Acting up over AI

Creativity is at the sharp end of the AI revolution. But other professions are sure to follow.

- Peter Griffin

In his 2002 film Simone, Kiwi director Andrew Niccol imagined the sensational rise of a Hollywood starlet that existed only as a digital creation. The movie was a critical and financial flop, but like many of Niccol's films, Gattaca and The Truman Show among them, Simone proved to be a prescient take on the future of the film business.

New artificial intelligence tools released in the past six months have made it relatively easy to produce convincing digital characters and video animations. Just check out some of the incredible images on the web that were created by the Midjourney and Stable Diffusion Al programs. Video is also getting the Al treatment.

Digitally enhanced actors and scenery are nothing new, but generative AI takes them to the next level, which is sending a shudder through the film industry. Twenty years after S1mOne, 160,000 film and TV actors who belong to the US Screen Actors Guild have gone on strike, joined by their scriptwriting colleagues in the most extensive industrial action to hit