Eternal Echoes
Stars Reborn: Navigating the Legal
Underworld
Photo generated using Wix AI
The idea of digital resurrection has been around for a while now and has been tampered with in many different forms and aspects. Celebrities have been recreated for films, advertisements, songs, concerts, etc. since 1987 with the film Rendezvous in Montreal creating a Marilyn Monroe for the film. The first introduction of bringing back actors and celebrities for the use of media has been circling for a while but was not discussed as much as it has surfaced today. Because this is now directly affecting our lives and there are no current federal laws surrounding the usage of one’s image, attention is brought to this topic. This is leading every state to debate about how personal image can be used before and after someone’s passing. Celebrities have been at the forefront of this discussion, with some going as far as to mention digital resurrection and recreation in their wills, wanting to have a say in how their image, voice, and thoughts are used after their passing.
A Brief Timeline
This timeline includes different uses of CGI, AI, and holographic technology to recreate a person, alive or deceased, over the past 24 years.
2000
Gladiator: Using CGI to Finish the Film
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Oliver Reed tragically passed during the filming of the film Gladiator, creating an issue of what to do with the character, especially since he appeared frequently. Using computer-generated imagery (CGI) the crew decided to have someone step in for Reed, using the technology to recreate his face over someone else’s. CGI is a common practice and has appeared in thousands of Hollywood hits.
2002
Simone: A Film About A Digitally Created Superstar
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Starring Al Pacino, the film focuses on a down-on-his-luck film director and producer who no longer can use the actress he planned, losing the rights to use all the previously filmed footage. Pacino’s character decides instead to create his movie character digitally, Simone, who becomes a big star, all while never truly existing. While the film did not get the greatest reviews, being described as a “preposterous” film, there have been many digitally created stars, including the Gorillaz, a digital techno-style band. In 2006, the Gorillaz performed at the 48th Grammys, pushing digital popstars into the forefront of Hollywood.
2006
Muhammad Ali and His Decision to Continue Advertising Forever
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Ten years before his passing, Ali gave up the rights to his “name, likeness, trademarks, slogans and videos, for $50 million.” In the past 30 days, there have been over 30,000 commercials aired featuring Ali’s face, voice, slogans, etc ("Dial TV Spot").
2012
Tupac Hologram at Coachella
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Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre performed with a projection of Tupac on the Coachella stage, the first time this was done in front of a crowd. While performing, Tupac mentioned the festival's name despite being deceased before the festival was created (Wagner).
2013
“Be Right Back” Black Mirror Released
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Netflix series, Black Mirror, released an episode looking through the griever's view of bringing a replica of a lost loved one back to life. Regardless of her late boyfriend being similar in almost every aspect, she grew to resent him because she knew he was just a copy of him and was not the same(Jiménez-Alonso et al.). While talking to the replication, the main character in the episode says, “you’re just a few ripples of you. There’s no history to you. You’re just a performance of stuff that he performed without thinking, and it’s not enough” (McLoed).
2014
Robin Williams Contract Restricting His Digital Presence
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After William's tragic passing, it came out that the famous actor had a deed created as “a restriction on his image, or any likeness of his image, being used for 25 years after his death.” The deed also includes a restriction on holographic and CGI recreations of himself. While this restricts people from using technology to digitally recreate Williams for a decent amount of time, after 2039, his recreation is available to the public to create and appear in films and advertisements (Ellis).
2016
Hatsune Miku, Virtual J-Pop Star, Toured the US
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Miku has released over 100,000 songs and toured across the U.S in 2016. She has never been a human and is a voice synthesizer. Despite not being an actual person, she has 900,000 fans on Facebook and 2.93 million subscribers on YouTube.
2016
Ronnie James Dio recreated at the Wacken Festival
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Dio's widower, Wendy, worked with Eyellusion to recreate Ronnie to be able to perform again. His band Dio Disciples performed four songs at the heavy metal festival in Germany. "We have been able to get Ronnie back up on stage where he belongs, ensuring that his music and memory live on," said Wendy after the concert (Gumble).
Feb
2020
Tours from the Grave: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour
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BASE Xperiential, a hologram company formerly known as Base Holograms, created a hologram of Whitney Houston to tour across the world. The tour was known as An Evening With Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour and had the first concert in England. The BBC reported that some attendees gave bad reviews of the experience, not enjoying the hologram act as much as they thought they would (Millman).
Feb
2020
South Korean Television Studio Created a 3D Replica of A Deceased Child
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Neoreul Mannatda, translated to “I Met You,” was a South Korean documentary created about a mother handling the loss of her daughter, resulting in the studio creating a 3D version of the child. The mother met her child again in a Virtual Reality environment and described the moment as very heartwarming. The television studio, MBC, released a shortened version of the documentary, focusing on the emotional moments that were filmed, and got over 10 million views within the first week or two it was uploaded to YouTube (Stein).
2022
AI Preserving our ability to talk with Holocaust Survivors
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Soon there will be no Holocaust survivors left. Heather Mario created a “bubble” that uses 20 cameras to help create 3D Hologram projections to make an accurate representation of this important part of our history. They asked the survivors around 2,000 questions to allow them to continue to tell their stories.
Sept
2023
Meta’s Digital Characters
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Meta, the company that runs Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram has released digital characters and replications of celebrities, some deceased while others are still alive and well. These celebrities include Jane Austen, Tom Brady, and Charlie D’Amelio. Currently, the only way to communicate with the different characters is through WhatsApp, however, Meta plans to release this suite of characters onto their other platforms in the future, including their virtual reality applications. Some characters are not the exact celebrities, instead, they are based on different people and have their names, like Billie, who is based on Kylie Jenner (Isaac and Metz).
Oct
2023
Deepfakes on TikTok
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TikToks of celebrities and politicians have started to be shared and spread across the platform, however, they are not videos of real people. Using voice recreation technology, different TikTok accounts have started sharing videos that spread false information about celebrities and politicians. A few videos have been created using Barack Obama’s voice, claiming that he is gay or that he had nothing to do with the recent death of his private chef (Thompson and Maheshwari).
Nov
2023
Bryan Johnson: Next Evolving Human
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Johnson has the overall goal of living forever through “$4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint.” This consists of consulting doctors for every decision regarding his body who created strict health guidelines to reduce his aging. Living forever is now on many people's radar, but the larger question remains - is it worth it? (Dickstein). He has acquired 653,000 followers on Instagram.
"The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rules boil down to whether they have the ability to take action against unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the course of commerce. They may well argue that this is deceptive or unfair if the consumers aren’t actively, affirmatively saying “I want this created” and the company is just doing it anyhow.”
-Chris Conley, Boston University school of Law
Future Advertisements
Deceased celebrities already have their face and voice used in brand advertisements. These creations and platforms open the door to celebrities who did not permit to have their information shared. These people can no longer stand up for themselves, if they did not explicitly include their likeness in their estate. This is something that is going to start needing to be included in everyone's wills and estates.
Regulation
The right of publicity is a property right that protects an individual's economic value of their name, voice, picture, or likeness. Since there is no federal regulation or laws, it is up to each state to decide this. Nineteen states have created statutes to protect the rights of publicity. For example, California passed a state law in 1985 that declared "the rights to use a celebrity’s image, including their voice and likeness, will be transferred to the deceased actor’s estate once that actor passes away, with any money from licensing going to the estate (Lee)."
Misuse
There have been conversations around using AI to be able to have people speak again about topics like drunk driving, mass shootings or domestic violence (Lewis). These tragic events leave people to have no say in their likeness being used to portray what happened to them. The lines become blurred when someone does not explicitly say that this is what they want done to them after their passing.