Using Deepfake in Trek... Yes or no?

In my opinion there are a lot of possible interesting uses of this technology, not all scary, it also will affect the society a lot, and while certainty it will be misused doing so it will also mean that people will have to consider who is showing them something, just like today we (If we have enough experience and will) check who writes something.

 

Jor-El was basically a Deepfake AI.

 

Agreed. I'm far more concerned about the writers they'd turn loose on that kind of thing than I am with what the animators would do.

 

I don't see any benefit to this technology. I'm completely biased and I'll own that. But, I don't see how it is useful or beneficial to humankind.

 

If it provides entertainment to a significant number of people it provides what is probably the most widely-sought and therefore most bankable benefit in the world after food, water and shelter.

 

Well, as long as people are entertained why question it?

 

The effect this kind of technology will have on the entertainment industry is by far the least questionable issue.

Still, it is coming, it can’t be stopped.

 

It's all questionable. Telling me it is inevitable will not stop the questioning.

 

But you questioning it won’t stop the technology.

 

Exactly. It's coming.

I respect that you feel strongly about the topic. If I felt that strongly about something, I'd be organizing people to push for laws against it.

 

All entertainment is questionable within someone's moral framework. So what?

I question the usefulness and benefits of STD, and claim the high ground.

 

on the other hand, laws against the technology itself will only push it in the background, making harder to understand and fight against its misuses.

NB: I’m all in favor of laws against those misuses, however most laws proposed on the topic, both in the US and in my own country, clearly show that who wrote them don’t understand the technology at all, wouldn’t solve the issues and would create new ones.

 

I agree with you there too. Laws trying to prevent something rarely work, IMO because they tend to simplify the subject.

Funny enough, about 25 years ago I had a conversation on this topic with a friend who worked as an electrical engineer, I think for HP, working on designing scanners. I told him that there would one day be new episodes of TOS with Shatner, Nimoy et al, and that they would be convincing, difficult to tell from the originals in terms of image quality. Speaking as a photographer, I put this at about 10-20 years out; speaking as an EE, he told me that it was impossible :-)

(In that same conversation I told him that there would one day be computers which worked with things like "maybe" and "probably" in addition to "yes" and "no". As an EE he told me that that was impossible as well. We're now on the verge of quantum computing.)

 

Well, there is dialogue from the 90s 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites video games (and Secret of Vulcan Fury, if it can be found) featuring the entire original cast. This could be edited and fashioned into new episodes, it's already being tried:





Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan and Majel Barrett are gone but we could get one more round with the original crew.

 

Here's what I have learned in advocating for laws against things like this-people don't care. Those who write the laws don't see the problem, and the rest are just following the money. To me it is more of a ethical concern and how you treat someone else's visage and image and putting words in to their mouth. On the surface that might sound relatively harmless. But, to me, it removes any sense of human agency to control what their image is used for. What frustrates me the most isn't that the technology is inevitable-lots of tech is and I've found much of it questionable. What frustrates me is the apathy towards the tech. As long as fan service gets satisfied then any concerns are written off.

That's my frustration. The apathy, the lack of concern, the dehumanization of choice. I hope people are satisfied with efforts to recapture the heroes of their youth.

 

Honestly, I feel that using this for mainstream entertainment with the permission of the original actor (eg: Mark hamill) it their estate (Peter Cushing) impales when the Same technology is already been used without the owner of the face’ consent, see deepfake porn and the politically motivated videos.

 

Damn you, you have intrigued me as to whether it might be possible to improve the quality of my fan edit voice clips... On the plus side, I will take some time to watch my TMP edit over the Bank holiday.

If you have a spare 5 minutes and you are willing to download the voice clip "Do you suppose she knows?" (from Miri) from the Yarn.co voice clip site, I'd be really intrigued to see how it performs.

 

I like the idea that the last Marilyn Monroe movie could be completed, I could see Connery in OHMSS or even get a TOS movie set during the series.

I have concerns about both the quality of the recreations and the writing, but few about actually doing it.

 

As far as Trek goes, the holy grail for me would be fan edits of STII,III, IV, V, and VI with the same version of Saavik, including the line from STII where Spock confirms she is half Romulan. At least with Vulcans, it doesn't matter if the voice cloning lacks emotion. I think it would be easy enough to overdub the name Valeris with Saavik even if the lip sync wasn't great.

The main problem would probably be that the actress's heads are different shapes so it would simply not look good. As a quick experiment I tried replacing Yeoman Atkins with Yeoman Rand in the Deadly Years and the shape of the head - the chin in particular - makes all the difference.