The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

196 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 3 The article “Toward Virtual Humans,” published in 2006, states that researchers have started working on making virtual humans that are able to make decisions and even perform like real humans by taking a script and acting it out (Swartout et al. 1). Some progress has already been made toward this goal. In “Developing Virtual Actors Inspired by Real Actors’ Practice” Rogerio Silva explains how a programmer could possibly implement an artificial intelligence to allow it to learn from an existing actor and eventually perform on its own (Silva et al. 1). This is a disaster for movie performers and even digital animators. If digital actors become smart enough to perform on their own, who would want a real actor that needs to be paid and negotiated with. One of the chief problems with virtual actors is the legal issues that come up regularly. As “Digital Actors and Copyright – From the Polar Express to Simone” states, a prevalent question is who owns the rights to the virtual actor, is it the person the virtual actor is modeled after or the company that made it (Kurtz 2). If the company owns the rights to the virtual actor, then they can exploit them for all kinds of purposes. One example of this is if an actor does not want to work on a studio’s movie, the studio, since it already has a virtual copy of the actor on file, can use the copy to star in the movie without the actor’s consent and without paying him or her. Another legal and ethical question is whether it is acceptable to make virtual actors out of dead film stars or historical figures. At the moment, computer animators are unable to create realistic humans without access to the actor. They cannot capture a person’s personality without being around him or her. When this does become possible, it will cause untold legal and moral problems. For example, suppose someone creates a virtual actor of John Wayne and has the actor endorse a product. At the moment, there is no legal recourse to solve this problem. In fact, creating a virtual actor is currently protected the same as if a person was making a painting or some other non-virtual recreation of that actor or historical figure (Kurtz 5). George Lucas, renowned Star Wars director, and one of the people who pioneered many of the computer effects we use today, states that recreating dead actors is a huge legal issue (“George Lucas” 1). A continuing problem with digital actors is that they lack true humanity. As revealed by “Leaving the Uncanny Valley Behind,” a virtual actor is currently incapable of acting with true emotion