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Woody the toy cowboy has faced a lot of frightening moments over the course of five Toy Story movies, but the actor voicing him for the last 30 years is trepidatious over the possibility that AI will supplant him. Tom Hanks told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview that the idea of AI replacing his voice is "a scary thought.""Time is undefeated," Hanks said. "The question would be whether or not we could cobble together some version of me. Every word we have ever recorded in time in Toy Story is on digital media somewhere, so they could put together anything they would want." Debates about AI in movies and film are raging even as the technology is deployed to reproduce the voices and complete performances of people who have passed away. Not to mention fully AI-generated films that otherwise employ human voice actors.AI actingMost entertainment projects with AI so far have generally involved the participation or approval of the performers themselves, but they also demonstrate how quickly the technology has matured. What once required painstaking effects work can increasingly be achieved with sophisticated machine learning models trained on years of existing material.Hanks has himself been in AI-assisted productions, specifically in the film Here, which relied on AI to de-age him and co-star Robin Wright for part of the film rather than depending entirely on traditional visual effects.Hanks' concerns extend beyond his own career. He has elsewhere suggested that his biggest worry is whether audiences will eventually stop caring whether a performance comes from a human being at all, not trusting that what they see isn't produced with AI. That feels like a more unsettling question than whether Woody could return without Hanks. Future films(Image credit: Disney Pixar)There's a little irony in Hanks' comments. The original Toy Story was a technological revolution that some saw as a threat to traditional hand-drawn animation. Three decades later, one of the stars who helped usher in that revolution is looking at the next wave of technology with understandable caution.Caution doesn't mean dismissal of AI, of course. Hanks is known for being part of projects using advanced tools like motion capture, digital filmmaking, and experimental visual effects throughout his career. His concern seems more about what gets lost when technology starts replacing the people audiences are connected with in the first place.And while each individual use of AI can be justified as another filmmaking tool, there's still a larger question about where AI assistance ends, and replacement begins. The answer will probably depend on what audiences decide they value rather than purely technical capabilities. Movie stars are more than collections of facial expressions and vocal recordings, and recreating the performance that audiences associate with Woody, that's more than just "good enough," would be a tall order.

The Thrive Act will create a pilot program that offers mental health resources for shooting survivors and witnesses under 25When Marvin Pérez and his family moved from their home country of Guatemala to Oakland, California, he thought it would lead to a better life for them all. But two years ago, when he was 23, Pérez was walking home from a store just four blocks from his family’s house. Someone drove past him and shot at Pérez multiple times, hitting him in his left leg.His physical recovery was difficult. The bullet couldn’t be removed and remains lodged inside the leg. Pérez spent about three months doing physical therapy and resting at home, which meant he couldn’t play soccer, his favorite pastime. The mental toll he endured, however, was far tougher. During the day, all he could think about was the shooting, and when he slept, he had nightmares about what happened to him. It was made even harder by the fact that he felt as if he didn’t have anyone he could share these feelings with. Continue reading...