Tom Hanks has praised the "amazing" use of artificial intelligence to de-age him "in real time" on the set of new movie "Here," even as he accepted that the technology is causing huge concern in Hollywood. "Here," out in theaters Friday, stars Hanks and Robin Wright as a couple striving to keep their family together through births, marriages, divorces and deaths, across multiple decades and even generations. Hanks portrays his character from an idealistic teen, through various stages of youth and middle age, to a frail, elderly man.
But rather than just relying on makeup, filmmakers teamed up with AI studio Metaphysic on a tool called Metaphysic Live, to rejuvenate and "age up" the actors. The technology worked so fast that Hanks was able to immediately watch his "deep-faked" performance after each scene. "The thing that is amazing about it is it happened in real time," said Hanks.
"We did not have to wait for eight months of post-production. There were two monitors on the set. One was the actual feed from the lens, and the other was just a nanosecond slower, of us 'deep-faked.
' "So we could see ourselves in real time, right then and there." The rapidly increasing use of AI in films including "Here" has triggered vast concern in Hollywood, where actors last year went on strike over, among other things, the threat they believe the technology poses to their jobs and industry. Hanks acknowledged those fears during a panel discussion with director Robert Zemeckis at last weekend'.
