Keanu Reeves has one eye open when it comes to acting and deepfake technology. During a recent interview with Wired ahead of the release of ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’, which has just unveiled its impressive final trailer, Reeved criticized how deepfake technology has made its way into Hollywood and confirmed that he has a clause in every one of his film contracts that prevents studios from digitally manipulating their performances.
“We will face the value or non-value of the real”.
Reeves specified when the moment in which he changed his way of seeing post-production with CGI.
“I don’t care if someone removes a blink during an edit. But early on, in the early 2000s, or it could have been the 1990s, they made a change to my acting. They added a tear to my face, and I was like, ‘Huh?!’ It was like, I don’t even need to go out there. What is frustrating about all of this is that you lose your independence.”
reeves continued with the topic stating that:
“When you act in a movie, you know you’re going to be edited, but you’re participating in it. If you go into deepfake land, it doesn’t have any of your views. That scares. It will be interesting to see how humans handle these technologies. It is having such cultural and sociological impacts, and the species is being studied. There’s so much behavioral ‘data’ these days…”
Reeves also commented that chatting about ‘The Matrix’ with a 15-year-old boy gave him terrifying insight as he explained to the teenager that his character, Neo, is fighting for the real thing. The teen laughed and said, “Who cares if it’s real?”
“People are growing up with these tools: we’re already listening to AI-made music in the style of Nirvana, there’s NFT digital art. It’s cool, it’s like, ‘Look what the cute machines can do!’ But there is a corporatocracy behind that seeks to control these things. Culturally, socially, we will face the value or non-value of the real.
And then what are they going to impose on us? What is going to be presented to us? It is this sensory world. It’s show. And it is a control and manipulation system, we are on our knees looking at the walls of the cave and seeing the projections, and we don’t have the opportunity to look behind us.”