AI de-ages Tom Hanks in new film Here

Tom Hanks has praised the "amazing" use of artificial intelligence (AI) to de-age him "in real time" on the set of new movie Here, even as he accepted that the technology is causing huge concern in Hollywood.

Here, out in theatres in the UAE on October 31, stars Hanks and Robin Wright as a couple striving to keep their family together through births, marriages, divorces and deaths, across multiple decades and even generations.

Hanks portrays his character from an idealistic teen, through various stages of youth and middle age, to a frail, elderly man.

But rather than just relying on make-up, filmmakers teamed up with AI studio Metaphysic on a tool called Metaphysic Live, to rejuvenate and "age up" the actors.

The technology worked so fast that Hanks was able to immediately watch his "deep-faked" performance after each scene.

"The thing that is amazing about it is it happened in real time," said Hanks.

"We did not have to wait for eight months of post-production. There were two monitors on the set. One was the actual feed from the lens, and the other was just a nanosecond slower, of us 'deep-faked.'

"So we could see ourselves in real time, right then and there."

The rapidly increasing use of AI in films including Here has triggered vast concern in Hollywood, where actors last year went on strike over, among other things, the threat they believe the technology poses to their jobs and industry.

Hanks acknowledged those fears during a panel discussion with director Robert Zemeckis at last weekend's AFI Fest in Hollywood, saying a "lot of people" were worried about how it will be used.

"They took 8 million images of us from the web. They scraped the web for photos of us in every era that we've ever been -- every event we've filmed, every movie still, every family photo that might have existed anywhere," Hanks explained.

"And they put that into the box -- what is it, 'deepfake technology,' whatever you want to call it."

The use of AI is not the only unusual technological feat in Here.

The film is entirely shot from one static camera, positioned for the most part in the corner of a suburban US home's living room.

Viewers occasionally see glimpses of the same geographic space before the house was built, as the action hops back and forth to colonial and pre-colonial times -- or even earlier.

"Here" is based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, which uses the same concept.

"It had to be true to the style of the book, and that's why it looks the way it does," Zemeckis said.

"It worked in levels that I didn't expect. It's got a real powerful intimacy to it, and in a wonderful way, it's very cinematic."

But the film's use of AI has drawn the most attention.

AI was also at the heart of a very different film at AFI Fest -- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the latest film for the beloved British stop-motion characters.