
Instagram's 'virtual' celebrities - timoth
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180402-the-fascinating-world-of-instagrams-virtual-celebrities
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clort
This is a corporate ownership of personality.

Shudu is ageless, ever available, won't do anything against the corporate
image and can be bought and sold.

Ok, she is a generated personality but this will happen with real people too.
Tom Cruise is too old to appear in action films? Well, his image won't be..
even after he is dead and gone his image will be owned by a corporation. He
won't be too short to appear as Jack Reacher anymore either.. We might be
lucky with some celebrities who are already dead, at least they will get left
behind. Its difficult to know how this will affect new talent though, perhaps
society will become sick of recorded images and turn to live events but I can
see that the CGI power will increase such that these images can be generated
live.

We already had some of this with Tupac of course

~~~
jakebasile
This is already happening. In Disney™'s Rogue One™: A Star Wars™ Story, they
had Grand Moff Tarkin played by a recreation of Peter Cushing. Disney claims
they won't use computers to resurrect Carrie Fisher, but I'm not sure I
believe The Mouse.

I remember back when Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within came out, Square was
saying that the Aki Ross character model would be like an actress. "While
Square ruled out any chance of a sequel to The Spirits Within before it was
even completed, Sakaguchi intended to position Aki as being the "main star"
for Square Pictures, using her in later games and films by Square, and
including the flexibility of being able to modify aspects such as her age for
such appearances."

source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy%3A_The_Spirits_W...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy%3A_The_Spirits_Within#Character_design)

~~~
DisruptiveDave
Sopranos did it like 15 years ago with Tony's mother, and I'm sure they
weren't the first.

~~~
iooi
Well, not exactly. They reused old tapes of her and superimposed it on a scene
[1]. It's an important distinction since they didn't actually _create_
anything new, like what deepfakes do.

[1]
[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-02-28-sopranos...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-02-28-sopranos.htm)

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chrisvalleybay
This is going to change the world in a substantial way.

Imagine when these characters become so lifelike that they are near
indistinguishable from reality. Imagine when someone gives them a voice and
personality, and you can speak with them. Imagine then that they star in their
own movies, and some of the personality traits you've helped shaped or bared
witness to emerge in those movies. The connection you will feel.

Today celebrities are inherently limited by their own bandwidth. These people
will have near unlimited bandwidth. Everyone can talk with them. I'm thinking
of the movie Her.

This is really interesting!

Edit: This made me think; The Sims in year 2050, might be immoral; almost
Truman Show-esque.

~~~
Cthulhu_
You're saying it like it hasn't already happened. Most models already are
carefully crafted images, with a lot of post-processing happening so what you
end up seeing is more of an art piece inspired by the model than the person
behind it.

Un-lifelike famous characters are already very much a thing, especially in
e.g. japan where there's characters appearing everywhere.

~~~
matte_black
You misunderstand the point of models. A model's photoshoot is rarely about
the model, or the "person behind it". It _is_ an art piece. It is not meant to
be a candid photo like what you throw up on your social media. Often models
are just for the purpose of branding, to convey a lifestyle or value, or to
get likes.

~~~
mercer
It gets a little blurrier with pop stars though. How much of what we _think_
we know as Katie Perry or Rihanna is really them? How many of the 'authentic'
bursts of personality are real, and how many are artificial? And to what
degree might they themselves not be able to tell the difference even?

While I personally am not a fan of this kind of artificiality, I'm also not
saying it's something to be outraged about. I find it fascinating, more than
anything.

~~~
lbotos
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf4VQcmxGp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf4VQcmxGp8)
<\- A recap of Katy Perry's live stream from her "witness" house experience.

"‘I created this character called Katy Perry. I didn’t want to be Katheryn
Hudson. It was too scary’" \-
[https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/11/katy-perry-
int...](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jun/11/katy-perry-interview-
witness-album-glastonbury)

Was just interesting in the light of choosing Katy as an example.

~~~
mercer
Ha, yeah. I'm cynical enough about it all at this point that I think this
might very well be part of a carefully crafted 'development', perhaps partly
to let her not go crazy, and partly for a new 'phase' of commercial viability.
She might not be 100% in on the joke even.

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masklinn
The lack of mention of Vocaloids strikes me as interesting/odd: they're
literally virtual pop stars/idols.

And while they're not intended to look or pass as humans they "give" hours-
long packed concerts:
[https://youtu.be/HI0mv7P_sRk](https://youtu.be/HI0mv7P_sRk)

~~~
steinuil
It also fails to mention virtual youtubers, who are "virtual" youtube
personalities with a 3D model as body and whose videos take place entirely
inside 3D environments.

Obviously they're being played by real actors with motion control equipment,
but there's a lot of work that goes into making them feel believable as
virtual characters, with facial expressions and lots of other animations that
are probably added after recording.

They've become very popular in Japan over the last year. The most famous one
is called Kizuna Ai:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NasyGUeNMTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NasyGUeNMTs)

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pjc50
Reminds me very strongly of "Idoru" (1996)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru)

> “If you think about social media, Instagram isn’t you. It’s just a digital
> version of you – one that shows photographs, sometimes videos, and comments
> on specific things,”

"Ceci n'est pas un pipe.": the image is not the thing, and there may be images
without referents.

~~~
analogmemory
Thank you, I was trying to remember which sci-fi book touched on the same
idea.

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ponderatul
The commoditization of beauty. Or the next thing that will become cheap, by
these providers of beauty. Hopefully the market will be oversaturated with
beauty, computer generated perfection and after some time swimming in this
junk, we will once again appreciate real people, with all their problems,
inconsistencies, imperfections.

Until then let us all hail our gods of technological progress.

~~~
Vaskivo
And then we will have artificial problems, inconsistencies and imperfections.

There will always be capitalization and fabrication on what is popular and
perceived to be "good". "Reality" TV is a thing :)

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Applejinx
If this works, humans can't possibly compete. Not on the scale that virtual
people can. This is simply another step towards a kind of singularity.

I suspect the most competitive virtual supermodel would be that created by a
person (say, some schlub) who desperately needed to be such a supermodel and
could handle themselves in that situation: projecting their own desired
identity through the mask, to animate it.

Or, created by an AI which itself is a needy schlub that craves validation and
can handle itself as a supermodel. There's no reason this hunger should be
exclusive to humans only. And an AI would have greater bandwidth for learning
what the public wanted from 'it as a supermodel'.

~~~
reaperducer
It doesn't even have to be human.

Take a popular Pixar character, add an AI and a bunch of stock photo
backgrounds, and you'll hook the under-12's in a minute.

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jronsomers
I'm not sure how I feel about this. This could be a good thing by saving
celebrities the need to appear perfect everywhere.

However, I feel like this could be a whole new ball game in terms of setting
unrealistic expectations (not that they aren't doing that anyway with
photoshop). But if it is transparent that these IG models are virtual and not
real, maybe that will help kids understand that real humans can't look as
perfect as a virtual model and that helps them create realistic expectations?

edit: I suppose they could also use virtual models and fatten them up / give
them more acne to make them more 'realistic'

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mkirklions
I'm going with unrealistic expectations.

Instagram celebs are either hot girls, or guys with lots of money to pay for
promoted content.

They dont take their own photos, they use professional photographers. Anyone
without the professional style or not willing to play facebook's algorithm
game loses out.

The internet is getting very specialized and content quality is skyrocketing.

~~~
rainbowmverse
>> _Instagram celebs are either hot girls, or guys with lots of money to pay
for promoted content._

Guys are hot, too. Not all of them need to pay for ads, and not all the women
got there without it.

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dfxm12
_[Virtual model] Miquela: I think most of the celebrities in popular culture
are virtual!_

I can't disagree. When I was a kid, I wanted to eat Butterfingers because of
Bart Simpson and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made me want Pizza Hut.
Along the same lines, "physical" celebrities have teams of PR agents telling
their clients how to act and shaping the public's perception of them.

This isn't really a new idea, just a new vector, right?

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gkya
> For fashion brands, a high-tech mannequin offers intriguing possibilities.
> She, he, or it can be placed in any situation in any given outfit.

Would not bet on that. If this stuff holds foot, these models will soon have
rights and fanatics who will lament when these things wear or do things non
characteristical of them. They'll have to have rigid, stereotypical
personalities to which the follower communities will practically confine them.

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blanche_
There was a black mirror episode about something very similar. "The Waldo
Moment"

~~~
Cthulhu_
That's an obvious cartoon character though, these are models trying to look
like real people - and having fooled people already.

~~~
freehunter
To be fair, I believe people are only fooled because we already do so much CGI
to real human celebrities that they're already basically indistinguishable
from a well-done virtual creation.

"Normal" humans look far different from celebrities and these CGI creations,
but celebrities and these CGI creations look similar because celebrities are
already mostly CGI.

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fenwick67
I mean, Tony the Tiger has tens of thousands of followers too...

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dandare
This brings the "unrealistic body image" discussion to a whole new level. it
could have a positive impact - in a way escalating the realization that
media/fashion models are not "real" either.

~~~
matte_black
Media/fashion models are “real” similar to how exotic supercars are “real”.

~~~
colechristensen
Fashion models aren't real because the images of them are photoshopped. If you
looked at the humans that inspired the images you wouldn't see the same thing.

Exotic cars are... expensive? A lot of the appeal of owning one is the
perception of (and the very real) cost, but they are still what they seem to
be.

~~~
l9k
Really hot and beautiful models exist. They are just rare. They are the 1%.
But out of 500M DAU, that means they are 5 millions, and they are the most
popular because of their beauty. The unrealistic expectation comes from the
fact that people get used to seeing the top 1% because of social media.

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foobaw
Reminds me of Hatsune Miku from Japan, a humanoid persona, with a huge
following. Miku is not deceptive about its virtuality. But people still love
it. Some people love anime characters - there's a huge culture behind that.

The problem occurs when there's deception about its identity. There will be
trust issues in the near future if things like this persist. Then again, would
it even matter if some celebrity is a real person in the future?

~~~
jbattle
I wouldn't be surprised if the window is already closing for this constructed
personalities where you can't tell if they are real or not. People get
relatively savvy to the nuances of new media fairly quickly (within a few
years). Sure there will be notable exceptions but I bet some unspoken norms /
rules / clues will develop and be roughly accurate guides as to which
dimensions the people they see on their screens are real vs. artificial.

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errantmind
For anyone interested in seeing how this could play out in the future, I
recommend watching The Congress. It has a somewhat low IMDB rating, but I
liked it as it addresses the corporatization of identity and the extent some
people will go to live vicariously :
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/)

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janandonly
This is directly form the movie "S1m0ne". What an uninspired artist :(

~~~
Cthulhu_
Except that the titular character in that one was actually a real actor, :p

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twostorytower
Miquela is so blatantly CGI it's a little sad that some people are confused if
she's real or not.

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tjwds
The SF lover in me loves this. The person who cares about others in me is glad
that this might change the way we idolize celebrity at the cost of real
people. Man, the future is cool.

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dwighttk
I might not have guessed Shudu was fake, but man, Miquela is so fake looking
as to almost not even be entering the uncanny valley

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nicwolff
If we're citing fictional predictions that this will fulfill, I think Howard
Chaykin coined the term "synthespian" in his 1983 comic book American Flagg!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Flagg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Flagg)!

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firefoxd
There is Ami Yamato[1]. A 3d character youtuber. I'm actually not sure how she
keeps being consistent. I imagine it is a lot of work to make these videos.

[1]:
[https://m.youtube.com/user/yamatoami](https://m.youtube.com/user/yamatoami)

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auganov
Instagram got 'hacked'. When a game gets hacked people stop playing. Rather
than fundamentally alter reality or whatever, it's just going to accelerate
migration towards high-frequency, ephemeral, video-first social.

~~~
JasonFruit
'Social' is an adjective.

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ccozan
This is totally Norman Spinrad's "Little Heroes" [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Heroes_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Heroes_\(novel\))

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return0
Not virtual though, they are CGIs but there is an artist behind giving it its
soul. Its gonna be a lot more interesting when the entire agent is
computerized.

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Lich
Reminds me of Eliza Cassan in Deux Ex: Human Revolution. A virtual 24/7 news
anchor.

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polar8
How is this different from cartoon characters?

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whywhywhywhy
It's not, but the software and hardware stack means a single human in a
bedroom can create this instead of a small room of illustrators and keyframe
artists in America and a large room of inbetweeners in Korea.

If neural network voice generation tech gets democratised in the next few
years too then you could even be pushing out video content too as an entirely
different personality than your actual self.

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paulie_a
This is just plain stupid.

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vernie
Why?

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mariusmg
This is fucking orweillian

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spurcell93
What about this is specifically Orwellian?

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crispyporkbites
George Orwell was a fictional person

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ravenstine
I see you might have gotten a downvote or two, but for those who don't know,
George Orwell is a pen-name. The author's real name was Eric Blair.

