AI in Entertainment Work by Raiyan Laksamana
artificial intelligence and other technologies are tools which can help or harm people
artificial intelligence and other technologies are tools which can help or harm people
Raiyan has graciously written some thoughts from an animation production perspective in Asia. They have some ideas for specifically how AI and the management of performers’ voices and likenesses can be handled well to the benefit of everyone: producers, talent and everyone involved.
Here are their insights:
My company, Visi 8 Entertainment Studio is an intellectual property (IP) developer, based in Indonesia. We are currently just starting publishing a comic worldwide, and adapting it into animation production. My background in the past includes working from the bottom of food-chain in the media industry, starting as offline editor at TV stations and in movies, living on the street, working as a video colorist, VFX (visual effects) compositor, 3D artist, VFX Supervisor (visual effects), an occasional CG and animation director, producer, in business development and now as the president director of an IP company.
So I’ve worked in every level of hierarchy. The daily struggle and grind on each level.
As I worked as a VFX Supervisor in Japan and Southeast Asia, I became acquainted with AI. Before the ChatGPT driven ‘renaissance’, I had already tested some artificial intelligence (AI) tools that really helped my crew to work efficiently. We could start coming home to our families much more often, have a better quality of life. And it’s always the exec producers, and the money guy, who pushed us back into the boiler room for more work, the same shitty pay, and away from our own life, asking us to “do what’s best for the company, because the company is your life.” Again. They even got the nerve to ask us to get into life insurance and name the company as the beneficiary. They pushed us to leave our spouses and kids because it’s the ‘natural cycle’ or get replaced by tools that we create on our own. Fuck that.
It’s the hyper capitalistic mentality that is what’s driving the wonderful tools into a threat. AI is just a tool. It has no inherent good or evil. It’s the people in hierarchical power within the production or economic ecosystem who would use such wonderful tools for a self-profit maximizing policy. And it’s their policies that dehumanize us. And they ask us to develop more tools to maximize the sufferings. The irony.
After years of slave like hard work, two divorces, defrauded so many times from our own life and rights, being near death from overworking, being gaslighted as a third world citizen that we’re less than a human, and countless mental breakdowns, I set off on a soul-search.
In animation projects before my own company existed, I’d become acutely aware on the plight of voice talent (actors and actress just starting out), animators and other crews that are essential nuts and bolts of a production. They are constantly eclipsed by the higher caste who seemed to gobble up the lion share of benefits and policy making, while we lived shoulder to shoulder in trenches.
So I just quit and worked the hell out to building my own company. I am blessed to find a huge investor group that can understand the industry, and thus we made an IP company. It’s a company where we develop a long term slate, giving artists a royalty share, and even incubate them to have their own IP.
In the case of animation voice talent, they are acutely nervous about voice cloning tech. And so we came to a deal:
- they will get paid in full for regular voice session,
- an extra portion every single time we used their voice for cloning on some critical revisions,
- and are starting to introduce that they can actually make an IP out of their voice.
We’re even making a union that can balance what creators need and what a sustainable IP needs. IP became a unifying force above the company and creators. It makes all the people work within a consensus.
And we are in process of creating platforms where all creatives can post their IP, their rules, have a chance to access investments, and we’re researching on how to use technology in projects with which we can track the the use of Talent IP within a production, without anyone being able to manipulate it. It’s protected by sustainable policies.
Like so many struggling artists, I came across some of these technologies initially because of being lured by desperation to seek out fortune to get myself out of the gutter on a tech dream. And I found the tech itself.
Going against dogma and/or urges that say, “it’s okay to maximize profit without regards to each other.”
It’s about building an ecosystem that both trusted by creators and investors alike. Restraining that instinct of hyper profiteering, into a sustainable long-term ecosystem instead of a cancerous growth. Humanizing humans again. Humanizing policies again. Tools is just tools.
© Copyright May 17, 2023, Raiyan Laksamana, all rights reserved visi8.com
David August is an award-winning actor, acting coach, writer, director, and producer. He plays a role in the movie Dependent’s Day, and after its theatrical run, it’s now out on Amazon (affiliate link). He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, on the TV show Ghost Town, and many others. His artwork has been used and featured by multiple writers, filmmakers, theatre practitioners, and others to express visually. Off-screen, he has worked at ad agencies, start-ups, production companies, and major studios, helping them tell stories their customers and clients adore. He has guest lectured at USC’s Marshall School of Business about the Internet.
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