Keanu Reeves is Not a Fan of DeepFake: Here's What He Really Thinks
Whether despite or because of starring in The Matrix, which core idea revolved around digital falsification of reality, Keanu Reeves has strong negative feelings about DeepFake, and about digital editing of actors' appearances as well.
He laid out his reasoning in an interview with Wired:
"What's frustrating about that is you lose your agency. When you give a performance in a film, you know you're going to be edited, but you're participating in that. If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That's scary."
Keanu wondered what these advances might mean for humanity in general, too:
"It's going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies. They're having such cultural, sociological impacts, and the species is being studied. There's so much 'data' on behaviors now."
Furthermore, he believes that these advancements are going to devalue much of the entertainment industry.
Not only because big companies can now use DeepFake images in place of real actors, but through the process similar to the negative consequences of earlier CGI advances, when filming often became sloppier, because you could just cover up errors and edit out bloopers digitally.
And he's vary of people at whose hands these digital tools are:
"But there's a corporatocracy behind it that's looking to control those things. Culturally, socially, we're gonna be confronted by the value of real, or the non-value. And then what's going to be pushed on us? What's going to be presented to us?"
He is probably talking from experience, when he's saying that big Hollywood studious would rather entirely replace living actors with digital images, if they could. Not only you won't need to pay the latter, they are ever obedient, unlike messy, unruly humans.
In places, Keanu Reeves sounds almost as if he can perceive the Matrix being created in real life, while we can only watch it happening:
"And it's a system of control and manipulation. We're on our knees looking at cave walls and seeing the projections, and we're not having the chance to look behind us."
He's doing what little he can do to combat the trend. For example, his contracts prohibit digital editing of his appearance. But, despite being a famous actor, he's only one man, so there's precious little he can do against the wave of ubiquitous change he's talking about.