Tom Hanks says AI recreating Woody without him is a ‘scary thought’

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Tom Hanks is lending his voice talents to a new quiz show on Apple Arcade. | Photo: Shutterstock/Tinseltown

The toy cowboy Woody has experienced many frightening moments over the course of five years. Toy Story movie, but the actor who has been voicing him for the past 30 years is trepidatious about the possibility of AI replacing him. Tom Hanks told Entertainment Weekly said in a new interview that the idea of ​​replacing his voice with artificial intelligence is a “scary thought.”

“Time is invincible,” Hanks said. “The question will be whether we can piece together some version of me. Every word we’ve ever written down in time Toy Story is on digital media somewhere, so they can collect whatever they want.”

The debate over artificial intelligence in film and film rages even now as the technology is used to reproduce the voices and full-scale performances of people who have passed away. Not to mention movies made entirely by artificial intelligence that otherwise feature human voice actors.

AI acts

Until now, most AI-based entertainment projects have typically involved the participation or approval of the performers themselves, but they also demonstrate how quickly technology is advancing. What once required painstaking work can now be achieved using sophisticated machine learning models trained on years of existing material.

Hanks himself has been involved in productions using artificial intelligence, most notably in the film. Here, which relied on artificial intelligence to de-age him and co-star Robin Wright for parts of the film, rather than relying entirely on traditional visual effects.

Hanks’ concerns extend beyond his own career. Elsewhere, he suggested that his biggest concern is whether audiences will eventually stop caring whether a performance comes from a human at all, and trusting that what they see isn’t created by AI. This seems to be a more troubling question than whether Woody will be able to return without Hanks.

Future films

Credit: Disney Pixar

There’s a bit of irony in Hanks’ comments. 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 start that revolution is looking at the next wave of technology with understandable caution.

Caution, of course, does not mean abandoning AI. Hanks is known for being involved in projects using cutting-edge tools such as motion capture, digital filmmaking and experimental visual effects throughout his career. He’s more concerned about what’s lost when technology begins to replace the people with whom audiences connect in the first place.

And while every single use of AI can be justified as yet another filmmaking tool, the larger question remains of where AI assistance ends and replacement begins. The answer will likely depend on what the audience decides to value, rather than purely technical capabilities. Movie stars are more than just a collection of facial expressions and vocal recordings, and recreating the performance that audiences associate with Woody as more than just “good enough” would be a daunting task.