Nicolas Cage already lost his face to John Travolta in Face/Off — so he's not about to let AI steal his identity too.
Speaking at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday, the Oscar-winning actor delivered an impassioned speech about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to individual actors and the movie industry at large.
"Film performance, to me, is very much a handmade, organic, from-scratch process," Cage said during a reception honoring a group of up-and-coming performers, according to Deadline Hollywood. "It's from the heart, it's from the imagination, it's from thoughts and detail and thinking and honing and preparing."
He continued, "There is a new technology in town. It's a technology that I didn't have to contend with for 42 years until recently. But these 10 young actors, this generation, most certainly will be, and they are calling it EBDR."
Employment-based digital replica, or EBDR, is a type of generative AI created through a performer's physical participation. It's one of two digital replicas permitted by the SAG-AFTRA deal negotiated with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers at the conclusion of the 2023 Hollywood strikes.
Per the agreement, even though the technology could lessen the amount of days that an actor is required on set, studios are still required to pay the performers their full rate. For example, if an actor only worked three days instead of five because of their EBDR, they would still be paid for the full five days. However, Cage's concerns about the technology go beyond wages.
"This technology wants to take your instrument," Cage warned his fellow actors. "We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums."
He added, "The studios want this so that they can change your face after you've already shot it — they can change your face, they can change your voice, they can change your line deliveries, they can change your body language, they can change your performance."
Citing his cameo in The Flash as an example of the technology at work, Cage urged his fellow performers to be skeptical and to "consider what I am calling MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination — my performance, in response."
He concluded, "Protect your instrument."
Cage has not been shy about sharing his concerns when it comes to technology altering a performance; he voiced a similar frustration in the wake of The Flash's debut. The film sees Cage appear briefly as Superman, but the actor has openly stated that his scene in the film wasn't the one he filmed.
"When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider. I did not do that," Cage told Yahoo Entertainment. "That was not what I did."
As Cage recalls it, he filmed a scene that saw Kal-El "bearing witness [to] the end of a universe," and added, "I had no dialogue [so had to] convey with my eyes the emotion.”
The Face/Off star addressed the subject again during a July conversation with The New Yorker. "I'm terrified of that," the veteran actor said of AI. "I've been very vocal about it."
He then lamented, "It makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up? Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I'm dead? I don't want you to do anything with it!"