[HN Gopher] Trey Parker and Matt Stone's deep fake company annou...
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       Trey Parker and Matt Stone's deep fake company announces $20M
       investment
        
       Author : tikkun
       Score  : 88 points
       Date   : 2023-02-02 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.deepvoodoo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.deepvoodoo.com)
        
       | tiahura wrote:
       | It seems odd that the money is coming from CAA. Shouldn't they be
       | opposed to deepfakes?
        
         | CyberDildonics wrote:
         | You're assuming people are going to deepfake actors on to other
         | people instead of their younger versions on to themselves.
        
         | chatmasta wrote:
         | There is a difference between deepfakes that are openly
         | marketed as such, and deepfakes which are maliciously promoted
         | as being real videos.
         | 
         | The movie industry in general stands to benefit the most from
         | deepfakes. Imagine making a movie without paying any cast? Or
         | bringing dead actors back for new roles? There are plenty of
         | legitimate use cases for deepfakes.
         | 
         | At first glance it seems that actors would be the first victims
         | here, and so you wouldn't expect CAA (an agency representing
         | actors) to invest money into a technology that could replace
         | them. But I think it's more complicated than that.
         | 
         | Deepfakes won't "replace" actors - certainly not any time soon
         | - but will complement them and serve as a multiplier for their
         | image. Angelina Jolie can license her likeness, and directors
         | can make a movie with a deepfake Jolie. She gets paid for doing
         | no work.
         | 
         | The A-listers will be fine. The first victims will be the
         | talent that's cast as extras and minor supporting roles. There
         | wont be much of a market for deepfake clones of them, and
         | eventually some A-lister or entirely synthetic deepfakes will
         | crowd them out of their jobs.
        
       | reidjs wrote:
       | Disclaimer I've never worked in film or TV.
       | 
       | This may have potential for a smaller indie filmmakers. Have any
       | celebrity cameo for cheap in your budget film.
       | 
       | I like that this technology has the potential to lower the value
       | of being a Hollywood mega superstar.
        
         | illwrks wrote:
         | Does that not devalue the celebrity? If they are everywhere
         | then they become tiresome and then the next new one comes along
        
         | jefftk wrote:
         | You'd still need to pay the celebrity for the right to use
         | their image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
         | 
         | I think it mostly lowers the value of being the next tier down,
         | since the mega stars would no longer be limited by hours in the
         | day.
        
         | CSMastermind wrote:
         | > I like that this technology has the potential to lower the
         | value of being a Hollywood mega superstar.
         | 
         | Why would it lower the value of being a Hollywood mega
         | superstar?
         | 
         | If anything wouldn't it increase the value of being one?
         | Because now Megastar Jim Bob Jones or whoever can "appear" in
         | hundreds of movies a year and collect checks from all of them
         | for using their likeness. Instead of those roles going to
         | smaller actors who would presumably get the part today.
         | 
         | Also it makes the value of that mega superstar more valuable
         | because their deepfake won't age nor will it be encumbered by
         | their death. We could start seeing Marilyn Monroe in movies
         | again. And if you're someone like Brad Pitt, it means suddenly
         | you have an entirely new revenue stream from licensing your
         | likeness for years, decade, etc.
        
           | User23 wrote:
           | Because you prompt the AI to generate Chad Britt who looks
           | and sounds an awful lot like Brad Pitt, but not enough so to
           | infringe on his likeness rights.
        
             | strulovich wrote:
             | If your intention is for people to confuse this person with
             | Brad Pitt then you already have issues that will probably
             | get to court, at least for the first few times to be
             | decided should this be legit or no.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | Not a chance. Blurred Lines lost a copyright case for
             | seeming like it could have been a Marvin Gaye song. You
             | won't be able to use Chad Britt unless it is a satire of
             | Brad Pitt that every judge thinks is funny.
        
               | PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
               | Quite a bit of that judgement is slowly being unwound and
               | walked back.
               | 
               | Doesn't mean you're wrong about likeness cases, but the
               | Blurred Lines/Gaye ruling is far from canon at this
               | point.
        
               | fzzzy wrote:
               | It was an absolutely terrible judgement. It only happened
               | that way because it was a jury. The law doesn't justify
               | it.
        
               | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
               | Songs are copyrighted. Are faces?
        
               | schrijver wrote:
               | Yes. Well, not copyrighted, exactly, but one gets to
               | control the commercial exploitation of ones likeness.
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
        
               | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
               | Wouldn't it come down to proof of intent to exploit?
               | Surely an actor who happens to look like Brad Pitt can't
               | be prevented from working in the film industry on that
               | basis alone? I agree that calling themselves Britt Pad or
               | whatever might be crossing the line!
        
               | toss1 wrote:
               | Seems like it is one thing to hire a look-alike of Brad
               | Pitt (or your selected star), a very different thing to
               | hire another actor and then replace his/her face with
               | synthetic animated images of Brad Pitt.
               | 
               | The first would get laughed out of court. The latter
               | would be an obvious ripoff to anyone (perhaps excepting
               | some soverign-citizen-level pedants).
        
               | petemir wrote:
               | That's why we can have fake Matt Damon (a.k.a. Jesse
               | Plemons)
        
               | cma wrote:
               | You could train the model on a lookalike and have him
               | sign over rights to his (the lookalike's) likeness.
        
         | mritchie712 wrote:
         | It's already gone past indie film makers. Kendrick Lamar[0]
         | used it in his last video.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY
         | 
         | 0 - Regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time,
         | multiple Grammy Awards.
        
       | benatkin wrote:
       | I want to see derp fakes. Like
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/taxiderpy/
        
       | post_break wrote:
       | Deep fake voices are getting crazy. Match that with deep fake
       | video. nsfw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKGPhaVluvQ
        
         | trevoristall wrote:
         | Wow that's quite convincing!
        
       | jonny_eh wrote:
       | Previous discussion:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34081302
       | 
       | Here's a music video they made:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY&t=1m40s
        
         | josephd79 wrote:
         | Wow. That's crazy. Hard to tell they're fakes if it wasn't
         | disclosed.
        
         | ShredKazoo wrote:
         | Do they have to pay royalties to the people whose faces they
         | use?
        
         | brailsafe wrote:
         | Damn that was a trip
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | Sassy Justice was fun despite being a slightly low quality deep
       | fake compared to recent standards. I liked it because it was the
       | joke, rather than trying not to draw attention to the fact that
       | it's all fake.
        
         | haunter wrote:
         | I mean their Trump was pretty good, but it was more like the
         | voice that was spot on
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM&t=560s
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | The voices were deepfaked too (over an impression), I think.
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | I believe it was just Serafinowicz doing an impression.
        
         | jpeter wrote:
         | The Zuckerberg one is the best
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep-f7uBd8Gc
        
           | Waterluvian wrote:
           | I love how they intentionally do a bad job with the Deep
           | Fake, which in a way makes him more authentic.
        
           | brailsafe wrote:
           | "Stop being a bitchy old grandma" got me
        
         | ramesh31 wrote:
         | > I liked it because it was the joke, rather than trying not to
         | draw attention to the fact that it's all fake.
         | 
         | Same thing they did with South Park (and Team America). It
         | allows for more comedic freedom because you can always fall
         | back on the defense of "this is just some stupid crappy thing,
         | how could you possibly ever take it seriously".
        
           | soiler wrote:
           | Not a harmless technique. Similar to the assholes we all know
           | who say "Can't you take a joke?" after saying some really
           | mean shit and then laughing at the victim.
        
       | jasmer wrote:
       | Technology needs creative minds to make it work meaningfully,
       | they have an excellent track record here and deserve this. I
       | wouldn't want to be Tom Cruise right now ...
        
       | JumpCrisscross wrote:
       | Parker and Stone were pioneers in using CGI-originally, Maya-to
       | dramatically compress animation's reaction time. Deep Voodoo
       | makes sense as a continuation of that trend into the voice acting
       | and realistic animated domains.
        
         | ttoinou wrote:
         | What CGI they did exactly ?
        
           | filoleg wrote:
           | Pretty much the entirety of South Park series, minus the
           | pilot episode (which still used real construction paper).
           | 
           | It became increasingly obvious with time, as they started
           | doing a lot of interesting things in later seasons that
           | aren't really suited for non-CGI, like smooth camera angle
           | rotations around the scene, complex special effects, etc.
           | While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of making
           | it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode.
        
             | tzs wrote:
             | > While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of
             | making it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode
             | 
             | Which they needed because of their insane production
             | schedule.
             | 
             | New episodes air on Wednesday on Comedy Central. They have
             | to have the complete episode uploaded to Comedy Central a
             | few hours before that.
             | 
             | There are times when the Friday before they have no idea
             | what the next episode will be about. Parker and Stone
             | figure it out over the weekend, Parker writes a script, and
             | then production can start on Monday morning. That gives
             | them two days plus a few hours to go from freshly finished
             | script to complete episode.
             | 
             | They need to, even on what is for them a leisurely week
             | where they come up with they have the script by Thursday,
             | be able to see that something isn't working and needs to be
             | changed hours before air time and have their system be fast
             | enough that they can do it.
             | 
             | Around the turn of the century they actually had a more
             | powerful animation pipeline than the major animation
             | studios like Pixar or DreamWorks or the major CGI places,
             | all because they needed such fast turnaround.
        
               | zahrc wrote:
               | The documentary "6 days to air"shows how insane this
               | is...
               | 
               | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2076781/
        
           | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-02 23:01 UTC)