The TriStar Pictures release was released on Friday Herea $50 million film directed by Robert Zemeckis that used real-time AI-powered generative facial transformation techniques to depict actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright over a 60-year period, one of the first feature-length feature films in Hollywood made in based on artificial intelligence-based visual effects.
The film is adapted by A A graphic novel from 2014 The story takes place primarily in a Novel Jersey living room and takes place in multiple time periods. Instead of casting different actors of different ages, the production used artificial intelligence to modify Hanks and Wright’s performances throughout.
Rejuvenation technology comes from Metaphysicsa visual effects company that creates face swapping and aging effects in real time. During filming, the crew watched two monitors simultaneously: one showing the actors’ actual appearance, and the other showing their required age for a given scene.
Metaphysic developed the facial modification system by training custom machine learning models on frames from Hanks and Wright’s previous films. This included a immense dataset of facial movements, skin texture and appearance under different lighting conditions and camera angles. The resulting models can generate instant facial transformations without the months of manual post-production work that established CGI requires.
Unlike previous aging effects that relied on frame-by-frame manipulation, Metaphysics’ approach generates transformations instantly by analyzing facial landmarks and mapping them to trained age differences.
“You couldn’t have made this movie three years ago” – Zemeckis he said The Novel York Times in a detailed article about the film. Time-honored visual effects for this level of facial modification would reportedly require hundreds of artists and a much larger budget, closer to the standard costs of Marvel films.
This is not the first film to apply artificial intelligence techniques rejuvenation actors. ILM’s approach to rejuvenating Harrison Ford in 2023 Indiana Jones and the Shield of Destiny used a proprietary system called Flux with infrared cameras to capture facial data during filming, then ancient photos of Ford to rejuvenate him in post-production. Meanwhile, Metaphysic’s AI models process transformations without additional hardware and show the results while filming.
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Cinematography Here comes as major studios explore applications of artificial intelligence beyond just visual effects. Companies like Runway were developing tools for generating text on videowhile others create AI systems such as Calla for script analysis and pre-production planning. However, the guild’s latest contracts place strict limits on the apply of artificial intelligence in inventive processes such as screenwriting.
Meanwhile, as we saw with SAG-AFTRA union strike Last year, Hollywood studios and unions continued to hotly debate the role of artificial intelligence in filmmaking. While the Screen Actors Guild and Writers’ Guild have secured some limits on artificial intelligence in recent contracts, many industry veterans consider the technology inevitable. “Everyone is nervous,” Susan Sprung, executive director of the Producers Guild of America, told The Novel York Times. “And yet no one is quite sure what to worry about.”
Despite this, The Novel York Times reports that Metaphysic technology has already been used in two other publications from 2024. Furiosa: The Mad Max Saga used it to recreate the character of the delayed actor Richard Carter, while Alien: Romulus brought back Ian Holm’s android character from the 1979 original. Both projects required consent for the property in accordance with Art new California legislation regulating the reproduction of performers by artificial intelligence, often called deepfakes.
Not everyone is elated with the development of artificial intelligence technology in film. Recently, Robert Downey Jr he said in an interview that he will instruct his estate to sue anyone who tries to digitally resurrect him from the dead for another film appearance. But even with all the controversy, Hollywood still finds a way to make death (and aging)-defying visual feats play out on screen – especially if enough money is involved.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.