Jack Black will next appear in “Borderlands” voicing Claptrap, a movie that’s bound to blow everyone away in 2024. As such, it may have been odd to see people talking about Black this far in advance from the film premiere, but it’s due to something the actor wasn’t even involved in. This video involves years of hard work from Şefki Ibrahim, who has been talking about utilizing this technology to create photo-realistic images of humans for quite some time.
Back in 2019, he spoke with 80 Level about the challenges of getting digital people to look just right. “The hardest thing with digital humans is getting them to feel relatable,” Ibrahim said. “There’s a fine line: if something feels a little off, you dip into the uncanny valley, which can distract from your hard work. Usually, that ‘thing’ is the eyes.” That article is accompanied by numerous images that look like PS4 video game characters and show how far he’s come with the new Jack Black face video.
A major source of contention for the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike was the use of AI to replace performers. Ultimately, a deal was reached where studios will require consent from performers to replace them with any AI likeness, complete with compensation. Ibrahim’s CGI creation shows how studios could replace actors in the future. After attaining consent, actors could be created digitally and put into a movie without the performer needing to lift a finger. It’s not fully AI, as a real person used CGI to create the Jack Black image, but a merging of the technologies could lead to some interesting developments in the years to come.
