I’ve been sending this video to friends & family to explain what the heck it is I actually, y’know, do for a living. (It’s somehow related to enabling all this!)

Here’s a good summary from Gemini:

• Digital Clones for A-listers (0:33–1:56): The Creative Artist Agency (CAA) is helping actors create and store secure digital doubles of their likeness and vocal inflections. This serves as a “vault” to protect their intellectual property and assert rights against unauthorized use.
• Deep Voodoo’s AI Innovations (2:15–3:54): Founded by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park, this studio uses proprietary facial scanning and AI to perform tasks like real-time de-aging for projects like the TV series Before and Billy Joel‘s recent music video.
• Production Efficiency and Ethics (6:03–7:40): Director Darren Aronofsky and filmmaker Eliza McNitt utilized Google’s Veo 3 model for the short film Ancestra. AI allowed them to create complex cosmic visuals and even recreate a newborn baby digitally to avoid the ethical concerns of filming with a real infant.
• Commercially Safe AI Tools (8:00–9:10): Asteria Film Company, co-founded by Natasha Lyonne and Bin Moser, focuses on building “commercially safe” AI models trained strictly on licensed materials to avoid copyright infringement, emphasizing that learning to use AI is an essential skill for modern filmmakers.
• The Human Element (4:48–5:13): Despite the rapid evolution of AI, industry unions like SAG-AFTRA emphasize that human performers bring a unique, special quality to projects that algorithms cannot replicate, advocating for guardrails to ensure AI serves as a tool for creators rather than a replacement.