Bitcoin biopic ‘Killing Satoshi’ leans into generative AI

An upcoming biopic about mysterious Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, starring Casey Affleck and Pete Davidson, is sparking controversy due to its willingness to use artificial intelligence not only to generate backgrounds and scene locations but also to adjust actors’ performances.

The movie, Kill Satoshiwill be directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne identity and 2024 Relay), but it was producer Ryan Kavanaugh who made headlines when he revealed in a British casting notice that the filmmakers reserved the right to “adjust” the actors’ performances, including the right to “change, add, remove, translate, reformat or reprocess” those performances, and that the actors themselves would perform on a “markerless, nowhere performative capture stage”, according to report by Variety.

These revelations come at a time of heightened anxiety and uncertainty in the film and television industry, particularly regarding the use of artificial intelligence to augment, or even completely replace, the work of creative professionals. Unions, copyright lawyers and federal courts are scrambling to understand the implications of generative AI’s incredible ability to reuse existing creative materials.

Consider, for example, this AI-generated encounter between Keanu Reeves’ characters Neo and John Wick and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic Terminatorcreated with Seedance 2.0, or this AI-generated clip of Jack Black playing a comedic role as Darth Vader Since Star Warscreated using Google’s Veo 4, and you will quickly understand the transformative and disruptive power of these technologies.

In response to public concern about the choice to rely on the use of AI in the realization of Kill Satoshiproducer Ryan Kavanaugh had this to say Variety:

We’ve been very careful, sensitive, and overly protective of our actors to ensure that we only use performance capture AI, meaning we won’t have any AI-generated actors that don’t exist. AI is a tool that we’re using to make the filmmaking process more efficient while still keeping all the department heads’ jobs, all the actors’ jobs, and hopefully helping to grow the industry in a positive way.

Although currently still in production, Kill Satoshi will be one of the first films to test these boundaries, so anyone interested in the intersection of AI and creative work should pay close attention to its reception.