Will Human-Like Actors Replace Real Ones?

Replacement may inspire resistance.

Imagine a scenario in the future where human-like robots are in many workplaces. Some may even participate in business meetings by providing briefings on certain subjects or preparing instant minutes of what was discussed and decided. They will be sophisticated machines and everyone will know it. They may even patiently listen to the stories you’ve told before.

Okay, set business aside and let’s shift to more glamorous territory.

Will the motion picture industry replace human actors with artificially created performers?

My initial suspicion was in the affirmative. Although such a decision would be cruel for an industry known as The Dream Factory, the words of comedian Fred Allen come to mind:

“You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.”

Nonetheless, even ruthlessness has its limits, particularly in a place that pretends to be altruistic, and going full AI in film casting would be a very big and risky leap.

Why?

Because a human audience continues to prefer human performers.

When television came along, there were nervous predictions that movie theaters would be finished as people saved money and time by hunkering down in front of the box in their living room.

Didn’t happen. TV didn’t kill the motion picture business, and the motion picture business did not kill live theater. There continue to be stage performances in cities throughout the nation.

In a related realm, one might think that the ability and convenience of being able to purchase a recording of an excellent musical performance would be the death knell for live performances of symphonies and individual performers.

That hasn’t happened.

Music fans never sat in an auditorium to listen to a player piano.

So too with sports. We can easily watch sports events on television, but people still take the time (and spend a great deal of money) to attend baseball, football, basketball, tennis, golf and other matches.

Would those audiences show up to watch robots, however life-like and impressive those robots may be?

I doubt it. We want to be out among our fellow human beings.

This doesn’t mean that the epidemic of loneliness is being solved. You can be lonely in a crowd, but it does indicate that there is a poetry to live events that cannot be duplicated.

That poetry is a potential magic. Something especially moving or memorable may happen.

In many cases, the poetry isn’t just on stage. Although symphony audiences are pretty subdued, the crowds at rock concerts seem to regard themselves as part of the performance. The atmosphere is very different from the old “You sit and listen while I perform” social contract. There is a new role – Audience Member – and if you put your money down and show up, you’re in the cast.

Just be sure to buy a t-shirt and some CDs before you leave the arena.

The film industry, of course, studies this stuff. Over the years, the studios have made some creative attempts at introducing the non-human.

Way back in 1946, Disney’s Song of the South film, which was based on the Uncle Remus tales, had people interacting with cartoon characters.

In 1964, Dick Van Dyke danced alongside some cartoon penguins in Mary Poppins.

In 1988, Bob Hoskins and the “toons” gave brilliant performances in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. (There are those who believe Jessica Rabbit deserved an Oscar, if not four or five sequels.)

Remove human beings from those films, however, and you have cartoons. However well made, they are not going to have the same connection to the audience.

The actors often form a bond with the audience that goes far beyond a particular film. That’s why casting is crucial. An AI-formed cast would not come close to developing the intense fan allegiance and followings that human actors can create.

There is a chance that Hollywood may make an AI and human casting mix into a guessing game somewhat as the 1963 movie The List of Adrian Messenger did when it hid Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Burt Lancaster in disguises that were so cleverly done that the audience didn’t know until the end of the film who was who.

Revealing certain performers as AI creations, however, would not be a pleasant human surprise. It would instead be seen as a warning; an admission that the film studio executives took a bold step forward in a campaign to reduce jobs for real human beings.

The Dream Factory would become The Scheme Factory.

There is a unique power and appeal to the human being. A genuine actor, as oxymoronic as that description may sound, is a real actor who possesses the knowledge and ability to connect to other people.

The old joke that people would pay to watch certain actors read the telephone book is correct. (Charles Laughton, James Earl Jones, Richard Burton, Christopher Walken, Katherine Hepburn, and Peter Lorre would have been hits.)

In the future, the genuine actor issue may be the canary in the coal mine; a key indicator to warn us when danger is drifting in.

If we ever get to the point where AI-created characters are able to elicit the same emotions and sense of connection to the audience that human performers do, we will have either seen a major advance in AI or a decline in the emotional health of human beings. Perhaps both.

Think it over and then go watch a movie.