AI: About those Digital Twins

… Abundance for individuals and businesses

One of the core issues at the heart of the current tussle between Writers/Actors and Studios, is about AI leveraging their likeness, their ‘Digital Twins’ as it were. As I’ve discussed in posts on the subject, this is an issue that will likely get worked out as more than a win/win for all parties. The latest moves to settle the differences seem to be making some progress in this direction.

But on the subject of the top actors and AI, there seems to be greater receptivity to AI than one would imagine. The Information explains here discussing Will Smith and others:

“But some A-list artists and their teams are also seeing new opportunities in the technology and working behind the scenes to cash in. “The genie’s out of the bottle,” said Todd Terrazas, executive director of AI LA, a nonprofit focused on research, development and public education centering around artificial intelligence. “My advice? Don’t put your head in the sand.”

“After all, applications in filmmaking only scratch the surface of what digital twins — as many in the industry call these digitized identities — can do. Digital twins can hawk products in customizable advertising, such as Jennifer Lopez’s “Jen AI” campaign for Virgin Cruises; or they can interact with followers, using natural-language processing and responsive behavior to engage in live conversations in fans’ native languages.”

The key is to understand here of course that digital technologies turn scarcity into abundance. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing as many would assume at first glance.

“You have your digital human performance double that you may license to filmmakers, you might license to gamers, you might license to experience creators,” said Travis Cloyd, chief technology officer of CMG Worldwide, which holds the licensing rights for dozens of celebrity estates, from Aaliyah to Judy Garland to Malcolm X.”

“They may have a version of you aged up, aged down. Maybe a younger version of you, might be an older version of you. Might be a version of you that speaks a different language for a different regional distribution solution.”

And of course, abundance opens up a lot more ways to make money, both direct and indirect:

“These developments may promise new monetization opportunities to big names willing to license out their intellectual property, but they’ve also let in a host of existential anxieties”

This all works of course in the context of individual actors, and not just the A-list stars, as the Information highlights in this other piece:.

“The striking actors aren’t wrong to be worried: The brave new world of digital doubles is undoubtedly going to empower bad actors and produce outcomes that could make the Black Mirror episode “Joan Is Awful” look like a true-crime documentary. But it also will carry real upside, and not just for celebrities.”

The broader question of course is what happens when ‘Creators’ on the internet are given agency to take multiple ‘digital twins’ and combine them in creative ways.

In many ways, we’ve already seen this movie, in the music industry. Since the dawn of digital musical technologies like synthesizers, MIDI and other mechanisms, we’ve seen an explosion of ‘sampling’ in the music industry that has created a gusher of creative output over the past few decades, across genres from rap to hip-hop to jazz, rock and far beyond.

The question is what happens when LLM AI technologies are used on these ‘scarce’ pools of existing content, and then generate new takes and mixes of the content. Artists like Grimes and others are leaning into this future.

We’re going to get a take on this in other areas as well like Sports. For example. Google and the NFL are building on their recent seven year, $2 billion annual deal between the NFL and Google’s YouTube. There are potentially further discussions around commercial licenses where the NFL could license some NFL Sports content for Google YouTube to allow it’s “Creators” to leverage in unique ways online.

Many of course will undoubtedly use LLM AI technologies in addition to manual creativity to create new takes on countless plays on the field. Something that’s been a staple on YouTube already for years by creators commenting and displaying plays and replays, sometimes in sketch form where they didn’t have access to the original video, will now see a fountain of creative use and hopefully consumer engagement.

Separately, coming back to Music, just this week we saw YouTube ‘teaming up’ on AI with one of the largest Music Publishing companies, Universal Music Group:

“YouTube is partnering with Universal Music Group and a number of artists, including singer Rosanne Cash and producer Don Was, to experiment with artificial intelligence in the music business.”

“The newly formed Music AI Incubator, which includes other partners such as rapper Yo Gatti and the estate of singer Frank Sinatra, will explore and offer feedback on AI-related tools with the goal of getting more artists involved with the technology, Universal Chief Executive Lucian Grainge said in a blog post Monday.”

“YouTube Chief Executive Neal Molan underscored in his own post that the streaming video giant intends to enforce copyrights and monitor its service for unauthorized use of an artist’s voice. AI-generated videos on YouTube were viewed more than 1.7 billion times this year alone. The goal of the incubator is to find ways for performers to profit from the new technology.”

And ‘Digital Twins’ are not just relegated to likenesses of actors, works by musicians, text by writers, and plays by athletes.

As Jensen Huang, CEO/Founder of Nvidia has often highlighted in his keynotes, as he discusses his vision for ‘Accelerated Computing” on Nvidia’s Omniverse Cloud services.

There as he describes it, ‘Digital Twins’ have endless uses in businesses large and small, in manufacturing, logistics, scientific research and a wide range of applications:

“Looking to extend its lead, Nvidia announced the Omniverse Cloud, a suite of services in the cloud that lets creators and developers collaborate at any time, using any device.”

“Extended to vast scales, a digital twin is a virtual world that’s connected to the physical world,” Huang said. “It is the next evolution” of the internet.Countless companies are already using LLM AI technologies to create massive digital versions of factory floors, warehouses, and other facilities way before expensive ground is broken and buildings are built from scratch. The opportunities to plan, train, and manage business processes at every step are open-ended, as we again take products of scarcity and apply the pixie dust of abundance. And it’s barely gotten started with LLM AI technologies on this front as well.”

So ‘Digital Twins’ are a potent item to watch for in AI applications and services, as seen in Box 6 in the AI Tech Stack I’ve discussed at length before. They are as important in terms of AI products and services to come as ChatGPT is today, and as the ‘Smart Agents’ and ‘Everything Apps’ strived for tomorrow, by so many companies large and small.

We’re going to see them used by A-list actors and musicians, but more importantly by a vast number of ordinary folks on the internet, who will create amazing content, products and services to come. I daresay that some of these possibilities are not even in the $250 billion “Creator Economy” projected by Goldman Sachs in their recent report, to grow to almost $500 billion by 2027.

We’re already seeing experimentation with AI around digital twins with regular online creators, as discussed before:

A lot of interesting AI innovation is ahead of us over the next three years in particular, and not all of it will be successful. And it will take longer to work out the technologies, regulations, and business agreements than we think. And much will be litigated in the courts before we have clearer directions on where we’re going. We’ve seen tougher issues worked out in earlier big tech waves like the PC and the Internet. And that served us well as stepping stones to the possibilities ahead.

So watch out for ‘digital twins’ and ‘smart agents’ to play a bigger role in what we all do online. Lot more net good to come in the years ahead. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)

(You can also subscribe to my Newsletter “AI: A Reset to Zero” for free on Substack for more content like this.)