While his iconic Marvel Cinematic Universe portrayal of Iron Man may be a massive fan of AI, actor Robert Downey Jr. is not, as the actor has now made it clear that he intends to take legal action against any and all Hollywood execs who ever try to use the technology to replicate his likeness.
Downey made it clear that all future attempts to depict him with AI would not go unchallenged during an October 21st appearance on the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast.
The actor drew the proverbial line in the sand when, during a conversation about his time as Iron Man, he was asked by the show’s eponymous host for his thoughts on whether or not Marvel would ever use such technology to bring back his incarnation of the Armored Avenger for future appearances.
“There’s two tracks,” he replied. “How do I feel about everything that’s going on? I feel about it minimally because I have an actual emotional life that’s occurring that doesn’t have a lot of room for that.”
“To go back to the MCU, I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me, with or without me,” he added.
Met with the observation from Swisher that “future executives certainly will”, Downey Jr. admitted “Well, you’re right” before announcing, “I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives…just on spec.”
“You’ll be dead,” Swisher quipped back, to which the actor confirmed, “But my law firm will still be very active.”
While Downey was relaying his concerns about the hypothetical situation in a joking manner, his underlying message is clear—he’s serious about protecting his image, even after his time on screen is over and he’s in the ground.
Downey’s discussion with Swisher notably comes at a pivotal moment in the battle between Hollywood and AI. As anyone paying attention to the news can attest to, AI is becoming an increasing point of contention between executives and the rest of the creative community.
The video game industry, in particular, has been dealing with a performers’ strike since July, largely centered on AI protections. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has been leading the charge, pushing for new rules to safeguard actors against unauthorized digital recreations.
These concerns led to SAG-AFTRA securing a critical win in the matter during the recent Hollywood guild strikes, wherein they got The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to agree to their demand that productions obtain informed consent from actors before digitally replicating them.
Luckily for Downey, in September, California passed a pair of laws prohibiting the replication of a deceased performer’s likeness without prior consent, and as such his person would be protected under this new legal framework (though it wouldn’t hurt to have a law firm on standby to help navigate the ever-changing AI legal landscape).
Downey isn’t the only Hollywood star who is concerned with AI.
During a May 2023 appearance on The Adam Buxton Podcast, Tom Hanks joked about how “What is a bona fide possibility right now, if I wanted to, I could get together and pitch a series of seven movies that would star me in them in which I would be 32 years old from now until kingdom come.”
“Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deep fake technology,” he noted. “I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but my performances can go on and on and on.”
The star of Amazon MGM’s upcoming Spider-Man Noir series, Nicolas Cage, also shares concerns about AI’s future relationship with Hollywood.
While speaking with The New Yorker last summer, Cage said, “Well, they have to put me in a computer and match my eye color and change—I don’t know. They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital… God, I hope not AI. I’m terrified of that.”
Some of the concerned, like Downey Jr., have even started taking action against their potential duplication-via-AI.
During a 2033 conversation with Wired, John Wick star Keanu Reeves confirmed that, for a long while now, his contracts included a clause which held that no production could digitally alter his performances without his explicit permission.
“I don’t mind if someone takes a blink out during an edit…But early on, in the early 2000s, or it might have been the ’90s, I had a performance changed,” he recalled. “They added a tear to my face, and I was just like, ‘Huh?!’ It was like, ‘I don’t even have to be here’.”
Next pressed for his opinion on deepfakes, the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 lead opined, “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,” he said. “If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That’s scary. 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.”
Met with a further ask from his host as to whether or not he though AI would be coming for the reporter’s job, Reeves asserted, “The people who are paying you for your art would rather not pay you. They’re actively seeking a way around you, because artists are tricky. Humans are messy.”
With AI touching on more and more facets of various creative industries, it will be interesting to see how other actors and creators deal with the technology in the future.
But at present, one thing is for sure: Not even the grave will stop Robert Downey Jr. from protecting his image.