Per WSJ, the plan was to enlist Johnson’s cousin Tanoai Reed to be a body-double for one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors. Disney would then work with AI company Metaphysic to layer an AI-generated deepfake of Johnson’s face over his similarly-built cousin, a plan that Johnson approved and which would have enabled him to skip actually coming to set on “certain days.” However, none of the footage will actually appear in the film due to Disney’s concern that AI-generated parts of the film would mean that the company would not wholly own the film.
The report also details another attempt to use AI in the forthcoming Tron: Ares, a plan that was reportedly abandoned due to the potential bad publicity it would generate. Jeff Bridges’ character Bit would get an animated character that would be the result of a writer describing it to a generative AI program. Then, in the words of WSJ‘s Jessica Toonkel and Erich Schwartzel, “the AI program, voiced by an actor, would respond to questions as Bit as cameras rolled.”
Disney’s attitude toward AI has seemed, from the outside, to be touch and go. In June, the company joined Universal in suing Midjourney AI, calling the company a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” Disney is notoriously protective of its characters and IP, a stance that is often at odds with the current trend of feeding anything and everything into machine learning models. In May, the company allowed an AI-voiced Darth Vader to participate in Fortnite, which led immediately to players making Vader curse. (WSJ notes that Epic Games, Fortnite‘s parent company, fixed the issue within 30 minutes.) While both of these instances might be good reasons to be a bit more conservative about the implementation of AI, executives are reportedly still excited about the cost-saving potential of the technology. You can read The Wall Street Journal‘s whole story here.
