In light of rising apprehensions regarding the effects of artificial intelligence on performers, actress Olivia Williams emphasized that actors should handle data obtained from body scans similarly to how they approach nude scenes.
The star of Dune: Prophecy and The Crown stated that she and fellow actors often face mandatory body scans by on-set cameras, with scant assurances on the usage and destination of that data.
“It would be reasonable to adhere to the ‘Nude Rider’ standard,” she noted. “This footage should only be used within that specific scene; it must not be repurposed elsewhere. Furthermore, any edited scenes must be removed across all formats.”
Williams drew attention to a vague provision in contracts that seems to grant studios extensive rights to use images of performers “on every platform currently existing or created in the future worldwide, indefinitely.”
A renewed conversation about AI’s impact on actors has been ignited by widespread criticism of the development of an AI performer named Tilly Norwood. Actors fear their likenesses and poses will be utilized to train AI systems, potentially threatening their employment.
Actors, stunt performers, dancers, and supporting actors relayed to the Guardian that they felt “ambushed” and compelled to participate in body scans on set. Many reported there was little time to discuss how the generated data would be handled or whether it could be used for AI training purposes.
Ms. Williams recounted her unsuccessful attempts to eliminate the ambiguous clause from her contract. She explored options for obtaining a limited license to control her body scan data, but her lawyer advised her that the legal framework was too uncertain. The costs of trying to reclaim the data were prohibitively high.
“I’m not necessarily looking for financial compensation for the use of my likeness,” she remarked. “What concerns me is being depicted in places I’ve never been, engaging in activities I’ve never done, or expressing views I haven’t shared.”
“Laws are being enacted, and no one is intervening. They’re establishing a precedent and solidifying it. I sign these contracts because not doing so could cost me my career.”
Williams expressed that she is advocating for younger actors who have scant options but to undergo scans without clear information regarding the fate of their data. “I know a 17-year-old girl who was encouraged to undergo the scan and complied, similar to the scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Being a minor, a chaperone was required to consent, but her chaperone was a grandmother unfamiliar with the legal implications.”
The matter is currently under discussion between Equity, the UK performing arts union, and Pact, the trade body of the UK film industry. “We are urging for AI safeguards to be integrated into major film and television contracts to prioritize consent and transparency for on-set scanning,” stated Equity Executive Director Paul W. Fleming.
“It is achievable for the industry to implement essential minimum standards that could significantly transform conditions for performers and artists in British TV and film.”
Pact issued a statement saying: “Producers are fully aware of their responsibilities under data protection legislation, and these concerns are being addressed during collective negotiations with Equity. Due to the ongoing talks, we are unable to provide further details.”
Zelda Williams, the daughter of the late actor and comedian Robin Williams, has voiced her opposition to AI-generated content featuring her father.
“Please, stop sending videos of dad generated by AI,” Zelda posted on my Instagram story on Monday. “Stop assuming that I want to see it or that I’m interested; I don’t, I really don’t. If you’re just trying to annoy me, I encounter something worse, I block it and move on.”
“To reduce the legacy of real individuals to something like, ‘Just this vague appearance and sound, that’s sufficient,’ is disheartening.”
“You’re not creating art; you’re producing grotesque, over-processed versions of human life, derived from art and musical history.”
“And for heaven’s sake, stop referring to it as the ‘future’; AI is merely a mishmash of recycled content that badly reflects the past. It’s integrating superficial human content.”
Robin Williams with Zelda at the premiere of his film RV in 2006. Photo: Mario Anzuni/Reuters
This isn’t the first instance where Zelda Williams, an actor and filmmaker who directed the 2024 horror-comedy Lisa Frankenstein, has addressed the recreation of her father, who passed away at 63 in 2014. The potential for realism is concerning.
“I’ve encountered AI imitating his ‘voice’ and saying what people want to hear. While I find this intrusive personally, the implications extend far beyond my own sentiments.”
“These recreations are inferior imitations of great individuals and, at their worst, resemble horrifying Frankenstein-like constructs formed from the industry’s lowest points.”
Zelda’s recent commentary arrives amidst a surge of celebrity deepfakes on social media, which span various themes, including adult content, political messages, scams, and advertisements.
In January, actress Scarlett Johansson highlighted the “immediate dangers of AI” following her condemnation of Kanye West’s anti-Semitic comments, after deepfake videos surfaced featuring other prominent Jewish celebrities like Jerry Seinfeld, Drake, and Adam Sandler.
A fraudulent advertisement featuring Deepfark in August was falsely attributed to Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, who stated he was incorrectly represented discussing erectile dysfunction, prompting the band to issue a disclaimer.
The deepfakes of Robin Williams are part of a larger trend in AI-generated content, fueled by the rapid proliferation of low-quality material produced by entertainment-free generation AI applications.
The recent TikTok video featuring Robin Williams appears to have been created using Sora 2, OpenAI’s new video generation app, and includes a simulated interaction between the comedian and the late Betty White.
Within days of launch, Sora’s feed was inundated with videos featuring copyrighted characters from series like SpongeBob SquarePants, South Park, Pokémon, and Rick and Morty.
OpenAI informed the Guardian that content owners can report copyright violations through a “copyright dispute form,” although individual artists and studios cannot opt out broadly. Varun Shetty, Head of Media Partnerships at OpenAI, commented:
IIf you wandered onto the set of M3GAN 2.0 last year, you might have stumbled upon M3GAN, an eerie humanoid doll. Alison Williams shares with a nervous chuckle, “The challenge is whether to turn her around to face the wall or send her back to her room. Neither option feels right.”
In the sequel to the sci-fi horror film, Williams reprises her role as Gemma, a robotics expert-turned-advocate against the reckless development of AI after creating M3GAN for orphans. (She is also a producer on the sequel.)
Discussing M3GAN’s challenging role via a video call from her New York hotel room, Williams noted that the character was sometimes portrayed by a 15-year-old dancer named Amie Donald, but often by a robotic doll operated by a small team. “After a while, her eyelids get sticky,” Williams explains. “The handler uses a brush to apply lubricant to her eyes, and if you catch yourself thinking she’s alive, that’s a problem.”
Williams is best known for her breakout role as Marnie in Lena Dunham’s landmark series, Girls. Her first significant film project post-Girls was the Oscar-winning dark comedy, Get Out. Both IT and M3GAN were relatively low-budget films that became cultural phenomena. M3GAN particularly tackles racial politics and the perils of AI, highlighting M3GAN’s own disarray.
Williams has long been intrigued by AI. She knows Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, who developed ChatGPT, and engaged with robotics experts while preparing for her role as Gemma. The film raises ethical questions about AI, exploring not only the threats posed by AI gone rogue but also the “rights” of our devices. “It’s easy to anthropomorphize something like our little robot vacuum at home,” she remarks.
Is she apprehensive about AI taking over jobs in the near future? She chuckles, “If you pose a question that begins with ‘me,’ the answer is always yes. I have an endless capacity to worry about things.”
Yet she suggests that whether it’s human acting or other work, “We will all be replaced eventually. But so far, especially in art, I haven’t witnessed anything that replicates human output in a way that truly feels human.” She smiles, adding, “But it’s not that it doesn’t concern me.”
M3GAN poses questions about the technology we give to children. “You wouldn’t give your child cocaine,” Gemma asserts in M3GAN 2.0. “So why hand them a smartphone?” With three sons of her own, Williams is cautious about this. “He asks such profound questions; it’s incredible. Often, I don’t have answers.” Recently, she shared an explanation about rocket launches using ChatGPT. “Watching his reaction reminded me of Gemma observing a child interacting with M3GAN. It struck me how I had to note to take him to the library to get a book next time. It’s hard to justify logically,” she adds. “It felt like an instinctive decision.”
A cultural phenomenon… I’m dating Daniel Kaluuya. Photo: Justin Rubin/PA
Parenting is the focal point of a new podcast that Williams launched this month alongside two friends, early childhood educator Hope Klemer and therapist Jamie Oppenheim. It originated from a group chat delving into motherhood, aging, and life’s complexities. Upcoming episodes will touch upon the guilt many mothers grapple with, a theme echoed in M3GAN 2.0. Do our expectations of mothers evolve? “I certainly hope so,” Williams responds. “Guilt thrives in the absence of a community where you can express those feelings.”
She expresses frustration regarding the prevalent “mama content” on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, often portraying an idealized version of motherhood. “Many times, it just makes people feel bad. The emotional toll can be immense,” she shares with a laugh, addressing the unrealistic portrayals of influencer-packed lunches filled with nutritious options. “Without our nanny, I would be a mess, especially while my husband is working in London. I’m so grateful for her support. It’s unrealistic to expect anyone to handle everything alone. What about the help?”
“We were easy targets”…(From left) Lena Dunham, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke, and Williams in Girls. Photo: PR’s Distribution Material
In another podcast episode, she tackles societal standards regarding aging and the unrealistic expectations of beauty. With a chuckle, she remarks, “But there’s not much that can be done about my forehead now. Yet, someone could glance at me and think, ‘I should be able to have a wrinkle-free forehead.’ No, my lack of wrinkles doesn’t make me better than you.”
Williams reflects on the perception that once celebrities achieve fame and fortune, maintaining genuine friendships can become challenging. “I don’t walk the world feeling like a celebrity,” she notes. “I experienced that during my twenties while shooting in New York, but now, dropping my son off at kindergarten makes me feel like a regular person among others. My job might be public and unique, but I’m still just a person.”
Recently, she realized that her son is at the same age she was when she began considering acting as a possible career (his father, Alexander Dreymon, is also an actor). They met while filming the 2020 thriller Horizon. Williams recalls how movies like Mary Poppins shaped her perception of acting, “Julie Andrews was like a goddess to me.”
Her parents, former NBC News anchor Brian Williams and producer Jane Stoddard Williams, encouraged her education (Yale) over entering the acting world as a child. “I’m thankful they didn’t push me into this industry too early. It was tough enough starting my career at 23 when Girls premiered.”
Williams’ experience is rather atypical. Growing up in a household with famous parents meant her father, Brian Williams, reached millions before the media landscape shifted dramatically. In 2015, his reputation was called into question when it was revealed he embellished a story about being shot at while covering the Iraq War, leading to a six-month suspension and eventual departure from NBC.
What was it like to navigate such circumstances as a family? “When you feel the weight of public scrutiny and chatter, it can be daunting,” Williams admits. “It’s a harsh side of the media; they often turn on their own.”
In discussing the criticism surrounding “nepotism babies,” Williams approaches the topic positively, recognizing her advantages. “One of the privileges is the ability to pursue acting without the stress of providing for myself. Growing up around people who were doing what I aspired to do—like the Hanks family—made it feel attainable. By high school, I was already working as a production assistant for Robert Altman on Horizon, landing a spot in a star-studded ensemble alongside Meryl Streep. That experience surely gave me a head start.”
Gratitude is a recurring theme in Williams’ life. She feels fortunate not to be starting her career now. There was a considerable buzz surrounding Girls during its six-year run ending in 2017, but she can’t fathom what it would be like navigating social media scrutiny today. (Williams left Instagram in 2020, feeling the platform became increasingly toxic and cynical.) “We treated each episode as if it mattered significantly,” she reflects.
“When she’s been working for a while, her eyelids can get sticky”… with Gemma (Alison Williams), Cady (Violet McGraw), and M3GAN in the original film. Photo: Geoffrey Short/Universal Pictures
While some criticisms were valid—like the predominantly white setting of the show—several were driven by misogyny, undermining constructive critique. Williams laughs, recalling how some reviews failed to refer to the characters by name, instead labeling them as “daughters of famous parents.” “We were easy targets, and I acknowledge that,” she admits.
For a while, Williams struggled with people conflating her identity with her character, Marnie, who grapples with sociopathy. “I wanted to create distance because I thought it was important for people to respect the act of acting. Our characters were heard and seen, but we chose not to reveal that. It felt odd for people not to recognize the characters as distinct from us.”
Despite the challenges, she emphasizes that the experience was overwhelmingly positive. Is there a chance for a reunion? “I would love that,” Williams responds. “I know Zosia [Mamet, who played Shoshanna] is promoting spin-offs. I’m eager to find my own path to elbow into that. I want us all back together; working on that show was a blast and marked the start of my career, a time I now recognize as exceptionally special.”
For fans of Girls, a reunion would be an ideal scenario: four dynamic women against the backdrop of an unsettling AI doll.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are ready to break Thanksgiving bread in orbit.
NASA astronaut Suni Williams said she and her fellow crew members will be taking the day off to celebrate.
“I’m packing a lot of Thanksgiving-y food,” Williams said Wednesday in an interview with NBC News. “Smoked turkey, cranberries, apple cobbler, green beans and mushrooms, and mashed potatoes.”
She added that she plans to attend the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade before dining with American and Russian colleagues.
Williams has been living and working on the International Space Station for almost six months. She and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore arrived at the orbiting outpost in early June as test pilots for the first manned flight of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule.
The two were scheduled to stay on the ISS for only about a week, then return to Earth on the Starliner. However, problems with the spacecraft kept them in orbit for months longer than expected. Wilmore and Williams are scheduled to return home in February in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
Starliner’s difficult mission was a dramatic, months-long story for NASA and Boeing. But Williams said she doesn’t feel like she’s “stranded” in space.
“Our control team and management always had the option of us returning home,” she said. “Yes, we came here on the Starliner. We’re coming back on the Dragon, but there was always a plan for how we were going to get home.”
In the last few weeks, NASA dodged the rumors Williams reportedly suffered from health problems while in space. Although some news articles suggested that the astronauts had lost significant weight, the agency’s medical director said on Nov. 14 that the health of Williams and others on board the space station was He said the condition was good.
Williams told NBC News that he is enjoying his time in orbit and is in good spirits.
“We feel good, we exercise and we eat properly,” she said. “We’re having a lot of fun here, too. So people are worried about us. Really, don’t worry about us.”
June 5, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore of Cape Canaveral, Florida. Chris O’Meara / AP File
Despite problems that occurred during Starliner’s voyage (mainly thruster and helium leaks), the capsule returned to Earth without a crew on September 7th. Williams said he wished he had been able to see Starliner’s mission to completion.
She added that Boeing and NASA would not hesitate to send Starliner into space again if they ironed out the problems that arose during the test flight.
“It might not be tomorrow because we need to incorporate some of the lessons we learned,” she said. “But once we knew we were on the right path, we fixed some of the issues we had — absolutely.”
I I received a message from a former colleague, a once cheerful person who is now a provocateur of “alt-right” nostalgia to an aging society. Whatever he wanted, I would have told him to get on with it, but it just so happened that I didn't really agree with it: campaign to limit children's cell phone use. It is a bipartisan organization that
As surely as anything bad happens to children, people will blame it on phone use. Perhaps there is a crisis in their mental health, someone is being bullied online, someone is being threatened over an image they have sent, they are part of a criminal organization, part of a murderous enterprise, or they are committing self-harm. You may be doing this. Somewhere in the story, smartphones probably don't play a role. Those affected often wish they had limited their phone use, or at the very least, are keenly aware that they had little knowledge of what was happening to their children, who of course were constantly on their phones. is used. Then politicians and pundits get involved, exploiting the sorrows and trials of others to their discursive advantage, lecturing schools on the measures they are already frequently implementing and forcing parents back to “dumb phones”; Preaching to kids to ban devices completely.
And steadily, it becomes another indicator of reputable parenting. If you're doing it right, your kids will get a Nokia at age 14 and won't know about Instagram until they're 25. And all the kids who have had iPhones since age 6 and can operate them with one thumb, they texted with their eyes closed, well, they were clearly poorly raised. The main reason I dislike such campaigns is that they turn parents into jailers whose authority they must circumvent, which I can't help but think inhibits openness. Beyond hard work, respect, and responsibility, I like to instill the values of “tell me what's going on” above all else. No information is too small. Beef is not trivial. No gossip is too far away. If someone from a completely different age texted another person a shrimp emoji and that person mistook it for a sombrero, I'd love to hear about it. Also, if I want to spend a significant amount of time every day engaging in a fierce battle with a teenager, I want it to be about something important: which is better, a dog or a cat? How many crunches should I eat in a day? – It's not about compulsive phone checking behavior that's just as good as mine, or even slightly better.
But I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel scared multiple times a day looking at the state of modern connectivity. TikTok is basically a never-ending reinforcement exercise. If your hobbies are K-pop or cafes with animals, there's no problem. All you see is a nicer young Korean woman and a piglet drinking a cappuccino. When I was 14, I was so obsessed with trench warfare that I regularly thought I was going crazy. I don't even want to think what my social feed would look like, a combination of self-diagnosed mental illness and military recruitment ads.
Snapchat, on the other hand, works as if someone created the app out of a disturbing dream. What if everyone could see not only who you're talking to most of the time, but also who you're talking to? They are I was able to talk to the most people and rank entire circles by their asymmetrical loyalties and affiliations. Imagine if you could always see where everyone is with Snap Maps. But if you turn it off to avoid detection, you'll look suspicious and he'll probably start people gossiping about you on Snapchat. The level of hyper-surveillance that teens exert on each other is incredible. The last thing you want to do is rush in with an oar and make the situation worse.
But I think so, and I always say one thing: Whatever it is, it's not the end of the world. Today's social apocalypse will be tomorrow's boring anecdote. Yes, the internet has a very long memory, but it also has a lot going on at the same time. I don't have the strength to stay angry forever or even for two weeks. It's strange that no one has proposed a cross-party parenting campaign to help us all maintain a sense of balance. That should be our main job.
a A friend of mine was recently fooled by a fraudulent email purporting to be from her middle school daughter and transferred £100 into her account to cover a mysterious situation, which she described as a very time-sensitive and inconvenient event. That’s it.
You can imagine how the scammers managed to pull it off. Remember the everyday low-level anxiety of parents expecting bad news when their children are further away than the kitchen table? What’s more, the bad news story, which begins with a 19-year-old’s email saying, “I broke my phone,” is completely believable. All the scammer has to do is lean back.
Still, the story isn’t complete, as it neglects to ask basic questions like, “But if your phone is broken, why transfer money to someone else’s bank account?” , and for years afterward we called him a fool. He didn’t even call her number to see if he could talk to her. A 100-pound lighter was probably the best place to land. If someone tries to release his life savings, he will concentrate.
But what happens when you hear your child begging for money just like you? Who has strong enough defenses to withstand voice cloning? Members of Stop Scams UK tried to explain this to me last year. Scammers can extract the child’s voice from her TikTok account. Then all they have to do is find the parent’s phone number. I thought I had gotten the wrong end of the stick and had to piece together the message from recorded words available on social media. Good luck getting some soccer tips and some believable havoc from K-Pop, I thought. When it comes to AI, he didn’t think for 10 seconds about whether it could infer speech patterns from samples. In fact, it’s possible.
I think it’s still pretty easy to get around. Kid Machine is seeking urgent assistance. You say, “Precious and perfect being, I love you with all my heart.” Kid Machine will surely reply, “I love you too.” Why can’t we do that? A real child would claim to have been sick in the mouth. You can’t build an algorithm for this.
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