The Real in an AI-World — Ai casting
Ai-Casting is likely to become a feature of media, just as podcasting did appealing to a new wider audience for engagement. Ai-casting suggests factual media production using synthetic media, but how is that possible?
I’ve been tracking trends in media innovation, as well as creating innovative media for a considerable time which has led to presentations to BBC execs, Channel 4 directors, National Press Club in Washington, and World Association of newspapers.
As an example of this emerging media I’ve produced this history Ai-cast. It’s a short piece of media taken from my archive — a lengthier broadcast from the BBC World Service over thirty years ago when I was working from South Africa.
I’ve embedded myself in a unit called the Peace Monitors, whose job is to address violence by mediation in the townships.
The audio is real, the images are not. They are conceived from memory from a thunderous cold night. But just how can we trust such films? What are the ethics?
Not on this media, but on previous videos where I used video hyperlinking -a piece of code, the user could press the V (for verification) at the bottom left, it opens up a verification map, or video like this that provides contextual background of the producer
And what about the ethics? Firstly, it’s a question of trust. Using Gen AI tools how can you trust the user? That code and link will help, but what about its use in the first place?
This is another techno-situation, not unlike previous tech expressions — users making their own media. When YouTube emerged (much to the chagrin of broadcaster professionals) at first the background chatter was not so dissimilar.
The rules and guidance over ethics are philosophical as much as they are societal and cultural. Those rules will be required to be geared towards transparency and truthfulness for the audience to decide.
But it cannot be the preserve of one group to impose standards over another. In previous posts I’ve written about the Laval Decree which existed between 1930–1960 Africa which prohibited Africans from making films.
Hence they were denied media and as such archive. AI as I showed in Chairman: the Ghanaian AI short overcomes this draconian decree by using academic rigour to re-create archive.
Ai represents a new billion dollar industry in incubation hatching. Last month having my AI film empowered shown on the big screen in the US, peaks at the industry ahead. Ai-casting is not if, but a matter of when.
If you’d like to know more. I’m working with an amazing AI artist/filmmaker and specialist Michele D’Acosta, an award-winning documentary filmmaker. We’re hoping to present ideas at SXSW.
You could help by voting on the SXSW page here https://lnkd.in/ektN2JJT for this to take place. You’ll find us under the filter AI Robotics & Automation. We’d be extremely thankful.
