Matthew McConaughey has built a career on a chilled type of confidence: \u201cAlright, alright, alright.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when a University of Texas student asked him during a CNN town hall<\/a> about the future of artificial intelligence replacing actors, there was nothing breezy about his response.<\/p>\n His face grew grave. He stared at the camera. \u201cIt\u2019s not coming. It\u2019s here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t deny it,\u201d McConaughey said in a recent conversation alongside actor Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet. \u201cIt\u2019s not enough to sit on the sidelines and make the moral plea that this is wrong. That\u2019s not going to last.\u201d<\/p>\n In light of that inevitability, his advice to creators was to \u201cown yourself. Your voice, your likeness, whatever you\u2019ve got\u2014own yourself. So when it comes\u2014not if it comes\u2014no one can steal you.\u201d<\/p>\n The Oscar winner has already acted on that philosophy. As The Wall Street Journal first reported<\/a>, McConaughey has secured a series of trademarks covering his image and signature expressions\u2014including his famous \u201calright, alright, alright\u201d\u2014in an effort to create a legal perimeter around his voice and likeness. The goal: make it harder for AI companies or bad actors to simulate him without permission.<\/p>\n \u201cMy team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it\u2019s because I approved and signed off on it,\u201d he said in an earlier statement.<\/p>\n For McConaughey, it\u2019s not as simple as just making a quick buck by protecting a catchphrase. He sees the writing on the wall: Tthe movie industry is racing towards automation,<\/a> with AI-generated replicas of public figures proliferating online. Some celebrities, like TikTok star Khaby Lame, have secured nearly billion dollar deals<\/a> to protect their likeness.<\/p>\n The film industry is already at a tipping point in which the digital and the physical are becoming indistinguishable. From de-aging legendary stars (such as the Jurassic Park stars in Xfinity\u2019s superbowl ad<\/a>) to creating entirely synthetic voices that can speak any language with perfect emotion, the technology has moved out of the lab and directly onto the big screen. To try to create some barriers, platforms like YouTube<\/a> are rolling out likeness-detection<\/a> tools to help creators combat deepfakes. But legal frameworks remain murky and difficult to parse, especially when AI-generated content isn\u2019t explicitly selling something.<\/p>\n McConaughey says he believes artists can\u2019t rely on moral outrage or future legislation alone.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it starts to trespass, you\u2019ll at least have your own agency,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to have to come to you and ask, \u2018Can I?\u2019Or they\u2019re going to breach, and then you\u2019ll have the chance to say yes for this amount\u2026 or no.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s also realistic about how pervasive the technology will become. In five or 10 years, he speculated, awards shows could even feature \u201cBest AI Actor,\u201d believing they could make a separate category for just AI actors.<\/p>\n Chalamet struck a similar but more abstract note, calling it a \u201cdual responsibility\u201d between established stars and younger artists. Those in power today must help keep the door open for human performers, he said, but it will ultimately fall to the younger generation to determine how AI is integrated into creative industries.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dreamer in me wants to enable a 19-year-old to produce something they couldn\u2019t otherwise,\u201d Chalamet said. But he also emphasized being \u201cfiercely protective of actors and artisans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew McConaughey has built a career on a chilled type of confidence: \u201cAlright, alright, alright.\u201d But when a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1149,220,144650,218,219,1043,17952,3211,61,60,2900,270,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-307599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-advertising","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-antitrust-lawsuit","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-film","14":"tag-film-industry","15":"tag-hollywood","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-legal","19":"tag-movies","20":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}