In a repeat of an incident from last year, Forrest Gump star Tom Hanks has warned that his likeness has been faked using AI for a medical ad campaign.
Don’t let a digital Tom Hanks fool you into buying drugs. That’s the message direct from the Hollywood star himself, as Hanks warns of an online advertising campaign which has used an AI-generated version of him in order to sell “miracle cures.”
It’s a curious echo of an incident from last October, in which Hanks was forced to warn his Instagram followers that his likeness was being used to sell some form of dental plan.
Of this latest scam, Hanks wrote in an Insta statement (via Deadline), “There are multiple ads over the internet falsely using my name, likeness, and voice promoting miracle cures and wonder drugs. These ads have been created without my consent, fraudulently and through AI. I have nothing to do with these posts or the products and treatments, or the spokespeople touting these cures.”
Last year’s Hollywood strikes were in large part due to actors and filmmakers’ growing fears that AI could be used to re-create their likenesses without their consent or compensation. What these fake Hanks ad campaigns prove is that it’s also relatively easy for criminals to use AI technology for their own dodgy ends. At present, it isn’t clear what – if any – legal guardrails can be put in place to protect both actors and the public from this kind of activity.
Hanks talked about the use of generative AI during an episode of Adam Buxton’s podcast last April. “We saw this coming,” the actor said. “We saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. Now that has only grown a billionfold since then, and we see it everywhere… Right now if I wanted to, I could get together and pitch a series of seven movies that would star me in them in which I would be 32 years old from now until kingdom come. Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deepfake technology.”
Curiously, Hanks has long been at the centre of tech-driven acting. Almost exactly 30 years ago, he starred in Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump, which used then cutting edge technology to place the title character (played by Hanks) in pieces of historical footage. Hanks was later one of the first high-profile actors to use performance capture in Zemeckis’ borderline experimental CGI movies, beginning with The Polar Express in 2004.
Twenty years later, Hanks and Zemeckis are re-teaming once again for the high-concept drama, Here, which uses AI technology to significantly de-age both Hanks and his co-star, Robin Wright. To the best of our knowledge, Hanks and Zemeckis have no plans to make any medical adverts, however.
