Jon Favreau Worries About ‘The Mandalorian’ Technology Being Co-Opted – The Hollywood Reporter
In a new behind-the-scenes look at The Mandalorian that dropped Thursday, creator Jon Favreau marveled at the technology that allowed the Disney+ series to bring a de-aged Mark Hamill back as Luke Skywalker in the season two finale. But he also expressed serious concern.
While talking about Deepfake, a technology that allows a person in existing media to be replaced with someone else’s likeness, Favreau said that he was worried that the tech was getting so good that it could be used for wicked purposes.
“You have a new technology available to you just as Mickey [Mouse] had [in Fantasia with] the magic book that book allowed him to have the mops carry the buckets and do that work for him,” Favreau said on the Disney Gallery behind-the-scenes series. “And every technology is like that. And there are unintended consequences with new innovations if you don’t fully appreciate what these things are capable of. And I think in the case of Deepfake … It’s something that is available readily, it is a reminder that it might be used for purposes that are more misleading and more detrimental.”
Favreau is confident that in a few years, technology will be so good that a viewer will not be able to the difference between genuine media and media that has been altered via Deepfake, he said. To highlight his point, Favreau revealed that Luke’s voice in the episode is not real, but rather “completely synthesized.”
Favreau suggested that chain code might be the best security measure in the future for protecting against Deepfake and other tech misuses. “I wonder if certain images or videos released in an official capacity could have some kind of a stamp with it,” he said. “Something that when you see something, you know it’s real. Having tokens that are associated that have where does this image come from built into the blockchain, how has it been edited or changed, when was it created.” Favreau said he envisioned something along the lines of social media verifying accounts with a blue badge.
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