What do you think of deepfake actors and actresses?

Actor Son Suk-ku (left) and his childhood appearance in a movie (right). The childhood face was created using a deepfake image created from a photo of Son Seok-gu. Courtesy of Netflix

"I thought he was an actor who looked like him, but I didn't think it was a deepfake of him.”

“A Killer Paradox,” which is ranked No. 1 movie on Netflix, features a childhood appearance of Jang Nan-gam, the main character played by Son Suk-ku. After the release of the series, it turned out that the child actor who completely looks like Son was a “realistic-looking fake” image created by deepfake technology based on artificial intelligence. The producers said they used several childhood photos of Son to create the face of a younger Son with deepfake technology and then put the image on the face of the child actor to “make the series more realistic.”

Recently, there have been increasing cases of making drama and films more realistic by using deepfake actors. In the first episode of JTBC's drama “Welcome to Samdal-ri,” which ended last month, the late show host of “National Singing Contest” Song Hae appeared as a younger version of himself. It was done to recreate the setting that there was an episode of the show in Jeju Island in 1994. Also in KBS's drama “Korea–Khitan War," deepfake technology was apparently used to create so-called "digital crowds" in large-scale military battles such as The Battle of Kwiju.

The use of deepfake actors in the media industry is expected to increase. “When shooting a drama, a big part of the production cost is the cost of supporting actors and actresses," said a drama producer, "and if deepfake technology becomes more advanced and accessible, it will become an attractive option with no reason not to use it."

Then do we just enjoy the rare attractions of the new technology? The answer is not really. Deepfake technology has ethical and legal problems that cannot be easily solved.

The biggest problem is the issue of the "digital portrait rights.” The appearance of a deepfake actor in other works without the permission of the face owner has already become an issue in Hollywood several times. Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks and others raised the issue, saying that images made of deepfake technology without their permission appeared in commercials. "AI technology allows me to continue to appear in new movies even after I die," Tom Hanks said on a podcast in May last year. "Even if I get hit by a bus tomorrow and get seriously injured, my acting can continue."

Lee Sang-wook, a professor of philosophy at Hanyang University, said, "Not only celebrities but also ordinary people may experience problems related to deepfake actors." He added, “If a fictitious deepfake actor is created using the photos someone posted on social networking platforms and he or she is appearing somewhere, it will be much more difficult for ordinary people to recognize and cope with it than celebrities. There is still no legal clarity on how social networking platforms will handle the data when a social media user dies.”

Another big problem is that actors and actresses’ jobs could be drastically reduced by deepfake technology. AI was one of the reasons that the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike in Hollywood last year. The union pointed out, "If you look at the proposal presented by the Federation of Producers, there is a clause that a film company can own and use the image forever, even if the actors and actresses shoot just for a day." This would allow deepfake actors, with the exception of some famous actors, to appear in multiple works like copying and pasting. This would exponentially decrease the number of jobs for stunt actors and supporting actors.

Professor Lee said, “We cannot stop people from using existing technology unconditionally, but there should be institutional mechanisms or regulations to look into how to deal with technology when it crosses the line at some point," adding, "It's time for our society to discuss the principles of deepfake technology."

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.