Samuel L. Jackson knows his legacy will last forever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants his image to be used “in perpetuity.”
The iconic film star, who most recently appears in Disney+ Marvel series “Secret Invasion,” revealed his apprehension about the use artificial intelligence in Hollywood in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“People just started worrying about that? I asked about that a long time ago,” Jackson said while discussing being “scanned,” a common practice for Marvel actors. “The first time I got scanned for George Lucas, I was like, ‘What’s this for?’”
Jackson continued, “George and I are good friends, so we kind of had a laugh about it because I thought he was doing it because he had all those old guys in ‘Episode I,’ and if something happened to them, he still wanted to put them in the movie.”
The “Avengers” star noted that the MCU has similarly followed suit when it comes to protecting the brand.
“Ever since I’ve been in the Marvel Universe, every time you change costumes in a Marvel movie, they scan you,” Jackson said. “Ever since I did ‘Captain Marvel,’ and they did the Lola project where they de-aged me and everything else, it’s like, ‘Well, I guess they can do this anytime they want to do it if they really want to.’”
Yet Jackson admitted that A.I. “could be something to worry about” for actors, saying, “Future actors should do what I always do when I get a contract, and it has the words ‘in perpetuity’ and ‘known and unknown’ on it: I cross that shit out. It’s my way of saying, ‘No, I do not approve of this.’”
Tom Hanks also recently shared his thoughts about de-aging and A.I. technology as a way of keeping actors alive in movies forever.
“I can tell you that there [are] discussions going on in all of the guilds, all of the agencies, and all of the legal firms in order to come up with the legal ramifications of my face and my voice — and everybody else’s — being our intellectual property,” Hanks said.
The Oscar winner continued, “What is a bona fide possibility right now, if I wanted to, I could get together and pitch a series of seven movies that would star me in them in which I would be 32 years old from now until kingdom come. Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are, by way of A.I. or deep fake technology…I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but my performances can go on and on and on. Outside of the understanding that it’s been done by A.I. or deep fake, 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.”
