There are a lot of things I don’t enjoy about living in the future. The cost of housing is at the top of that list, but I also hate global warming, microplastics, cybertrucks, social media brainrot, and the 40 minutes of trailers that play before every movie.
I should probably reprioritize those a bit, but the point is, things are bad, and the only people with the power to do anything about it seem dead set on making it worse.
Like most disillusioned Millennials, I try to cover up the agony of the now with nostalgia for my youth. And, if my collection of vintage video games and Talespin Funko Pops are any indication, I’m doing a pretty good job. Nostalgia is powerful and profitable. Every day, someone is cooking up a new way to make a buck off of our unhealthy attachment to our own childhoods.
Most nostalgia bait is innocent enough, but every once in a while, someone comes up with something so diabolical it should never see the light of day. Something that breathes pure evil into existence, damning us to exist side by side with it in a world that’s just a little bit worse than it was before. There are some things any decent society should outright reject, and the Stan Lee hologram at this year’s L.A. Comic Con is one of them.
Kill The Stan Lee Hologram Before It’s Too Late
Proto Hologram is bringing an AI-powered Stan Lee to L.A. Comic-Con next weekend to take pictures with and chat up fans. Just like an actual celebrity encounter at a convention, attendees can choose from a menu of activities ranging from selfies to a three-minute conversation, pay a fee, and spend some time getting to know ol’ Stan. Except, of course, it isn’t Stan Lee, it’s a demon wearing his skin.
Bob Sabouni, head of Stan Lee Legacy Programs for Kartoon Studios – a title I’m certain he doesn’t deserve – told The Hollywood Reporter that the Stan Lee AI was built using decades of footage, in order to “build a voice that stays true, not always word for word, but always faithful in spirit, context, and intent.”
It’s an LLM trained exclusively on the thoughts, voice, and mannerisms of Stan Lee. “We’ll never put words in his mouth that aren’t in line with things he spoke about in his lifetime,” Sabouni says. I wish he had stopped at “we’ll never put words in his mouth,” but here we are.
For fans attending LA Comic-Con next weekend, I can understand why this kind of technology would seem novel and interesting. I’ll be at the show, and I imagine I’ll hear a lot of people who visited this abomination making comments about how realistic the hologram is. I’m sure he looks, sounds, and acts just like Stan, which is exactly why it needs to die. Kill it, kill it with fire before it’s too late.
TheGamer Does Not Support Or Advocate For Acts Of Vigilante Justice Or Property Damage… Unless…
I wish I could impress upon everyone how disgusting this whole thing is. Stan Lee was a man who lived, who created, who inspired and left behind a legacy, who had ideas and feelings, who died. He was not a collection of catchphrases, an unnaturally toothy smile behind a signing desk, or a collection of anecdotes about the Fantastic Four. Giving this AI his face and voice and pretending anything it says has any relation to who Stan was is not just wrong, it’s evil.
This is intuitive to me, but I realize I’m not going to be able to convince everyone how disrespectful this project is – otherwise the whole notion of Holograming the deceased would have ended with Tupac in 2012, not evolved into an even more heinous version (though, having a hologram perform someones art is arguably the most heinous thing you can do, but I digress).
If ‘hey, this is the devil’s work’ isn’t compelling to you, at least recognize how dangerous this whole thing is. Do we think it’s good that a tech company can make a seemingly accurate and lifelike representation of anyone and make it say whatever they want it to? Maybe you don’t think pretending to be Stan Lee at Comic-Con is evil, but surely you can imagine someone using this technology to do something you do think is evil, right? Would you like Proto Hologram to make an AI version of you? Or, say, any political figure past or present.
The whole thing makes me very sad. The Comic-Con Stan Lee represented is a very different, less commercialized, more pure version of the one we have today. Ironically, the Stan Lee hologram represents modern Comic-Con pretty well. It’s cynical, overly commercialized, and dominated by interests with no emotional or meaningful connection to the culture they’re profiting from. And worst of all, I have no doubt the line to make small talk with this stupid thing will wrap around the convention center three times.
Reject this. Refuse to participate in it. Let the Stan Lee hologram wither and rot on the vine so that no one ever tries to ensoul AI with a real person, living or dead, ever again. This is digital necromancy presented as a carnival freak show, and we shouldn’t entertain it, even for a quick selfie.
