– [Tyler] Three, two, one. (cameras clicking) – This is one of the
first steps in a trend that could upend the way movies are made. Her purse was full of useless trash! AI gives Hollywood producers the ability to capture a scan of a star and use it to do, well,
pretty much anything. For example, neither of
these guys is the real me. But the technology used to
do that comes with big risks, especially for actors. So I visited the CAA Vault. – [Jack] We'll just step you in. – [Erich] A studio created by one of Hollywood's top talent agencies to give actors control
of their digital doubles. – There's no way to imagine
a future world without this.
– I don't quite know
what to anticipate here but I'm excited to see what happens. (air whooshes) The CAA Vault houses
four different stations that record an actor's body,
face, movements, and voice. I feel like Jodie Foster in "Contact." – Yeah.
– They should've sent a poet. Dominic Ridley, the director of VFX company
Clear Angle Studios, works with CAA to create
these digital scans. – With shooting those 17
different lighting fires, we get to see how the light
is reacting to your materials and your skin, et cetera. – The first step in the
process is a 3D full body scan. Why is this the pose? – So this is basically just allowing us to capture all the inside
of your arm and hands while still being nice and relaxed. – It's hard not to be a little nervous. (cameras clicking) – [Tyler] And that's it.
1 1/2 seconds, that just
is your full body capture. – It's like a red carpet. It shoots 17 different
lighting environments in just 1.2 seconds. (cameras clicking) Those few seconds capture
more than 200 images that look like these. Later, all of the images will be used in a process called photogrammetry, which brings together
hundreds of 2D images in order to create a 3D image of my body.
(air whooshes) The next step in the process
is a range of motion scan. – Once you start feeling
that kind of tension, don't go too far past that. – Okay. It's just like following a workout video. – Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just like following a workout video. – This is for all the beach scenes you're filming me in.
– Yeah. (laughs) – [Erich] As the technology has grown more popular in the industry, actors are worried about
their digital doubles being used without their consent. The use of AI doubles was
a major sticking point in the recent union negotiations
between actors and studios. – [All] AI, bye-bye! – I'd imagine AI is a bigger
and bigger part of your day. – Yeah, AI became something that we as a company were
aware of a long time ago.
– [Erich] Bryan Lourd is CEO
of the Creative Artists Agency which represents actors like
Tom Hanks, Cate Blanchett, and Zendaya, and is the company beyond the CAA Vault. – What we believe is that an individual, whether you're famous or not, should own your digital presence and the simple concept of the Vault was to get out ahead of this. – [Erich] As the tech
becomes more accessible, AI doubles could change
the way actors work. For example, they could
avoid hours in their trailer thanks to digital makeup or they could use their
double for reshoots while they move on to another project. So far, there's been little protection around how these digital doubles are used. There isn't any federal law
protecting this kind of likeness and local laws vary from state to state. Many scans are owned
by studios, not actors. And payment is also an issue. How much should an actor make
when their double is used instead of them? Outside of work, anyone
can create their own scans to make deepfakes that do or say anything. – I'm gonna show you some magic.
– [Erich] The agency says the CAA Vault is aimed at solving these issues since all of the scans taken at the Vault belong to the actors. So that means, at the end of the day, my digital identity and all
of the scans used to create it will belong to me. That includes my next one, a face scan in a machine called Dorothy. – She encapsulates the highest technology that we have at Clear Angle Studios and in this system we're
gonna capture your face in the highest detail, both for a 3D scan, we can
do 4D scanning as well.
– Do you feel like you're
living in the future? – No, my wife keeps me very grounded. – Ah.
– Yep. – [Erich] It captures
the face in two sessions. The first for use with photogrammetry, like in the full body scan. – [Jack] What this does
is it just allows very, very high qualitative alignment and when you're a 3D model, we can stabilize your 3D models around the cubes on your head.
– [Erich] Each three second capture grabs nearly 700 images. This is followed by a series of 76 different facial expressions
with just a single flash. – [Jack] That was the
perfect outer brow raise with this one, yeah.
– Oh, really? The second stage is a
capture for generative AI, which is a series of images used by a machine learning platform to recreate my image in 2D. This includes the full
spectrum of mouth movements, so my double can say any
word and appear authentic. To give the system enough options, I had to express a lot of
emotions about a beige fox. The quick beige fox jumped in
the air over each thin dog. The lights flash in very
specific patterns in this scan to simulate different environments. – And then we can replicate
the lighting from the set in here and then redo the performance. – Those scans come out
looking something like this, allowing my double to be placed
in different environments without the lighting looking unnatural.
These days, a chicken leg is a rare dish. Then, the last stage, a scan of my voice. I could try to do, like, a British accent. The hogs were fed
chopped corn and garbage. So why do you have me
saying these sentences? Why do we care so much about women with trash in
their purses and smoky flames? – These are words and phrases that will cover every possible sound to make other phrases or words
happen, if that makes sense. – [Erich] So from this collection of random sounds and sentences, you can have me say or do anything? – Yes.
(laughs) – CAA then stores the scans and says they have a layer of
security to protect the data. Then I could hand off my
digital mask to VFX studios, like CAA Vault's partner Deep Voodoo. They can then make a digital
rendering of, well, me. While the tech is a major talking point in Hollywood right now, CAA says it's not just
actors being scanned. Musicians, athletes,
directors, and content creators have also gone through the process. But there's a lot of uncertainty
about this technology. For example, it's unclear how it could impact work in Hollywood for people who aren't major stars, or what its implications
might be in politics, or our everyday lives.
I feel like that when
you see this technology, the first response is, "Oh
my god, this is so cool." And the second response is, "This could ruin the world."
– "Oh my god." Yeah, yeah. – Does it keep you up at night
and do you worry about that as you try to in some ways
advance this technology? – Yes. I mean, I think it was a
big fundamental question that we had to ask ourselves is, "Do we bury our heads in the sand or do we embrace this and go after it?" And so we think we all have a
responsibility to embrace it, but to embrace it with some
sort of ethics and morals and fairness in mind.
(soft music).