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Computer graphics and machine learning mean that old actors need never die. Hollywood has resurrected Carrie Fisher, Oliver Reed, and many others post-mortem in order to finish movies. As the technology improves to replace actors, it may be that Hollywood won’t need new ones.
The shift started about 2 years ago with the rise of Lil Miquela. A purely AI creation, Lil Miquela is a digital fashion icon/model/robot. Since then, “her” instagram account has grown to a followership of over 1.5 million people. Her followers are not confused, they know she is fake. Yet follow they do. “She” has gone so far as to score editorials in Vogue and has endorsed a series of different products.
The follow up is Shudu, another purely CGI model:
While Shudu hasn’t achieved the followership of Lil Miquela, the quality of the graphics and the accuracy of human reproduction is clearly superior. Shudu’s skin and expressions are cloyingly lifelike. If makeup is humanity’s way of looking better than real, Shudu is the computer’s version of the opposite.
