cage warned his audience.
Cage cited his appearance in THE FLASH, which was created with EBDR.
He previously told Yahoo Entertainment that THE FLASH scene he saw in theaters wasn’t the one he filmed.
“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. I did not do that,” he said. “That was not what I did.”
“I’m asking you, if you’re approached by a studio to sign a contract, permitting them to use EBDR on your performance, I want you to consider what I am calling MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination — my performance, in response,” he said at the Newport Beach Festival. “Protect your instrument.”
Movieweb added that Cage’s fear of studios adopting AI tools like this is founded as more and more studios use tech like EBDR to cut costs.
“NATIONAL TREASURE star Nicolas Cage is opening up about his fears regarding artificial intelligence, especially as an actor…”
READ MORE: NICOLAS CAGE FEARS AI WILL ‘STEAL MY BODY’
Cage said in a previous conversation with THE NEW YORKER, “I’m terrified of that (AI). I’ve been very vocal about it.”
“And it makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up?” he continued. “Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!”
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