That was the most interesting part to me. The voice AI that's never talked about is very interesting because that was convincing as hell unlike the face. Favreau mentioned what most of us already think will happen. In a few years time it'll be indistinguishable to tell Deepfake faces and voices from the real ones.
I actually wonder if they'll fix Luke's face in Mando once Deepfake is to the level they deem worthy.
We then get into the question of ethics and legality. As you mentioned they could tell Luke's story until the end of time. We could get Young Leia stories. Han Solo. Marvel could have RDJ's IronMan and Evans' Cap forever. WB could revive Bale's Batman and Reeves' Superman. We know the company owns the likeness for those actors when representing the character. Do the actors get paid whenever they are used or just for the work they put in? If Marvel creates Ironman 4 using a stunt double actor and Deepfake face/voice does RDJ get paid? In the future these companies will probably only require some stunt double actor since their voice and face will be replaced by Deepfake. Another thing is we'll probably need blockchain to keep track of changes for all these videos since the fakes will be so convincing like Favreau mentioned. We need to know and have a way to verify what is and isn't real.
Obviously a much bigger discussion than intended here, but something that came to mind as I was watching that.
I thought exactly the same thing re: actors getting compensated. Surely in the future there will be something in an actor's contract that stipulates that they or their estate will receive payment if their likeness is used.
It's interesting that they didn't deem the deepfake experiments worthy when they were plainly better than the final result we got. Just look at 2:40 in this video (I apologise if this is a toxic YouTuber, I have no idea who they are and just found the video). With a bit of clean up, that looks like RotJ-era Luke Skywalker. It looks like a human face:
Frankly, I think they probably landed on using the traditional Marvel-style de-ageing tech to flatter Hamill and make him feel included in the project. It perhaps also would have been morally wrong to bypass him in favour of an AI recreation when he is alive and potentially available, plus Hamill's physical presence on set adds some gravitas to the whole event. But if he consents to it, I could see the deepfake version taking over in the future.
The Marvel tech definitely still has its place, especially when a character is front and centre in a story and a lot of emoting is required (see: SLJ in Captain Marvel). But sadly it's not very effective with Hamill because, respectfully, he has not aged quite as gracefully as some other actors. He looks quite different to his 1983 self, especially when he is a bit heavier. On the other hand, I think Harrison Ford could be de-aged quite convincingly with the Marvel tech because he looks pretty similar to his younger self (and I'm hoping to see this in the next Indy film).
