While artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics in Hollywood right now, it’s stuntmen’s turn to worry about the progress that could well make their profession obsolete.
While the scriptwriters’ and actors’ strike is still raging in the United States, the question of artificial intelligence and its impact is on everyone’s lips. The fear of being replaced by AI is indeed widely discussed and the creation of limits very often requested.
As announced by France Info, it is now the stuntmen’s turn to express themselves on the subject, the threat being, for them too, very real. Many studios, to save money, use new technologies to generate silhouettes by computer during on-screen stunts. Some even go so far as to “body scan” their stuntmen and extras in order to obtain a 3D digital version to exploit – a realistic modeling that the AI will be able to make move or talk as it pleases and which could well replace those whose job it is.
“Technology is improving exponentially. […] It’s a really scary time [pour nous]”, explains stunt coordinator Freddy Bouciegues (via France Info) who notably worked on the sixth installment of the Terminator franchise – a franchise which incidentally puts AI and the catastrophic consequences it could have at the heart of its history.
PROGRESS TOO RAPID
For Neill Blomkamp, the director of Gran Turismo, the profession of stuntman could also disappear quickly. In his current sensational film, real people drive the on-screen race cars. One scene, however, used the AI, but justified since it involved a fatal accident. However, according to the filmmaker, within a year all that will have changed and the AI will be able to successfully recreate such scenes. Therefore, “on get rid of the stuntmen, we get rid of the cameras and we do not go on the circuit”: this is the danger.
This is why screenwriters, actors and now stuntmen are now asking that limits be established so that these professions are kept, one question, among many others, which today paralyzes Hollywood like never before.