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Tom Hanks Warns of an AI Version of Him Used To Promote Dental Plan (hollywoodreporter.com) 81

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Tom Hanks is warning fans not to trust a video of him circulating about a dental plan. From a report: The Oscar-winning actor took to his Instagram on Sunday to give his fans a heads-up that anything they may see about him online linked to a dental plan was not actually him. "BEWARE!! There's a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it," Hanks wrote over a photo of a computer-generated image of him from the clip. The Asteroid City star previously opened up about the use of AI in the entertainment industry, noting it's been a long time coming and citing The Polar Express as the first time he did a movie that had a huge amount of his likeness locked into a computer.

"We saw this coming," he said on The Adam Buxton Podcast in May. "We saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. Now that has only grown a billionfold since then, and we see it everywhere." He also discussed how, with the use of AI, a version of him could continue acting, even if something were to happen to him. "I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and that's it, but performances can go on and on and on and on," Hanks said. "Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there'll be nothing to tell you that it's not me and me alone. And it's going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That's certainly an artistic challenge, but it's also a legal one."
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Tom Hanks Warns of an AI Version of Him Used To Promote Dental Plan More

Tom Hanks Warns of an AI Version of Him Used To Promote Dental Plan

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  • Has anyone actually seen this video? google's not finding any matches.

    This is supposed to be news for nerds, so of course we want to see this actual AI-generated video.

    If this site were news for lemmings, then of course we would just accept the article as written and assume there is this evil AI-generated video that looks so natural that we would fall for it and sign up for the plan if we happened to actually see the video, so it would make total sense that it can't be found anywhere...

  • Streisand effect... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Last_Available_Usern ( 756093 ) on Monday October 02, 2023 @09:58AM (#63893807)
    I'm wondering if celebrities taking to the internet to make these denouncements won't have the opposite effect they're hoping.
  • over on YouTube. Ones so dodgy I don't think even Rogan would shill them.

    What I really like though are the ones that aren't done with AI, but are done up like those old Weird Al interviews from "Al TV" specials on MTV back in the day. Where they cut back and forth from Rogan and the scammer making it look like he's praising the scammer's product.

    Not sure what I did to make YouTube think I trust Joe Rogan's opinion, but whatever it was I feel like my intelligence is being insulted.

    • Google is probably using Facebook logic to target ads at you. It sees that you said Joe Rogan more than a few times so it gave you a relatively high score on the Joe Rogan keyword. Except with Facebook you only have to say the name once to summon it.

  • How do I know it's not an AI Tom Hanks taking to Instagram instead of the real one?

  • But was the only excuse Rita Wilson could come up with quickly when Tom caught her in bed with a guy that vaguely resembled him.

  • Dentistry and orthopedics have a heavy licensing requirement. It's not usually the kind of industry that would engage below the belt because losing your license is career death.

    • I would assume dental plans are not as heavily regulated and any plan that would advertise using shady tactics like an unauthorized AI version of a celebrity to promote their plan might be doing other fraudulent things. For example the plan covers almost nothing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      Dentistry and orthopedics have a heavy licensing requirement. It's not usually the kind of industry that would engage below the belt because losing your license is career death.

      The item in question is about dental insurance, somewhat less regulated than actual medical care.

      • The item in question is about dental insurance, somewhat less regulated than actual medical care.

        Yes and no. Insurance has their own regulations especially health insurance. I suspect any plan using underhanded tactics like unauthorized celebrity representations may skirting other regulations like it is not actually insurance at all but claims to be.

  • Celebrity endorsements are mostly useless
    Yes, it's plausible that a famous race driver might have some useful insight about a sports car, but an actor adds nothing to understanding of a dental plan, even if the ad is real
    Maybe when we are flooded by fake celebrity ads, admongers will stop using them

  • If I remember correctly Back In The 90s (TM) on The Simpsons when Krusty The Klown became an edgy comedian for one episode he bemoaned that the late Vincent Price had his likeness appearing in adverts, warning of The Horrors Of An Unclean Bowl.

    As I see it: the technological problem of a familiar face losing agency in what they say and do not say in broadcasts to those who recognise them has been accumulating for some time. I seem to remember one of the Beastie Boys also putting it in a contract or will that

  • Lisa Needs Braces (Score:4, Funny)

    by Your Anus ( 308149 ) on Monday October 02, 2023 @10:24AM (#63893889) Journal
    yup
  • Not personalized in the sense of "We know what you want and we'll offer that to you". It'll be like "We know exactly who you watch, like and subscribe, and we'll deepfake them to convince you to buy our crap".

    • This is something I never quite grasped: Why should I buy something that some actor, musician or athlete I like to watch endorses? So $football_star likes $food. Ok. So? What does this tell me about that food? That I become like $football_star if I eat it? That would be silly to expect or assume. That I should eat it because he likes it? He wouldn't even know that I eat it, so why would he care?

      I mean, if some world-class runner endorses sport shoes, I can at least say "ok, it's maybe a product he uses, and

      • People tend to respond positively to recommendations from someone they trust. For some, that can just be a celebrity they like. But that's the point: they could deepfake your pro runner to endorse sport shoes as well. Or deepfake tech reviewers you regularly watch to sell you on a new laptop.

  • If the video makes no use of the name of Hanks, and it's simply a cartoonish person with a likeness to Mr.Hanks, can you sue about it, or is basically grey zone?

    • Imagine a political party would push a cartoon character that looks like the candidate of the other party that makes him look like a totally dishonest buffoon.

      You think that would be considered a grey zone?

    • It is certainlya gray zone.

      Here, check out this story from 1993:

      https://www.chicagotribune.com... [chicagotribune.com]

      Actor Wilford Brimley, who stars in TV ads for Quaker Oats Co., filed a $10 million suit against Hardee's Food Systems Inc. and its ad agency, WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather, over commercials that Brimley said "abused his personal identity" by using sound-alike and look-alike actors. At issue are commercials for Hardee's "Frisco" sandwiches. Brimley contends the actor who delivers the sandwich pitch was de

  • The faulty premise here is that you should trust an endorsement of a celebrity. When it comes to intelligence and making good choices - entertainers tend to be at the very bottom of society. They aren't experts in any particular field of study. I know many people do but I can't figure out why anyone would be enticed to use a product or service because some actor, an adult who plays make believe, suggests it.

    Maybe it's just me - I avoid almost all forms of entertainment. I don't watch movies these days -

    • I never got why actors and entertainers were considered sources of information or important opinions. Based on my experience they did all they could in school to avoid things like science and such yet they come forward as having something important to say about science, health, economics, etc. Their only qualification is entertaining. If they want to comment on tuning a guitar or studying scripts then I'll listen.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
        I don't even find them all that entertaining! Especially the latest crop. At least Leonard Nemoy or Morgan Freeman could narrate a documentary well. That's about as entertaining as these folks get for me!
      • Based on my experience they did all they could in school to avoid things like science and such yet they come forward as having something important to say about science, health, economics, etc.

        You mean like Dolph Lundgren who has a Master's in Chemical Engineering [snopes.com] and received a Fulbright Scholarship? Or did you mean Danica McKellar and her theorem? Here's a list of actors [wikipedia.org], composers, athletes, and others who have advanced degrees. Look over the list and let us know why these people with advanced deg

        • I am sure you can cherry pick actors who have degrees, the point is they are not any more qualified than a random person on the street to give an opinion, and given they are often paid to give that opinion, it means that opinion logically should mean less than some random person. Hell I wouldn't trust a doctor to give me advice on a medication, if I suspected they where receiving a kickback for recommending that medication.

      • Because idolatry is alive and well, while actual information is hard to come by.

      • I never got why actors and entertainers were considered sources of information or important opinions.

        Sometimes they may have important opinions. For example, James Cameron was interviewed extensively about the Titanic sub disaster recently. While people may know him as a Hollywood producer and filmmaker, he has extensive experience with deep sea submersibles including piloting the record holder Deepsea Challenger [wikipedia.org] for the deepest dive.

        Based on my experience they did all they could in school to avoid things like science and such yet they come forward as having something important to say about science, health, economics, etc. Their only qualification is entertaining. If they want to comment on tuning a guitar or studying scripts then I'll listen.

        I would say to figure out their qualifications first before you assume they have none. Some of them do have qualifications. Some do not. Actress Mayim Balik used her backgroun

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Not liking comic books is a bad decision. It's deciding based on the media rather than on the contents.
        (OTOH, I tend to avoid things that require JavaScript, but that's based on not trusting that the libraries they depend on haven't been maliciously updated. If that's a bad decision, please explain why.)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rlwinm ( 6158720 )

        Not liking comic books is a bad decision. It's deciding based on the media rather than on the contents.

        I should clarify: I hate the whole subject matter. I don't like anything fantasy or fiction whatsoever.

        If that's a bad decision, please explain why.

        It's a question of attack surface. JS (or WASM) is no more or less secure than programming languages X, Y, or Z. It's about what can be done. Also - I have 3 browsers installed in my phone for different "partitions" of my online life. In practice it works

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          But not all comic books are fiction or fantasy. Did you ever encounter "The Cartoon History of the Universe"? (There are others, but that's the one I found best.)

  • Dental Plan! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Monday October 02, 2023 @11:06AM (#63894059) Journal

    But Lisa needs braces.

  • I treat advice from the AI Tom Hanks same as the real Tom Hanks.

  • Is Tom Hanks an authority on dental care?

    I've never really understood why celebrity endorsements are considered credible. I don't know, Hanks isn't young any more so maybe he knows something about keeping his teeth healthy. OTOH, entertainment stars seem to do lots of things (like bleaching their teeth) which look good on screen but aren't great for long term health.

    I'm going to continue using AdBlock and paying for commercial free streaming so I don't have sit through this nonsense. Now get off my lawn!

  • How long before people are getting convicted of serious crimes because the AI version of themselves confessed on tape? Or because the defendant's face was successfully Deepfaked onto a real video of the crime?

    Or people getting exonerated from crimes they did commit, because a true video record is successfully argued to create reasonable doubt since it could have been AI?

    Countermeasures are going to be needed, and, as yet, I have absolutely no idea what they might look like, nor how well they might work.

  • Mandate that all artificially created renderings of people must contain either purple or black eyes indicating that they are not real. Tom hanks with purple eyes.

  • Thank God I have robot insurance. [youtu.be]

  • ...isn't really selling reverse mortgages?

  • I have not watched the video, could not find. But, do they say it is Tom Hanks? If not, then how does he know it is him? May be it was some person who looks like him?

    I mean, it can be really difficult to deal with this kind of abuse if there is no clear statement that this is "the celebrity". I am not sure Tom Hanks had copyrighted his look...

  • I don't take healthcare advice from actors. I also don't take financial advice from actors. You know what, perhaps we shouldn't take any advice from paid shills.

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