For years I’ve been waiting for the time when AI has reached a level where it can take my likeness and replace all movie heroes with it. It will be as simple as toggling closed captioning on and off. I click a button and it’s me. If I’m watching reruns of Seinfeld or Friends, I can click a button and be whatever character I want. Or ALL the characters. Seeing all four of them as me would be amazingly hilarious.
Or not me. If we’re swapping out people, why stop with me?
I can make Jerry Seinfeld be Rambo. I can make Rambo into George Costanza. I can have all the guys on Friends be Oprah Winfrey and all the women be SpongeBob Squarepants.
The amount of hilarious combinations here are just amazingly endless. Why stop with defining just the person in the role? Many major video games allow users to detail the smallest amounts of detail in wardrobe and other features. Rambo’s head on Elaine wearing a shirt that is playing an episode of Friends where Oprah is Joey and Monica is JFK? Why not?
And I haven’t even talked voice or background music yet.
Maybe it’s just regular Seinfeld. But they all talk in Rambo’s voice. The funky bass line between scenes is replaced by Vincent Price’s voice attempting to sing the funky bass parts.
There’s also setting, lighting, camera angle, and all the other elements that make a show what it is. There’s no reason those can’t be manipulated in the future as well. Friends in the favela. What kind of statement would that make?
Let’s push the idea further.
It’s not just “set the options then watch it”. It’s a livestream. All the customizable elements are voted on by viewers. Capitalism, always having a hand in things like this, would allow that people could pay more to get a more heavily weighted vote.
The thing about this AI is that I don’t think it would have to be fully baked. There’s enough amateur content out there that many (certainly enough) people are used to glitchy imperfect unpolished entertainment. An imperfect medium can even add its own humor elements.