Actors, Accountants and AI winners
Cape Town, 4 October 2023 – Tom Hanks throws his toy stories out of the cot.
You can see the future climate of your career by looking at the present weather of others. A storm is coming in the accounting profession.
There will be losers, but there will also be winners. Winners will be those that are able to leverage the intelligence of AI and losers will be those that dismiss it.
Take the situation faced this week, by Tom Hanks, the Mr America of the acting profession. Hanks makes millions from the delivery of his image and his voice, repeat deliveries of the media, negotiated associations between his image and commercial transactions.
Tom Hanks and all those collaborators and beneficiaries around him are under attack from AI.
This week Hanks issued a statement that he would not allow his image to be used in a commercial transaction without his permission. He denounced the use of AI to create a fake image of himself to promote a dental product. Hanks of course is quite correct. The ad is a fake and the use of his image is a violation of his rights. The use of his image was neither negotiated or paid for. The dental ad is unlawful ambush marketing.
The technical process of becoming an actor involves a lot of hard work and dedication. Actors must first develop their craft by studying acting techniques and practicing their skills in front of an audience. The best way to learn to act is to train yourself by watching other actors, and by taking in the advice of acting coaches and directors.
They must also build a network of contacts in the industry and audition for roles in order to gain experience and exposure. Successful actors like Hanks pick the roles and use each one to build brand. For Hanks that is Mr America.
The technical process of becoming an accountant involves a lot of hard work and dedication.
However this does not make you immune to competition. In the case of Hanks the attack on the dental ad is at best a Red Herring and at worst a Strawman argument. The real threat to actors is not a nickel and dime ad agency. The AI attack is a technology that can encapsulate the acting process and deliver productively at scale. That is the promise of AI. A virtual character can be created and trained to act like Hanks or like any defined character - Jim. Jim can embody any set of values desired and can be built way cheaper and with order of magnitude more productivity. Jim is Hank's real competitor.
Hanks may just be standing on high ground, waving a fist at the storm. Jack Conrad, played by Brad Pitt in Babylon, faces a similar challenge when he cannot transition from the old silent movies to the new talkies.
The winner is the engineer that can accomplish a virtual actor. The winner is an actor who is quite within his own rights to offer his own assets as training material to the AI. The winner is the director that can keep building a selling a database that makes the character. Eitherway the near future is bleak for actors, who rely on maintaining the old methods.
Accountants are like Hanks. We get paid for presentation and delivery of advice including our image and our voice. We would also be offended if our image and our voice were used in a commercial transaction without our permission. We face the same threat as Hanks. We also have the same opportuntity - use AI to leverage our skill. If we don't move on we will miss the opportunity.
The lesson for accountants is that the future is bleak for those that rely on maintaining the old methods and blue sky open for those that embrace the new.
The image and some of this text is generated by OpenAI.
The winner is the engineer that can accomplish a virtual actor. The winner is an actor who is quite within his own rights to offer his own assets as training material to the AI. The winner is the director that can keep building a selling a database that makes the character. Eitherway the near future is bleak for actors, who rely on maintaining the old methods.
Accountants are like Hanks. We get paid for presentation and delivery of advice including our image and our voice. We would also be offended if our image and our voice were used in a commercial transaction without our permission. We face the same threat as Hanks. We also have the same opportuntity - use AI to leverage our skill. If we don't move on we will miss the opportunity.
The lesson for accountants is that the future is bleak for those that rely on maintaining the old methods and blue sky open for those that embrace the new.
The image and some of this text is generated by OpenAI.
For media inquiries:
Philip Copeman
Project Leader
philip@pinksoft.co.za
@philipdc
The TurboCASH Accounting Project aims to build businesses by providing a world class freemium accounting package. With a dedication to transparent financial practices and economic development, and Three Million downloads over twenty years, the Project has transferred over $600 M into the SME sector. For more information, visit www.turbocash.net
(this article contructed with the assistance of chat.openai.com and creator.nightcafe.studio)
