Tom Hanks is currently promoting his debut novel
Hollywood actor Tom Hanks, 66, in the latest episode of "The Adam Buxton Podcast" said that he could keep appearing in new movies after he dies with artificial intelligence technology.
The actor is currently promoting his debut novel “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.” During the podcast, he said, "What is a bona fide possibility right now, if I wanted to, [is] 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."
The Oscar-winning actor further added, "Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI 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 AI 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," he said.
His remarks came as the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant said AI could be used by musicians to complete songs, reported BBC.
During the podcast, Mr Buxton suggested that people would be able to make a difference between AI Hanks and the real version.
While acknowledging that Mr Hanks said that the AI version of himself would not be able to produce the same performances as he does now.
"Without a doubt people will be able to tell, but the question is, will they care?" he wondered. "There are some people that won't care, that won't make that delineation."
He further said that this has always been lingering. "The first time we did a movie that had a huge amount of our own data locked in a computer - literally what we looked like - was a movie called The Polar Express," Mr Hanks said.
"We saw this coming, we saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones from inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. That has only grown a billion-fold since then and we see it everywhere."
He also shared that people in the industry are now talking about how to protect actors from the effects of technology.
"I can tell you that there is 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," the actor shared.
A similar technology was already used in the latest Indiana Jones film, for which Harrison Ford, 80, was de-aged for the opening sequence.
The filmmakers created an illusion of Indiana Jones in 1944.