The war is lost, as Tyler Perry abandons elaborate old-person makeup in favor of AI
Perry also said he's paused an $800 million expansion of his massive studio complex in Atlanta over fears AI would make it redundant
Aux News Tyler Perry
In the future, when we look back for the moment when humanity truly lost out to artificial intelligence—when our collective ingenuity, effort, and brilliance was first fully eclipsed by the rising tide of generative AI—we’ll probably have a lot of candidates to choose from. But we find ourselves convinced, tonight, that we’ve found the actual smoking gun for humanity’s impending irrelevance: A recent interview in which Tyler Perry revealed that, instead of getting into the makeup chair for multiple hours for a couple of movies he was cranking out, he used AI to make himself look like an old person, instead.
Now, Perry—talking to THR about his wider concerns with AI’s rising influence on the entertainment industry—didn’t come out and say that he’d created a Digital Madea, which is the kind of idea that’d keep even the most dedicated Singularity fetishists up at night. But he did note in the interview, when asked how he was using AI at his own massive, endlessly churning studios in Atlanta, that “I just used AI in two films that are going to be announced soon. That kept me out of makeup for hours. In post and on set, I was able to use this AI technology to avoid ever having to sit through hours of aging makeup.”
You already threatened to take our jobs, robots. Now you come for our “Practical effects to make Tyler Perry look like an old person” movies, too? Tyler Perry in bad prosthetics is a cornerstone of American artistic achievement; losing this is like hearing that some highly specialized handcraft has gone extinct, never to be rediscovered.
On a more drastic financial note, Perry also noted that he’s paused an $800 million expansion at his studio complex due to concerns about AI, including OpenAI’s new “Sora” video generation tool. Which is extra worrying, in so far as, while we remain confident that generative AI can never match actual human artistry, we’re a lot less certain about whether it can hit “Good enough for Tyler Perry to slap his name on it” levels. Perry seems to be talking about the topic from multiple different angles, weirdly, expressing concerns for set builders and other crew members losing their jobs, at the exact same time he’s waxing fantastical about filming on AI sets. Will the war for humanity’s destiny be waged in Tyler Perry’s makeup-slathered heart? Only the future knows for sure.
53 Comments
The Madea movies were never my thing but the makeup effects are funny and I assume they’re meant to be. I just checked with The Internet that assures me it’s ok to call the Madea movies drag, and so the makeup is def part of the fun. AI will spoil that effort, imo. But it sure will cut down on pre-shooting prep time, not to mention constant touch-ups. And since he’s tinkering with his own image, I don’t feel mad. But I’m the first to comment so I expect I’m going to get dragged for something myself. That’s ok.
While I understand why this is very beneficial for someone like TP, who is producing, directing, playing multiple roles, I hope it doesn’t take off industry wide, and cause lots of people to lose job opportunities.
Me too, and after reading a lot of the comments I’m giving a big F-you to Perry for this. But one Commenter noted that most of Perry’s work is sh*t anyway and already looks like garbage AI so he’s only confirming that he’s choosing to be a hackHopefully, the movie will look so bad and play so badly that other directors say “Nah, I’m not doing that.” One can hope.
Does he even need aging makeup anymore? He’ll be Madea’s age pretty damn soon.
Tyler Perry’s filmography is exactly what I picture when I try to envison a future where films are made by AI.So, no actual loss for anyone.
I know you’re having a laugh, but this isn’t going to negatively impact his pace as a film maker. It just means fewer jobs for the people who worked on his project. He’ll be able to make more films, faster and cheaper.
He’ll be able to make more films,yeah, but who the actual fuck is looking for THAT?!
oh you’d be surprised. People love trash.
Just wait ‘till it comes out that all this time Tyler Perry himself is a cyborg!
Anyone who has ever worked for Tyler Perry could have seen this coming from miles away.
Please expand on this.
He has a well-known reputation for being, essentially, a cheapskate. The Atlanta episode about “Kirkwood Chocolate” is based on Tyler Perry. He uploaded a video to social media where he showed off stacks of TV scripts he’d written by himself and proclaimed, “Work ethic!” (hence the title of the Atlanta episode), and some writers chimed in to point out that he writes all of those shows by himself so he doesn’t have to pay other writers (he claims that he doesn’t have writers rooms because a writer can change a few lines or sentence, submit it as a new draft, and then charge him the full rate for rewriting a script). And if you watch any of his TV shows, the writing is abysmal. He just cranks out the first thing that comes to his head and then shoots it. And plenty of people online have mocked the low-quality cheap props and wigs he uses in his work.So to not only embrace A.I. as a way to speed up his already ridiculously-fast shooting, but also slam the brakes on a $800 million expansion due to “concerns” about A.I. is completely on brand for him. A.I. excels at reproducing the specific kind of cheap, low-effort, low-quality product that Tyler Perry (a man who, despite everything I’ve said about him, possesses the talent, ability, and resources to produce higher quality work) has been putting out for years. This is a person who bases his decisions on what saves him the most money, and A.I. has an enormous potential for that.There are other, more salacious (and serious) allegations against Tyler Perry, but none of the above is disputed by anyone other than Tyler Perry.
Now I’m remembering some of this. I did enjoy his earlier movies, but only in the theater, when audience experience was a huge part of it. I saw one of them in an empty theater and it was awful and I noticed all of the terrible things about it, so I dropped off. He is undoubtedly talented but also very cheap and weird.
All of this. He’s also said some pretty dumb anti union rhetoric during the strikes.
ans: business man realizes why spend 8 figures w/building construction when you can pay 5 figures for a cloud account + some [non union] s/w devs you can layoff in 9-15 months doing AI CGI and still get those 4/10 reviews and [where the money is] syndication contracts.Also says ATL real estate has peaked.
See? Ordinary humans can sound just as robotic as any robot!
The rest of the 99.999% of the human race will just have to sit here and wonder.
Tyler Perry’s Madea Vs. Terminator, calling it now
stole this take from twitter, but when a guy like this starts saying stuff like this i need to see what their personal investment portfolio looks like.
Given he’s the person who has to sit through the makeup chair, I can understand his enthusiasm for tech that lets him not do that, especially with all the hats he wears.
Stripped of the snark, that AI work DID take work from a fairly skilled artistic profession. It takes hours in the chair because getting the prosthetics right isn’t something that just happens.It’s the conversation noone wants to have about AI. Are we OK with very literally telling the majority of our employed workforce that they aren’t needed, and what next?
I am seeing it start to impact all sorts of industries, including my own. I work in product marketing. I’m at a spot in my career where I personally don’t have to worry about AI (at least so far). But I got my start as a lowly communications associate. Which meant a lot of copy writing. “Content creation.” Looking back, a sizeable chunk of the work that made up the beginning of my career 20-plus years ago could be handled, at least in part, by AI today. Reflecting on the skillset I had when I started my professional life, I would not want to be starting down that same road today. I also wonder where tomorrow’s “creative directors” or “art directors” or “VPs of brand” or whatever other strategist type people will come from. While I may not write as much copy today, I learned the strategy and management aspects while I was doing a lot of that copywriting. Likewise with an art director — AI can churn out ads that may only need a little touch up, the kind of work you would have once employed a graphic designer to do. Are people going to just skip over that stage in their career? The lucky few who get jobs will go straight from school to overseeing multiple AI work streams that they no longer have the skills to do themselves? Maybe. I suppose it’s like someone working on a factory line to do the work that ten skilled metal smiths or carpenters would have done generations before. Productivity will increase and costs and pay will decrease. Shit I bummed myself out.
I remember when you’d go to a key Smith to get a new key forged. Now they’ve literally got a machine for that.
I work in post-production sound for film/TV/commercials and my one solace with AI are the completely incomprehensible notes I get from 90% of directors/clients and other “creatives.” Almost no one has any clue how to articulate what they want when it comes to describing sound, it’s like each person has their own vocabulary. Half the time I’m sending out mixes for review and receiving notes that read like riddles of the sphinx. It’s extremely hard for me to imagine these people typing anything into an AI prompt that would actually get the desired results, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough
Yeah. I get sitting him in the chair for hours a day is a drag, but it’s a pretty lucrative drag, so he can suck it up for better quality craft and to keep people working. His facility will only become “redundant” if he lets it.
We do live in a capitalist society where companies and corporations routinely take away peoples’ livings if it’s better for the bottom line.
Isn’t it also giving work to whoever makes the AI? I’ve never heard anyone say “Those damn make up and hair artists are keeping computer experts from working!”
Ahh the almighty bottom line. Didn’t expect a “protect shareholder value” simp on this thread. And screw the people making AI, I want art from artists not “computer experts”.
Well then go live in Sugarplum Fairyland. The rest of us have to walk in the world as it is. That doesn’t make me a . . . how you say . . . ‘simp’? I’ve lost work because someone else figured they could save money; and all the bitchy threads on the net don’t change it.
Everyone: That sounds disturbingTechbros and AI developers: Disturbingly awesome you mean! Oh by the way you’re fired.
I know, I know . . . didn’t anyone think of all the poor oarsmen who were out of work when they brought in those damn fangled steam engines?
I mean oarsmen were mostly slaves? so probably no.
Oh so now you’re oppressing people? Cool.
yes
It’s by far the most fascinating and frightening aspect of generative AI. It has the potential—which it’s already beginning to realize, under our noses—of gutting entire industries and wreaking untold economic havoc. I’m concerned too about the effect it will have on art, and artists. But more broadly, it could create significant unemployment.
On the one hand, that’s what we’ve said about a lot of technological advances that ultimately increased productivity. On the other hand, AI sucks, and practical effects, or practical effects combined with AI/CGI are probably the most convincing effects.
Fuck AI, and fuck Tyler Perry
you can if you want to; I’m good on that one.
any chance he’ll abandon making these shitty movies?(I’ve never seen any of them, in case you couldn’t tell)
I’ve seen about ten minuts of a few of them. Changing the channel was my vote.
For anyone in Ireland and Britain , these movies crossed over with Mrs Brown’s boys , in a true axis of “holy fuck no!”
Sad that a journalist that could have used this moment to explain to the public that this is not just about the many art jobs that will be lost from AI, but jobs throughout society. Didn’t even mention the construction workers Tyler Perry is not going to hire now that he’s not doing the 800 million dollar expansion and which he used as an example of his fear of AI. His fear… he’s the one that’s choosing not to do the expansion and eliminating jobs… Sora isn’t even out yet.
Instead this is just an article that treats what’s happening as a joke. When AI comes for journalist jobs, I won’t care. It’ll probably be too late for me anyways to care as an artist in the entertainment industry to care. People like me will long gone. Wake up journalists and do your job!
Sad that a journalist that could have used this moment to explain to the public that this is not just about the many art jobs that will be lost from AI, but jobs throughout society. Didn’t even mention the construction workers Tyler Perry is not going to hire now that he’s not doing the 800 million dollar expansion and which he used as an example of his fear of AI. His fear… he’s the one that’s choosing not to do the expansion and eliminating jobs… Sora isn’t even out yet.
Instead this is just an article that treats what’s happening as a joke. When AI comes for journalist jobs, I won’t care. It’ll probably be too late for me anyways to care as an artist in the entertainment industry to care. People like me will long gone. Wake up journalists and do your job!
What journalists? My city doesn’t even have a proper newspaper anymore and it’s a freaking capitol city! AI is doing our ‘journalism’ now.
Well I’m sorry to hear that, which is why journalists needs to do their job and warn people about the problems of unregulated AI. They are not going to be around to inform us as jobs are threatened if they keep their kiddy gloves on when talking about AI.
I expected AI to do the tedious work for creative people, but instead it’s doing the creative work for tedious people.– Somebody Online
This sums it up so well I wish I could offer more than one star.
If people like writers, actors, and the clowns that support them weren’t such uppity douchebags, then society at large might actually feel bad for the plight they face in light of generative AI. However, you don’t win many fans by proclaiming oneself to be the gatekeepers of artistic expression.All human endeavor is art. It doesn’t matter if you make coffee cups or movies: the out put IS art. The fact that people in the entertainment industry claim to be the only “artists” in society is exactly why very few are going to shed a tear once their profession finally becomes obsolete.The fact of the matter is that even AI itself is a form of artistic expression. It is the byproduct of human ingenuity. It didn’t just manifest itself into existence after all. The only real difference in any art form is the intent. Some art is utilitarian, while other forms are intended to evoke emotional reactions or even just to provide some basic entertainment.What goes around, comes around. Entertainers have been putting this karma out into the universe for decades and now it’s time to settle the tab.
Tell us you’re a shitty artist who relies on AI w/o telling us… you sound bitter as fuck boo.
This is such bull, and just like so many other stories where we hear about layoffs or cutbacks because of “AI”. It’s just a scapegoat.He’s much more likely pausing it because of high interest rates (assuming he’d finance the expansion and with current rates you’re probably talking $1.2 billion total), more expensive production costs post-strike, and a nosedive in ordered shows. Perry thrives on constant low-cost production he can sell to anyone, so this is a bad environment for him to expand in.
Looking forward to M3GAN vs. MAD3A
I’m waiting for ChatGPT to write his scripts. They’ll certainly be funnier than anything he’s ever done.