The age of deep content creation is coming

In the 20th century, video and sound recording technology gave birth to media such as movies, records, and television, which greatly advanced society. In the current era, we have greeted another wave of heightened technological progress lending itself to this discourse—the rise of artificial intelligence. AI technology can replicate the abilities and characteristics of the human body, which has introduced a new level of complexity into the world in which we live in addition to the media that we consume. With AI, it is possible to copy and reproduce human abilities such as writing songs, books, and drawings, as well as characteristics of the human body such as appearance, voice, and body movements. This departure from simply being able to record movements and voices, as is the case with conventional video and sound recording technologies, bears striking implications for the types of content that we are able to generate.

AI’s ability to perform human abilities and exact characteristics of the human body makes this form of intelligence comparable to creating another human being, one that can behave independently of the original subject and be utilized for a variety of purposes. The reach of AI does not merely begin and end with duplicating human beings. Copying is merely the starting point of creation, and therefore, allows for the production of completely original and unprecedented content.

There has been a great deal of concern over the existential risks posed by artificial intelligence in recent years as well as accompanying fears that these technologies will cause the proliferation of fake content, that will in turn saturate our media networks. However, in the future, all content will be “fake” to a degree, and these concerns will be alleviated by the awareness that this phenomenon is a byproduct of the ushering in of a new age of progressive content creation. In the near future, it will become commonplace to see a TV show in which an actor who has already passed away, a virtual celebrity who does not exist in reality, and a real-life famous person occupy the same space, as they entertain the masses, for example.

In this type of program, even the presence of the real-life famous person will not be necessary, as directors, producers, and showrunners, for example, will be able to manipulate their talents’ likenesses to perform lines from a script and “act” in ways according to their vision, entirely remotely.

As we will all soon realize, the distinction between real and fake, and the authenticity of a persona presented to you on screen, is fast becoming obsolete. The time is quickly approaching, when the notion of real-life celebrities will transcend the physical, the concrete—and instead these figures will be treated like cartoon characters, whose likenesses will become the source of all information, such as news, commerce, and games, and they themselves will assume the role of the omnipotent media. As a pioneer on this elevated media landscape, EmbodyMe will continue to drive technology and culture forward in order to redefine the future of human endeavors.

Issay Yoshida