Lisa Kudrow slams Tom Hanks’ movie flop ‘Here’ as ‘endorsement for AI’

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Moviegoers didn’t exactly flock to see Here, Tom Hanks’ recent reunion with his Forrest Gump co-star Robin Wright and director Robert Zemeckis. But that didn’t stop Lisa Kudrow from finding fault with the Oscar winner’s embrace of de-aging technology for the drama.

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The movie, which landed with a thud at the box office last month, utilizes AI to allow Hanks and Wright to play the same characters from their teenage years to old age as they grow old together in the same house.

But the experience of watching the two actors play younger and older versions of themselves left Kudrow unsettled.

“They shot it, and they could actually shoot the scene and then look at the playback of them as younger, and it’s ready for them to see,” Kudrow said in a recent appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast (via Variety). “All I got from that was, this is an endorsement for AI. It’s not like, ‘Oh it’s going to ruin everything,’ but what will be left? Forget actors, what about up-and-coming actors? They’ll just be licensing and recycling.”

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Kudrow said the artistic indulgence left her wondering about the future not only of her fellow actors, but other industries as well.

“Set that completely aside, what work will there be for human beings? Then what? There’ll be some kind of living stipend for people, you won’t have to work? How can it possibly be enough?“ she pondered.

When he spoke with Conan O’Brien last month, Hanks confirmed that Zemeckis used AI while making Here. 

“You go and you do a data scan, and then they match it with every photograph that exists of me and they go back and find as many photographs of me at the age of 17, 18, 19… my entire life. Then they jam those in using— are you ready for it, the scary word? They use AI in order to do all the work and make it happen faster,” he said (per Fox News).

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But Hanks hailed it as just yet another “movie-making tool” at filmmakers’ disposal.

“We would have two monitors while we were shooting. One monitor was the way we really look, and the other monitor with just about a nano second’s lag time was us in the deep-fake technology. So on one monitor, I’m a 67-year-old man pretending he’s in high school, and on the other monitor, I’m 17,” he said.

During another appearance on The Adam Buxton Podcast back in May 2023, Hanks said that recent technological advancements mean he can play not only younger characters, but act in films long after he’s gone.

“If I wanted to, I could get together and pitch a series of seven movies that would star me in them in which I would be 32 years old, from now until kingdom come. Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deepfake technology,” he said. 

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Knowing that the possibility of his likeness being used in the future could come to pass, Hanks wondered if audiences would even mind knowing that the performance wasn’t “real.”

“Without a doubt people will be able to tell, but the question is, will they care?” he said. “There are some people that won’t care, that won’t make that delineation.”

Zemeckis was also not worried about filmmakers embracing AI in their work.

”I look at it the way computing has evolved in music,” he told the Associated Press.

Some films may eventually be completely crafted using AI, which Zemeckis likened to techno music. But the director insisted a human touch would remain essential.

”You have machines that create the sound of any musical instrument perfectly, yet we haven’t replaced any musicians,” he said.

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