Name: Brainstorm AI 2023: Cruising to a Fake Out
Uploaded: 2023-12-13
Duration: 10 min 11 s
Description: Martin Adams, Co-founder, Metaphysic Moderator: Jeremy Kahn, FORTUNE

Martin Adams, Co-founder, Metaphysic Moderator: Jeremy Kahn, FORTUNE

Brainstorm AI 2023: Cruising to a Fake Out

Conferences

Welcome back, everybody. We've got some great sessions ahead. So let's get to it. You probably saw the Deep Tom Cruise videos online, the ones where he's hanging out with Paris Hilton backstage or dancing with Diplo on New Year's Eve looking ever younger than before. Well, guess what? They aren't actually him but an A I generate video from metaphysic A I A start up utilizing A I to create hyper realistic visual effects here to show us how A I can help us build immersive content. Please welcome co founder of Metaphysic A I Martin Adams. Good to see you. Hi, how are you doing before we get started? Can you tell us a little bit how you got into this whole space? Yeah. Uh Absolutely. Nice to see everyone. Thank you for having me. Um So maybe a bit strange, my background is actually as a, an intellectual property lawyer which uh at this sort of conference with generative A, I definitely gets a few reactions. I've seen the policy people sort of lean in and some of the CTO S and co-founders kind of edge out of the room. Um But yeah, so I left left my legal career in New York behind about 20 years ago and I've been building sort of machine learning, big data A I businesses mainly in the creative and cultural industries ever since. And so, you know, broadly, that's what we're interested in doing at metaphysics is, you know, investing in technology that can actually build shared experiences and you know, kind of create standout standout internet moments. Really? Cool. What do you guys actually do a little bit more detail? Yeah. So we specialize in basically sort of powering photo real A I content. So what does that mean? That means that we can scan anything that has data? That could be my voice, it could be my face, that could be this room, it could be an item of clothing and then our models can sort of power that into any sort of video feed or any sort of digital experience in a way that looks like it was made and shot with a camera. So again, maybe that's a bit too abstract to bring this down a little level since I've been on the stage, I've had actually a model of my own face on top of my face. So if you look on the screens, you may be able to see the sort of slight very significant kind of transition that happens there when I put an occlusion in front of my face. So why would I do this? And is this interesting in this particular use case. No. But what if you were trying to make a film in which you wanted to manipulate that model to age me up or age me down? That could be the difference between being able to tell that story and not being able to tell that story. So let's look at something that's maybe a little bit more interesting and applied. So we're going to try and take my face and put it on to our, our dear Jeremy's here. So, let's see how that looks. In theory. We should be able to do that at the click of a finger. Let's see. Oh my God, there's Jeremy shave this morning. Exactly. So we've got the beard. I would like to apologize for what you're experiencing right now. Jeremy, something I have to deal with every day. Problem. Shared problem halved all that stuff. But as you can see, you know, it's, we don't have necessarily the same facial shape or head shape, but you can see that the kind of those impossible crow line wrinkles that I've had for the last 1020 years have been imported onto Jeremy's face. If Jeremy smiles, maybe try smiling and I smile, it's not too dissimilar at all. If you frown can both be sad on stage together, Jeremy, then it looks very similar. And what's important here is that this is, this is real time, this is live, this is dynamic and that's important because it really augments and respects the underlying performance of, let's say an actor or a musician. And that's, you know, we hear that we hear that from people at the absolute top of their game. People like Tom Hanks saying, wow, you know, this is not an abstracted post production process. This is something that with a set aside monitor, I can actually see this younger version of myself playing out and that can build empathy and connection and ultimately power. How is this actually working? So, I mean, we have a normal camera, we have a portable laptop backstage. So there's nothing too intensive on that side. What essentially is happening is there's some destination markers on your face, which are you identifying your face? There's been a neural network model on me which has encoded the different features of my face, the composition, the symmetry, the way it structures, but it can also infer in for anything that it hasn't managed to capture data wise just a few minutes with a with an iphone has allowed me to kind of create this model. And yeah, and it's basically going onto your face and filling in all those gaps. And this is just a live version and a kind of cut down less ambitious version of what we're using on Hollywood Studios. And how will this do you think change, you know, the entertainment industry? You know what, what is this going to enable Holley Studios to do? Yeah, I mean, I think it will have a dramatic impact. I think that impact is already being felt by, by innovators and pushed by innovators. I think that it allows flexibility. We've talked about some of those things both in terms of age or being able to scale someone to another destination. If they can't or won't travel, it allows possibility in the sense that if with consent, if a deceased person was caught to a story line, you could put them back into that film. And so I think film is a big area. We've talked about that. I think content is another big area, broadly speaking, branded or otherwise, you could have a luxury fashion brand that could film a, you know, a catwalk for example, and then with consent and my scan, I could be on that model walking along and build that empathy, build that connection with the brand and the product, think of the network effects that start to be unlocked when you're in the content. And I think live concerts as well, live concerts, live music, which is another area where we're doing a lot of great work. And I believe we have a video where we can see an example of that now. So maybe we'll cut to that. You ain't nothing but so that was metaphysic um in the finals of America's got talent last year. First A I, as far as I'm aware, that's managed to get to the finals placed fourth uh recreating Mr Presley there. Um, and, you know, that's done with his consent and, and everything else. Um, well, not his, but his family, I should probably add, we haven't quite got the technology that far. Technology. Um, but yes, so, you know, you can see sort of the impact here. I think. What's interesting is that a very young audience in America's got talent, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to experience anything like seeing that, that form of a live performance. And now they have so again, impossible stories can now be told in the in the screen actors strike that just took place. This was a big issue about whether actors were going to be forced or there was a from the guild that actors would be forced to sign away their facial rights, their biometrics for life to studios. There's a particular concern about I think younger actors who are less established with less leverage and extras. Were they right to be worried about this? What do you think that that's a legitimate concern? Yeah, look, I think clearly there's a consent driven market here which, which you can see here. I was working with the Presley estate and the rights holders there, but I do think that they were right to be concerned. These are powerful technologies and I think broadly speaking, a lot of other industries will have their moment and they'll look for Zafra and say, how did they negotiate and what did they negotiate and there will be something to learn there. I think that the balances that were struck broadly seem right. They've kind of enshrined a role for a innovative technology in a creative space which seems appropriate, but they made sure that the consents couldn't be writ large, couldn't be abstracted away. They were specific and tailored to specific projects. So really, it puts more power in performers hands, which should be the case. Interesting. And your, your co founder and Ceo Tom Graham, I know he's gone out and tried to copyright his likeness. I think he's the first person to have done this. Is that something we all should be doing or we're all going to have a copyright likeness frankly. Yes, I think it is in the long term, something that all of us should do the technology and the data is there to create, you know, there's enough data to basically create a version of most people online, not just famous people. Tom and I were two of the co founders of the business we met at Harvard Law school 13 years ago, very, very kind of committed to an ethical approach to this technology and it's not simply about, you know, so we have a, we have a new product called Pro which is around scanning your identity and that's about preventing misuses so that you could, for example, get a copyright and then avail yourself of the existing apparatus with the MC takedowns. Otherwise you're fighting against public rights, which are different state by state and country, by country or terms and conditions which again are very, very hard to kind of get through quickly. So by having a copyright, you avail yourself of those existing apparatus and there are teams in all of the big platforms that will respond to the DM CD MC A takedown. I think the the other thing is actually the creative and commercial uses that you can unlock. So if you are an actor and you want to license your likeness, you can do that. If you're a film director and you want to star Trek, you want to put some super fans into that content, then you can actually do that now, but only if you have the scan that allows that sort of creative use. So I think the principles as we see it are you need to have consent at the core, you need to be looking at compensation, you need to be giving control and copyright is a, is a core doing that in a kind of principled ethical way. Are there any other dangers? We talk a little bit of maybe identity theft is one obviously, but what are some of the other dangers of this technology? I mean, look, we're 2024 we know that there's an election coming, right? We want to keep this sort of technology out of that space. I think that's a, a combined responsibility of people building the technology, having these consent frameworks and the platforms that host, I think we're heading in the right direction, but we need to keep talking about it. And I think actually building these creator rights in order to get the outcomes that we want as a society. Great Martin, we're just about out of time. Thank you so much for coming and showing us this amazing technology and giving me your face for trying it on for a little bit. I appreciate it. Good to be you for a few minutes.