Harrison Ford is right about AI and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

As someone who grew up on Indiana Jones and Han Solo, I could only imagine how Troy Baker must have felt at the Game Awards. Veteran Voice actor presented the best performance with Indiana Jones and The Great Circle's executing producer Todd Howard, when Harrison Ford made a surprise (at least for the audience) appearance to praise the new Indy game and award the prize. Before he opened the envelope, Ford took a moment to praise Baker's performance and said, “I think this guy did a good job. If I had known he was so good, I would have done it myself.”

Thanks to a new interview with Ford, we now know that he was not only polite. When he spoke to the Wall Street Journal, the legendary actor said: “You don't need artificial intelligence to steal my soul. You can already do it for nickels and dimes with good ideas and talents. [Baker] Did a brilliant job, and it didn't take AI to do it. “

What people bring (and will always bring) to the table

Indy and Gina discover the hidden pyramid in Sukhothai in Indiana Jones and the big circle.

Ford is completely correct. Baker is fantastic in the large circle and does exactly what the role requires. It is a Harrison Ford impression, to be sure, but a really good one that is less remarkable for how he captures the sound of Ford's voice, and more for how well he nails his cadence. I have heard many Ford impressions over the years thanks to different Star Wars games, and Baker's Take feels like it has the most life.

What Ford says, however, comes to a larger point beyond the specifications in Baker's performance. AI is Used to replicate the actors' performances. For example, director Fede Alvarez used generative AI to bring Ian Holm back from the dead in Alien: Romulus.

But this type of thing happened before generative AI was ready for commercial use. Rogue One contained deep counterfeit versions of Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing, Mandalorian made Mark Hamill Young Again, and Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny, Ford gave a superflown face in a Flashback scene set during the original trilogy. This is not generative AI – and I do not think it is almost as illegal – but it is in the same way to turn to technology for a performance instead of relying on a person.

It's not just Disney -Franchise movies. Martin Scorsese's The Irishman unleashed Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.

AV-aged loses the human touch

These uses of digital elderly, whether they use generative AI or not, tend to lose the heart and soul that causes a notion to sing. The hamill placed in Mandalorian is a particularly incredible example. Disney had already found an actor who was a dead ring for Mark Hamill about 1983, but instead of using his face, they covered it with a shine of CGI Gloop. The show is deeply in the unpleasant valley.

De-Aging and AI both deal with a performance as a technical problem, not an artistic challenge. As both technologies improve, filmmakers will be able to cocx increasingly credible reproductions from machines. But we do not engage for Verisimilitude. It's more fun to see a comedian make a really big impression – James Austin Johnson's latest grip on Kamala Harris who hosts a cooking competition will think about – than listening to an AI depth of the same person because of the human element. Hearing a voice that you recognize comes from an unlikely face feels like a magical trick.

You may not like Solo: A Star Wars story – it's not one of my favorites either – but Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover's charismatic performances that he and Lando do an effective case for just … reworking some. It's fun to see new people inhabiting a role, to see young actors trying to elicit the essence of a screen icon. Sure, a computer will eventually be able to do it and already can. But where is it fun in it? Technology has made it possible to call the dead spirits, but that does not mean it is a good idea to let them hold a seance.