Audiences may soon get to see the retired Bruce Willis in new movies as the actor becomes the first to sell his image rights for use with deepfake technology. The deal will showcase his digital twin as a virtual actor.
Bruce Willis first actor to sell rights to digital twin for deepfake technology
Although no longer able to physically act due to a debilitating disease, Bruce Willis has become the first actor to sell the rights to his “digital twin” as Hollywood embraces deepfake technology for virtual actors.
Why Bruce Willis stopped acting
Bruce Willis, after nearly 40 years of making films, stepped away from his lengthy career in which he headlined a number of blockbuster, big-budget spectacles, NBC reported.
In late March, Bruce’s daughter announced he was “stepping away” from acting after an aphasia diagnosis, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” the actor’s eldest daughter, Rumer Willis, wrote in an Instagram post back in late March.
Aphasia is a disorder affecting a person’s ability to communicate, hampering their ability to express and understand both written and spoken language, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The condition affects over 200,000 people each year and often occurs after a head injury or stroke. It can sometimes slowly develop from a growing brain tumor or other diseases.
Bruce is coming back… sort of
Bruce Willis will be coming back to the big screen after he confirmed this week that he had sold his image rights, allowing his “digital twin” to be used on-screen via deepfake technology, Unilad reported.
Willis signed the rights to his face over to Deepcake, a US-based company that makes ‘digital twins.’
Willis viewed some of the company’s work and commented on the quality.
“I liked the precision with which my character turned out,” Willis said in a statement. “It’s a mini-movie in my usual action-comedy genre.”
“For me, it is a great opportunity to go back in time,” Willis’ statement continued. “With the advent of modern technology, even when I was on another continent, I was able to communicate, work and participate in the filming.”
“It’s a very new and interesting experience, and I thank our entire team,” Willis added.
What is deepfake technology?
The term deepfake is a portmanteau (combination) of “deep learning” and “fake” to create new images or video that takes an existing image or video and replaces those with someone else’s likeness. The technology is frighteningly accurate.
How it works in one example, a live actor would perform all the moves on film. Then artificial intelligence would replace the live actor’s image with that of another person.
There are some good examples, the most famous of which used the image of Tom Cruise.
This video features deepfakes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and other leaders. Can you tell that it’s fake?
Could deepfakes bring back deceased actors from the past?
Resurrecting deceased actors in fresh footage is nothing new, it’s been done multiple times already. Those past videos were mainly superimposing videos from the past with videos from the present. However, deepfake videos are light-years ahead in realism and are expected to become even more so.
A new film with a dead star
The combination of deepfake technology and CGI is already at work to do just that. Travis Cloyd, a virtual-reality filmmaker and CEO of immersive media company Worldwide XR, hopes to bring James Dean back to the screen, ExpMag reported.
“We will cast James Dean in a secondary role as himself in an upcoming drama,” Cloyd says. “James Dean, ‘digital human,’ will play the James Dean character.”
If successful, one can only imagine films featuring other stars such as Marilyn Monroe or Elvis couldn’t be far behind.
