A new movie directed by Robert Zemeckis, Here, uses artificial intelligence technology to depict actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in their youth and up to 60 years old. This makes the film the first in Hollywood to rely entirely on visual effects created by AI, Ars Technica reports.
The film is an adaptation of a graphic novel that takes place primarily in the living room of a New Jersey home over several time periods. Instead of looking for actors of different ages, the movie used artificial intelligence to change the appearance of the actors.
The rejuvenation technology was developed by Metaphysic, a visual effects company that creates real-time facial aging effects. During the filming, the crew simultaneously watched two monitors: one showing the actors' real appearance, and the other showing their age as required by the scene.
Previous films starring Hanks and Wright were used to train the model. The model can generate instant facial transformations without the months of manual work required by traditional CGI.
Unlike previous aging effects that relied on frame-by-frame manipulation, Metaphysic's approach generates transformations instantly by analyzing facial landmarks and matching them to prepared age variations.
Globally, this is not the first movie to use AI technologies to rejuvenate actors. Artificial intelligence was used during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 2023. But there, artificial intelligence only helped at the post-production stage.
"You couldn't have made this movie three years ago," Zemeckis says. Traditional visual effects for this level of face modification would reportedly require hundreds of artists and a substantially larger budget closer to standard Marvel movie costs.
Metaphysic technology was also used in two other 2024 films. In the movie Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, it was used to recreate the character of the deceased actor Richard Carter, and in Alien: Romulus, it was used to recreate the android character Ian Holm from the original 1979 film. Both realizations required the approval of the heirs.