Actor Erik Passoja has been featured in several TV series, including NCIS and The Flight Attendant. He's also been a video game actor, which led to his current real-life role protecting digital rights for performers as an AI and digital identity expert. Passoja will be leading a panel at the upcoming Carmel International Film Festival regarding digital identity and AI. I caught up with him ahead of the panel discussion, and he talked about the disturbing incident in his acting career that led to him becoming a digital identity expert:
" In 2014, I did the Activision game Call of Duty : Advanced Warfare. Six months later, the game came out, and someone called me and said, hey, Eric, my son just shot you! I said, what? It turns out they'd taken my face and put it on a PVP (person versus person) player. So now you can play me for $30 a month running around and shooting at your kids, which if you knew me, is just completely not okay. They didn't pay me any more than my original session fee, and they made over a billion dollars on that game. "
Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or read the highlights below.
On being a 'digital identity expert' as a result of what happened to him, and what that means:
"Well, it starts in collective bargaining. SAG-AFTRA had some pretty groundbreaking contracts in artificial intelligence in 2023 where we defined the term 'digital replica.' Basically, there's an employment-based digital replica. If you get hired and scanned, or your voice is recorded or you're on camera, that's employment-based. If you actually have your own replica and you lease it out, that's independently created digital replica, ICDR. And the third one is a synthetic character. In other words, in mid-Journey, they have a billion faces. It's all mushed into one who doesn't look like anyone who exists. There are negotiating rights by our union in a movie if a synthetic character is used. That's the contractual part of it. "
On the legislative aspect of digital identity protection:
"I'm a member of the SAG-AFTRA L.A. Government Affairs and Public Policy Committee, and I've been to Sacramento twice to testify for AI bills. The first time was a bill called AB3211 by Buffy Wicks that says that in a camera or on a microphone is when your voice needs to be watermarked. Not at a box somewhere, not in Pro Tools, not in any recording system, right out of your mic, right out of a camera on set. What that actually means is they're going to put something called 'provenance information' on your voice, which is inaudible data or in a video, invisible data that says or points to a location where it says where it came from. This is yours, not only to protect IP, intellectual property, but also protect likeness, name, image, and voice of performers, which is law through California AB2602 last year, which was signed by [Governor] Newsom, which says that if we're going to use your name, image, voice, and likeness, we need your consent."
On the AI and digital panel discussion Passoja will be leading at the Carmel International Film Festival:
"I want creators to know that they can come here [to the panel discussion] and really understand how to protect themselves and their IP [intellectual property] as a result of this conversation. I know that right now we are in a very interesting time in history, but right now all we need to do is have the studios say, hey, we want to protect our IP from AI ingestion, which we know is happening. Performers now are protected by law, so now when [someone] steals a 12-second piece of video with actors in it, the studios and the performers in that clip and the DGA [Directors Guild] the WGA [Writers Guild] all jump on dogpile lawsuits to start the conversation going of protecting IP and digital rights. We'll be having that conversation."
Actor and digital identity expert Erik Passoja will be leading a panel discussion about digital identity and AI at the Carmel International Film Festival, running October 2nd through the 5th at the Golden Bough Playhouse in Carmel. KUZU is a co-sponsor of the festival.