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AI on a lot,The entire technology conference focused on Artificial intelligence and filmmakingtook place at Amazon MGM Studios in Culver City last week. I was there for part of the sold-out event among nearly 2,500 people, who were all hopping from sound stages to stages getting the lowdown on everything artificial intelligence It can be done for Hollywood.
Human creativity, intention, identity, and impact were not front and center at the talks I attended. I made sure to make these topics a focal point in sidebar conversations with various AI representatives. The most surprising of these interviews was with Luc Arrigoni, CEO of the company Lots of artificial intelligence – A company searching the Internet for Deepfakes people (Celebrities and others) and overthrow them.
Do you want to Protect your likeness connected? Luke is the man to call.
Deepfakes are essentially digitally faking what someone looks like, whether it’s using their face, voice or the whole package, to create content, such as photos, videos and audio recordings.
Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which is the performers’ union of which I am a member, He went on strike In 2024. The threat of generative AI using a performer’s image without consent or compensation was — and still is, if I’m honest — an existential concern.
But deepfakes don’t just affect artists and celebrities. AI tools on social media are fertile ground for such, whether it’s for the sake of it Spreading misinformation on TikTok Or without consent Nude pictures of peopleAs happened earlier this year with Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool.
Arrigoni (who appeared in Forbes’ Next 1000 List in 2021)Meet me outside the Culver Theater. Dressed in a smart blazer and casual shirt, he had a welcoming but no-nonsense demeanor that made me hope that our conversation might disrupt the monotony of the AI cult at the event. I did.
We broke away from the hustle and bustle of the conference to talk about everything from the typical details of his company to the fear surrounding AI and the barriers needed to stop it from destroying humanity — his words, not mine. During a conference full of techno-optimism about technology that many fear and refuse to understand, Arrigoni cut through the noise to get to what really matters.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What does your company do specifically?
Arrigoni: We do two big things. The first thing is that we do a lot of defense: we scan the entire Internet, enter it into our system, use facial and voice recognition to find you where you don’t belong, and then we delete it. Think of it like search, find, and destroy. It’s unauthorized deepfakes, even scandalous stuff, scams, people photocopying logos on T-shirts — that kind of thing. We’re really good at detection, and we’re also better at elimination.
The second big thing we do is abuse. If any AI company wants to produce yours, there are these rules and prices that you as the creator can control. If they want to use you or your work, they send it to us, and in real time, we’ll scan it, and say, “Oh yeah, you can do that, you can create that,” or we say, “Don’t waste your money on creating. If you create that, I’ll delete it.”
So your product isn’t necessarily AI-specific, but it’s more than that. It’s like one of the many guardrails necessary in this day and age to protect people.
Arrigoni: It’s fighting fire with fire. We use facial recognition models and artificial intelligence to better understand content and determine whether it should be removed or approved. Realistically, what we are is a human tool. You mentioned the handrail. We are a railway system. We’re the fastest way to configure people in a secure way. We are the easiest way for general AI platforms to be compatible and participate in a larger market.
Hypothetical: I’m an actor and I found a video online that claims to be me but it’s not. Do I need to follow up with law enforcement and get a subpoena for your company to handle the complaint?
Arrigoni: You don’t need any of that. You sign up, and within 10 minutes, we’ll search the Internet for you.
What prompted you to start doing this?
Arrigoni: We’ve already started doing revenge porn takedowns first. This is a terrible term for non-consensual intimate images, but most people know it by its other name. And then we started doing it everywhere, and then SAG-AFTRA went on strike. I was working at CAA (Creative Artists Agency), so I called them and William Morris Endeavor (WME) and the other (talent) agencies and said, “Do your clients want a service where we can actually take care of this on a systemic level, where I can ingest large swaths of the Internet, and then take this down?” And everyone said, “This seems like a no-brainer. Let’s go do it.”
Ultimately, do you feel hopeful or fearful about what will come with artificial intelligence?
Arrigoni: I think there will be a lot of everything generated by AI; This has already started. People will lose their appetite for that, and then we’ll be left with real tastemakers and real people making art or journalism or other things that AI can’t imitate. I have no faith that AI will suddenly become better than humans at creating high-level content; There’s a reason for that. The truth is that AI is built around the idea that if you give it a lot of data, it can try to predict the average, and all the data that everyone is looking at now is somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile in terms of quality because the bottom quarter is illiterate and the top quarter doesn’t publish much. So, you have a system that wants to converge just above the average, but has no mechanism to converge at the 99th percentile.
Talk to me like I’m five, please.
Arrigoni: Okay. Depending on your appetite, whatever kind of cool stuff you like, whether it’s a Christopher Nolan or Jordan Peele-type movie — something weird and out there with its cool aesthetics — is not going to be replaced by artificial intelligence any time soon. But if you’re co-creating content, there’s going to be real competition.
Do you think we’ve reached a point where a deepfake will no longer be indistinguishable from the real thing?
Arrigoni: I think that over the next year or two, it will be impossible to distinguish between what is fake and what is not real.
What does this say about how AI technology will impact the general public in terms of how we interact with media?
Arrigoni: This is an educational problem, and it will take at least a generation to overcome. But how do you reduce the cost of critical thinking so that it doesn’t cost the average American so much brain power to think critically? I mean, you have to start in kindergarten, right?
This brings me back to this question of hope because it all seems a bit bleak and miserable.
Arrigoni: I’m very optimistic about what I think I can do. That doesn’t mean I’m optimistic about the current state of things, but I definitely feel that when there’s a bigger problem in our ecosystem, I can figure out how to use the tools in my network and bend them to try to fix it. I feel just the right amount of fear, but also a little excited about what I think I can do to help.
Arrigoni: That’s what technology likes to do: technology likes to improve over and over again until it gets to the point where it removes humanity or caution or guardrails. A lot of recommendation algorithms are a straightforward exercise in the most extreme versions of the technology. So what we do at Lotte is make sure that we don’t take that last step, even though the market wants us to say, “What’s the next step?” I resist that, and I actually have good investors who agree with that thinking, but I think more people need to start saying, “I know I can take the next step.” It will make things more profitable, but at the rate things are going, it will actually destroy humanity.
Wait, what did I just say?
Arrigoni: That sounds pretty extreme, doesn’t it?
Yes, but people are also turning to AI for all kinds of things they shouldn’t: ChatGPT doctor For people, it helps students cheat on homework, etc. What do I know?
Arrigoni: I have a 15-year-old, and you’ve made it really easy for him. I just told him, look, you can cheat, right? I know there’s no way I can stop you or anyone can. If I tell you that your whole life will be easier if you engage in work when all your colleagues don’t, suddenly everything — like being able to attract partners because you’re more literate, being able to get jobs because you’re more knowledgeable, being able to have conversations with people and communicate — will all be easier for you if you do something hard now. So, you can avoid it if you want. But I promise that doing some work now will make your life easier. I don’t know how you teach that on a large scale for everyone to understand. But I think parents probably have something to do with the OG barriers of humanity – just like having a child and making sure they don’t end up miserable, so yeah, I think that’s probably the only place you can start.
I’ll end this conversation on the subject of exclusivity — as one does. Do you think AI will be the catalyst that takes us to the tipping point where technology overtakes humanity?
Arrigoni: If that happened with the technology we have now, it would be bad. It will be as if the most ordinary person you’ve ever met is suddenly everywhere. This would suck.
