Featured Image Credit: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic/Getty Images / Instagram/@tomhanks
Topics: Tom Hanks, Celebrity, Artificial Intelligence, Instagram, US News
Katherine Sidnell
Topics: Tom Hanks, Celebrity, Artificial Intelligence, Instagram, US News
While most celebrities are more than happy to promote products on the side, Tom Hanks isn’t so eager.
In fact, the Forrest Gump actor has warned fans not to buy into a dental plan, which used a digitally generated version of him without his permission!
Following his stark warning about the bizarre advert, some fans have claimed it’s the beginning of the ‘AI apocalypse’.
It's not the first time he's been digitally reproduced though, check out the trailer below:
Advert
Taking to Instagram over the weekend, the Captain Phillips star shared a photo of his digital doppelganger as he cautioned fans.
In the caption, Hanks wrote: “Beware!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it.”
Having seen just how realistic the AI version of the actor was, some claimed it was a sign of the end times as AI prepares to take over. (Yes, really)
One even wrote on X: "And so the AI apocalypse begins...", with another adding that it was ‘Just the beginning…’.
Thankfully, others weren’t so eager to get their tin foil hats out and were pretty cynical about the dubious dental plan advert.
A third wrote: “So in other words, Commercials that promote items can NO LONGER BE TRUSTED…”
Understandably though, Hanks doesn’t seem to be too enthusiastic about AI and even shared his concerns about its use earlier this year.
Appearing on The Adam Buxton Podcast back in May, the A-Lister said that AI had ‘always been lingering’ in the creative industry.
Reflecting on his career, he revealed that he’d first felt uneasy about the clever tech whilst filming the classic kids’ film, The Polar Express.
Speaking about the motion capture film, he told listeners: “[It was] the first time we did a movie that had a huge amount of our own data locked in a computer — literally what we looked like…
“We saw this coming, we saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones from inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. That has only grown a billionfold since then and we see it everywhere.”
The 67-year-old went on to claim that actors needed to have control over their own likeness as technology rapidly improves.
Rather eerily, Hanks even acknowledged that AI could mean he could continue to appear in films long after he passes away.
He said: “Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deep fake technology.
"I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but performances can go on and on.”
Cheery thought, eh?