Ghosts who act: Rise of creepy, but lucrative digital afterlife industry

It may soon be possible to have digital replicas of Madhubala and Dilip Kumar star in a 2025 movie. This may be creepy, but also lucrative

In July 2023, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike in protest against a proposal by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

Now, tensions between “creatives” — the SAG-AFTRA represents 160,000 professional actors — and “suits”, a euphemism for executives who run studios, are hardly new. But this strike was triggered by new technology. The actors said AMPTP wanted to take scans of background actors – “extras” – and use artificial intelligence (AI) to generate replicas of them to use in future movies. This would obviously save a lot of