“STOP BELIEVING EVERYTHING YOU SEE ON THE INTERNET!”- GEORGE WASHINGTON

Recently I’ve covered new movies that have been sequels or remakes. The thing is that if the nostalgia is deep enough or if the movie is a vast improvement they make money and people enjoy them. There has always been a clamoring for shows and movies to be remade with shouts of “This would be a great TV show that could be a movie”, and “Why don’t they do a sequel?!”, and the ever popular “JUST REMAKE IT WITH A BETTER DIRECTOR AND ACTORS AND SPECIAL EFFECTS!” Hollywood is obviously listening as remakes like Dune and Road House have hit both the big screen, with Dune having it’s sequel just hitting the streaming service Hulu, and the Ghostbusters franchise having another sequel in theaters. Coming soon? A movie version of the Lee Majors hit TV show from the 80s The Fall Guy staring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, a new Planet Of The Apes movie, Twisters, Inside Out 2, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and The Crow. Are you getting a twitch in your childhood or early twenties? Or is that twitch the oncoming feeling of shouting about Hollywood not doing anything new? Maybe it’s both. The worst part of this is that there are people on the Internet that are masters of computer graphics art, special effects filming, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming. They play on people’s hopes and dreams of their favorite show or movie getting a long awaited sequel and seeing all their favorite characters grown up and facing new challenges. Here is a recent video of a James Bon movie that isn’t real and it’s gotten millions of views. Some are just people impressed by the technology and applauding the creator, but there is enough people watching this thinking it’s real and sharing it on Social Media.

Impressive. There’s a lot that looks real in this trailer. Until you watch them speaking and their mouths don’t match the dialogue and in fact look like they’re moving in spastic fashion. And while they are veiled in some layering AI special effects you can see some of the “scenes” are copied from other movies. It looks kind of cool, but it’s not real. While the description starts out looking legit A few weeks ago my Facebook feed seemed full of people sharing a movie poster that touted that a sequel to the 80s comedy adventure The Goonies was finally being made after years of fans hoping it would become a reality. Again, it was a realistic enough looking poster, but a quick Google search would tell you there isn’t a movie even close to development by studios. Also, all you had to do was look at the date this post was released …. April 1st. The original author even posted underneath his Tweet that he had fooled people and noted the date. Within the past 10 years or so people were putting up fake posters for Beetlejuice, Hocus Pocus, and any super hero they could think of. They would put words like “official” or “just announced” around them and people bit, got excited, and shared because they put a studio logo on their fake art. I felt bad crushing people’s dreams by pointing out it was fake, but someone had to stand up for the truth.

Here’s the main reason I wanted to talk about this today: people are allowing themselves to be fooled too easily. Many of the AI generated things you see have errors in them with missing appendages, athletes with a number on their shirt that doesn’t even look like a number, and a certain hue to the pictures that looks fake. The films make strange mouth movements with dialogue from another movie they were in or the same scenes from the original movie. They used to be easier to spot when people just spliced together actual recordings from film and you could recognize the scene. Now with AI they are a bit smoother and hidden, but they still have many telltale signs that they are fake. The main thing to look for is where the image or video is coming from. Is it’s on the official site for Warner Bros., Disney, or a streaming service or TV channel then it’s probably real and being shared by other reputable media. Just because it looks professional doesn’t mean it’s real. You can still dream and hope that these types of fake films and posters generate interest in the properties and Hollywood takes notice and makes them for real. For now, do a little research and see if it’s real before sharing it as a foregone conclusion. With that, take notice of how good AI is getting at making these fake videos and realize it will get better at it making it even harder to see the truth. That’s the part that worries me.