It’s immortality, Jim, but not as we know it
First they copy your voice, then they change your age, until finally they buy the rights to your synthetic image so they can do whatever they want with it after you’re dead.
James Dean, who died at the wheel of his Porsche on September 30, 1955 after appearing in only three, albeit highly acclaimed, films, will be cast in “Back to Eden” almost seventy years after his death, thanks to a deepfake algorithm that has recreated his image, voice and movements. This is the second attempt to make a film with the actor, after a 2019 project was cancelled.
Dean is not the first actor to be resuscitated: Carrie Fisher was brought back to life three years after her death in 2016 to appear in “The Rise of Skywalker”, although the scenes were created by CGI using unreleased scenes from “The Force Awakens”. Now, it is no longer necessary to resort to such techniques: an algorithm can be trained with footage of previous movies and the avatar can be directed digitally, just like Charlie Brooker predicted in the first episode of the sixth season of “Black Mirror”, featuring Salma Hayek in “Joan is Awful”.
But the James Dean we will see in Back to Eden will be more than a digital clone: his AI avatar will not only play a flat-screen role in “Back to Eden” and potentially a series of sequels, but also interact with audiences via virtual…
