Digital cloning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_cloning

Digital cloning is an emerging technology, that involves deep-learning algorithms, which allows one to manipulate currently existing audio, photos, and videos that are hyper-realistic. One of the impacts of such technology is that hyper-realistic videos and photos makes it difficult for the human eye to distinguish what is real and what is fake. Furthermore, with various companies making such technologies available to the public, they can bring various benefits as well as potential legal and ethical concerns.

Digital cloning can be categorized into audio-visual (AV), memory, personality, and consumer behaviour cloning. In AV cloning, the creation of a cloned digital version of the digital or non-digital original can be used, for example, to create a fake image, an avatar, or a fake video or audio of a person that cannot be easily differentiated from the real person it is purported to represent. A memory and personality clone like a mindclone is essentially a digital copy of a person’s mind. A consumer behavior clone is a profile or cluster of customers based on demographics.

Truby and Brown coined the term “digital thought clone” to refer to the evolution of digital cloning into a more advanced personalized digital clone that consists of “a replica of all known data and behavior on a specific living person, recording in real-time their choices, preferences, behavioral trends, and decision making processes.”

Digital cloning first became popular in the entertainment industry. The idea of digital clones originated from movie companies creating virtual actors of actors who have died. When actors die during a movie production, a digital clone of the actor can be synthesized using past footage, photos, and voice recordings to mimic the real person in order to continue the movie production.

Modern artificial intelligence, has allowed for the creation of deepfakes. This involves manipulation of a video to the point where the person depicted in the video is saying or performing actions he or she may not have consented to. In April 2018, BuzzFeed released a deepfake video of Jordan Peele, which was manipulated to depict former President, Barack Obama, making statements he has previously not made in public to warn the public against the potential dangers of deepfakes.

In addition to deepfakes, companies such as Intellitar now allows one to easily create a digital clone of themselves by feeding a series of images and voice recordings. This essentially creates digital immortality, allowing loved ones to interact with representations of those who died. Digital cloning not only allows one to digitally memorialize their loved ones, but they can also be used to create representations of historical figures and be used in an educational setting.

With the development of various technology, as mentioned above, there are numerous concerns that arises, including identity theft, data breaches, and other ethical concerns. One of the issues with digital cloning is that there are little to no legislations to protect potential victims against these possible problems.

Technology

Intelligent Avatar Platforms (IAP)

Intelligent Avatar Platform (IAP) can be defined as an online platform supported by artificial intelligence that allows one to create a clone of themselves. The individual must train his or her clone to act and speak like themselves by feeding the algorithm numerous voice recordings and videos of themselves. Essentially, the platforms are marketed as a place where one 'lives eternally', as they are able to interact with other avatars on the same platform. IAP is becoming a platform for one to attain digital immortality, along with maintaining a family tree and legacy for generations following to see.

Some examples of IAP include Intellitar and Eterni.me. Although most of these companies are still in its developing stages, they all are trying to achieve the same goal of allowing the user to create an exact duplicate of themselves to store every memory they have in their mind into the cyberspace. Some include a free version, which only allows the user to choose their avatar from a given set of images and audio. However, with the premium setting, these companies will ask the user to upload photos, videos, and audio recordings of one to form a realistic version of themselves. Additionally, to ensure that the clone is as close to the original person, companies also encourage interacting with their own clone by chatting and answering questions for them. This allows the algorithm to learn the cognition of the original person and apply that to the clone. Intellitar closed down in 2012 because of intellectual property battles over the technology it used.

Potential concerns with IAP includes the potential data breaches and not getting consent of the deceased. IAP must have a strong foundation and responsibility against data breaches and hacking in order to protect personal information of the dead, which can include voice recording, photos, and messages. In addition to the risk of personal privacy being compromised, there is also the risk of violating the privacy of the deceased. Although one can give consent to creating a digital clone of themselves before his or her physical death, they are unable to give consent to the actions the digital clone may take.

Deepfakes

Main article: Deepfake

As described earlier, deepfakes is a form of video manipulation where one can change the people present by feeding various images of a specific person they want. Furthermore, one can also change the voice and words the person in the video says by simply submitting series of voice recordings of the new person lasting about one or two minutes long. In 2018, a new app called FakeApp was released, allowing the public to easily access this technology to create videos. This app was also used to create the Buzzfeed video of former President Barack Obama. With deepfakes, industries can cut the cost of hiring actors or models for films and advertisements by creating videos and film efficiently at a low cost just by collecting a series of photos and audio recordings with the consent of the individual.

Potential concerns with deepfakes is that access is given to virtually anyone who downloads the different apps that offer the same service. With anyone being able to access this tool, some may maliciously use the app to create revenge porn and manipulative videos of public officials making statements they will never say in real life. This not only invades the privacy of the individual in the video but also brings up various ethical concerns.

Voice cloning

Main article: Audio deepfake

Voice cloning is a case of the audio deepfake methods that uses artificial intelligence to generate a clone of a person's voice. Voice cloning involves deep learning algorithm that takes in voice recordings of an individual and can synthesize such a voice to the point where it can faithfully replicate a human voice with great accuracy of tone and likeness.

Cloning a voice requires high-performance computers. Usually, the computations are done using the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), and very often resort to the cloud computing, due to the enormous amount of calculation needed.

Audio data for training has to be fed into an artificial intelligence model. These are often original recordings that provide an example of the voice of the person concerned. Artificial intelligence can use this data to create an authentic voice, which can reproduce whatever is typed, called Text-To-Speech, or spoken, called Speech-To-Speech.

This technology worries many because of its impact on various issues, from political discourse to the rule of law. Some of the early warning signs have already appeared in the form of phone scams and fake videos on social media of people doing things they never did.

Protections against these threats can be primarily implemented in two ways. The first is to create a way to analyze or detect the authenticity of a video. This approach will inevitably be an upside game as ever-evolving generators defeat these detectors. The second way could be to embed the creation and modification information in software or hardware. This would work only if the data were not editable, but the idea would be to create an inaudible watermark that would act as a source of truth. In other words, we could know if the video is authentic by seeing where it was shot, produced, edited, and so on.

15.ai—a non-commercial freeware web application that began as a proof of concept of the democratization of voice acting and dubbing using technology—gives the public access to such technology. Its gratis and non-commercial nature (with the only stipulation being that the project be properly credited when used), ease of use, and substantial improvements to current text-to-speech implementations have been lauded by users; however, some critics and voice actors have questioned the legality and ethicality of leaving such technology publicly available and readily accessible.

Although this application is still in the developmental stage, it is rapidly developing as big technology corporations, such as Google and Amazon are investing vast amounts of money for the development.

Some of the positive uses of voice cloning include the ability to synthesize millions of audiobooks without the use of human labor. Also, voice cloning was used to translate podcast content into different languages using the podcaster's voice. Another includes those who may have lost their voice can gain back a sense of individuality by creating their voice clone by inputting recordings of them speaking before they lost their voices.

On the other hand, voice cloning is also susceptible to misuse. An example of this is the voices of celebrities and public officials being cloned, and the voice may say something to provoke conflict despite the actual person has no association with what their voice said.

In recognition of the threat that voice cloning poses to privacy, civility, and democratic processes, the Institutions, including the Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Justice and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), have weighed in on various audio deepfake use cases and methods that might be used to combat them.

Constructive uses

Education

Digital cloning can be useful in an educational setting to create a more immersive experience for students. Some students may learn better through a more interactive experience and creating deepfakes can enhance the learning ability of students. One example of this includes creating a digital clone of historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, to show what problems he faced during his life and how he was able to overcome them. Another example of using digital clones in an educational setting is having speakers create a digital clone of themselves. Various advocacy groups may have trouble with schedules as they are touring various schools during the year. However, by creating digital clones of themselves, their clones can present the topic at places where the group could not physically make it. These educational benefits can bring students a new way of learning as well as giving access to those who previously were not able to access resources due to environmental conditions.

Arts

Although digital cloning has already been in the entertainment and arts industry for a while, artificial intelligence can greatly expand the uses of these technology in the industry. The movie-industry can create even more hyper-realistic actors and actresses who have died. Additionally, movie-industry can also create digital clones in movie scenes that may require extras, which can help cut the cost of production immensely. However, digital cloning and other technology can be beneficial for non-commercial purposes. For example, artists can be more expressive if they are looking to synthesize avatars to be part of their video production. They can also create digital avatars to draft up their work and help formulate their ideas before moving on working on the final work. Actor Val Kilmer lost his voice in 2014 after a tracheotomy due to his throat cancer. However, he partnered with an AI company that produced a synthetic voice based on his previous recordings. The voice enabled Kilmer to retake his "Iceman" role from 1986 Top Gun in the 2022 sequel film Top Gun: Maverick.

Digital immortality

Although digital immortality has existed for a while as social media accounts of the deceased continue to remain in cyberspace, creating a virtual clone that is immortal takes on a new meaning. With the creation of a digital clone, one can not only capture the visual presence of themselves but also their mannerism, including personality and cognition. With digital immortality, one can continue to interact with a representation of their loved ones after they have died. Furthermore, families can connect with the representations of multiple generations, forming a family tree, in a sense, to pass on the family legacy to future generations, providing a way for history to be passed down.

Concerns

Fake news

Main article: Fake news

With a lack of regulations for deepfakes, there are several concerns that have arisen. Some concerning deepfake videos that can bring potential harm includes depiction of political officials displaying inappropriate behavior, police officers shown as shooting unarmed black men, and soldiers murdering innocent civilians may begin to appear although it may have never occurred in real life. With such hyper-realistic videos being released on the Internet, it becomes very easy for the public to be misinformed, which could lead people to take actions, thus contributing to this vicious cycle of unnecessary harm. Additionally, with the rise in fake news in recent news, there is also the possibility of combining deepfakes and fake news. This will bring further difficulty to distinguishing what is real and what is fake. Visual information can be very convincing to the human eyes, therefore, the combination of deepfakes and fake news can have a detrimental effect on society. Strict regulations should be made by social media companies and other platforms for news.

Personal use

Another reason deepfakes can be used maliciously is for one to sabotage another on a personal level. With the increased accessibility of technologies to create deepfakes, blackmailers and thieves are able to easily extract personal information for financial gains and other reasons by creating videos of loved ones of the victim asking for help. Furthermore, voice cloning can be used maliciously for criminals to make fake phone calls to victims. The phone calls will have the exact voice and mannerism as the individual, which can trick the victim into giving private information to the criminal without knowing. Alternatively, a bad actor could, for example, create a deepfake of a person superimposed onto a video to extract blackmail payment and/or as an act of revenge porn.

Creating deepfakes and voice clones for personal use can be extremely difficult under the law because there is no commercial harm. Rather, they often come in the form of psychological and emotional damage, making it difficult for the court to provide a remedy for.

Ethical implications

Although there are numerous legal problems that arises with the development of such technology, there are also ethical problems that may not be protected under the current legislations. One of the biggest problems that comes with the use of deepfakes and voice cloning is the potential of identity theft. However, identity theft in terms of deepfakes are difficult to prosecute because there are currently no laws that are specific to deepfakes. Furthermore, the damages that malicious use of deepfakes can bring is more of a psychological and emotional one rather than a financial one, which makes it more difficult to provide a remedy for. Allen argues that the way one’s privacy should be treated is similar to Kant’s categorical imperative.

Another ethical implication is the use of private and personal information one must give up to use the technology. Because digital cloning, deepfakes, and voice cloning all use a deep-learning algorithm, the more information the algorithm receives, the better the results are. However, every platform has a risk of data breach, which could potentially lead to very personal information being accessed by groups that users never consented to. Furthermore, post-mortem privacy comes into question when family members of a loved one tries to gather as much information as possible to create a digital clone of the deceased without the permission of how much information they are willing to give up.

Existing laws in the United States

Copyright laws

In the United States, copyright laws require some type of originality and creativity in order to protect the author’s individuality. However, creating a digital clone simply means taking personal data, such as photos, voice recordings, and other information in order to create a virtual person that is as close to the actual person. In the decision of Supreme Court case Feist Publications Inc. v. Rural Television Services Company, Inc., Justice O’Connor emphasized the importance of originality and some degree of creativity. However, the extent of originality and creativity is not clearly defined, creating a gray area for copyright laws. Creating digital clones require not only the data of the person but also the creator’s input of how the digital clone should act or move. In Meshwerks v. Toyota, this question was raised and the court stated that the same copyright laws created for photography should be applied to digital clones.

Right of publicity

Main article: Right of publicity

With the current lack of legislations to protect individuals against potential malicious use of digital cloning, the right of publicity may be the best way to protect one in a legal setting. The right of publicity, also referred to as personality rights, gives autonomy to the individual when it comes to controlling their own voice, appearance, and other aspects that essentially makes up their personality in a commercial setting. If a deepfake video or digital clone of one arises without their consent, depicting the individual taking actions or making statements that are out of their personality, they can take legal actions by claiming that it is violating their right to publicity. Although the right to publicity specifically states that it is meant to protect the image of an individual in a commercial setting, which requires some type of profit, some state that the legislation may be updated to protect virtually anyone's image and personality. Another important note is that the right of publicity is only implemented in specific states, so some states may have different interpretations of the right compared to other states.

Preventative measures

Regulation

Digital and digital thought clones raise legal issues relating to data privacy, informed consent, anti-discrimination, copyright, and right of publicity. More jurisdictions urgently need to enact legislation similar to the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe to protect people against unscrupulous and harmful uses of their data and the unauthorised development and use of digital thought clones.

Technology

One way to prevent being a victim to any of the technology mentioned above is to develop artificial intelligence against these algorithms. There are already several companies that have developed artificial intelligence that can detect manipulated images by looking at the patterns in each pixel. By applying a similar logic, they are trying to create a software that takes each frame of a given video and analyze it pixel by pixel in order to find the pattern of the original video and determine whether or not it has been manipulated.

In addition to developing new technology that can detect any video manipulations, many researchers are raising the importance for private corporations creating stricter guidelines to protect individual privacy. With the development of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to ask how this impacts society today as it begins to appear in virtually every aspect of society, including medicine, education, politics, and the economy. Furthermore, artificial intelligence will begin to appear in various aspects of society, which makes it important to have laws that protect humans rights as technology takes over. As the private sector gains more digital power over the public, it is important to set strict regulations and laws to prevent private corporations from using personal data maliciously. Additionally, the past history of various data breaches and violations of privacy policy should also be a warning for how personal information can be accessed and used without the person’s consent.

Digital literacy

Another way to prevent being harmed by these technology is by educating people on the pros and cons of digital cloning. By doing so, it empowers each individual to make a rational decision based on their own circumstances. Furthermore, it is also important to educate people on how to protect the information they put out on the Internet. By increasing the digital literacy of the public, people have a greater chance of determining whether a given video has been manipulated as they can be more skeptical of the information they find online.

Hybrid warfare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_warfare

Hybrid warfare was defined by Frank Hoffman in 2007 as the emerging simultaneous use of multiple types of warfare by flexible and sophisticated adversaries who understand that successful conflict requires a variety of forms designed to fit the goals at the time. A US document on maritime strategy said "Conflicts are increasingly characterized by a hybrid blend of traditional and irregular tactics, decentralized planning and execution, and non-state actors using both simple and sophisticated technologies in innovative ways." While there is no clear, accepted definition, methods include political warfare and blend conventional warfare, irregular warfare, and cyberwarfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy, lawfare, regime change, and foreign electoral intervention. By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution. The concept of hybrid warfare has been criticized by a number of academics and practitioners, who say that it is vague and has disputed constitutive elements and historical distortions.

Definition

Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.

—Carl von Clausewitz

There is no universally-accepted definition of hybrid warfare; with a debate over its utility and whether it simply refers to irregular methods to counter a conventionally superior force. The vagueness of the term means that it is often used as a catch-all term for all non-linear threats.

Hybrid warfare is warfare which includes some, parts, or all of the following aspects:

• A non-standard, complex, and fluid adversary. A hybrid adversary can be state or non-state. For example, in the Israel–Hezbollah War of 2006 and the Syrian Civil War, the main adversaries are non-state entities within the state system. The non-state actors can act as proxies for countries but have independent agendas as well. For example, Iran is a sponsor of Hezbollah, but it was Hezbollah's, not Iran's, agenda that resulted in the kidnapping of Israeli troops that led to the Israel–Hezbollah War. On the other hand, Russian involvement in Ukraine (pre-2022) can be described as a traditional state actor waging a hybrid war (in addition to using a local hybrid proxy) although Russia denies involvement in the 2014 Ukraine conflict.
• Use of combination of conventional and irregular methods. Methods and tactics may include conventional capabilities, irregular tactics, irregular formations, diplomacy, politics, terrorist acts, indiscriminate violence, and criminal activity. A hybrid adversary may also use clandestine actions to avoid attribution or retribution. The methods are used simultaneously across the spectrum of conflict with a unified strategy. A current example is the Islamic State's transnational aspirations, blended tactics, structured formations, and cruel use of terrorism as part of its arsenal.
• Flexible and quick response. For example, the Islamic State's response to the US aerial bombing campaign was a quick reduction of the use of checkpoints, of large convoys, and of cellphones. Militants also dispersed among the civilian population. Civilian collateral damage from airstrikes can be used as an effective recruiting tool.
• Use of advanced weapons systems and other disruptive technologies. Such weapons can be now bought at bargain prices. Moreover, other novel technologies are being adapted to the battlefield such as cellular networks. In 2006 Hezbollah was armed with high-tech weaponry, such as precision-guided missiles, which nation-states typically use. Hezbollah forces shot down Israeli helicopters, severely damaged a patrol boat with a cruise missile, and destroyed heavily-armored tanks by firing guided missiles from hidden bunkers. It also used aerial drones to gather intelligence, communicated with encrypted cellphones, and watched Israeli troop movements with thermal night-vision equipment.
• Use of mass communication for propaganda. The growth of mass communication networks offers powerful propaganda and recruiting tools. The use of fake-news websites to spread false stories is a possible element of hybrid warfare.
• Three distinct battlefields. They are the conventional battlefield, the indigenous population of the conflict zone, and the international community.

Other definitions

The Chief of Staff of the US Army defined a hybrid threat as an adversary that incorporates "diverse and dynamic combinations of conventional, irregular, terrorist and criminal capabilities."^[14] The US Joint Forces Command defines a hybrid threat as "any adversary that simultaneously and adaptively employs a tailored mix of conventional, irregular, terrorism and criminal means or activities in the operational battle space. Rather than a single entity, a hybrid threat or challenger may be a combination of state and nonstate actors."

The US Army defined a hybrid threat in 2011 as "the diverse and dynamic combination of regular forces, irregular forces, criminal elements, or a combination of these forces and elements all unified to achieve mutually benefiting effects." NATO uses the term to describe "adversaries with the ability to simultaneously employ conventional and non-conventional means adaptively in pursuit of their objectives."

The former US Army Chief George W. Casey Jr. talked of a new type of war that would become increasingly common in the future: "A hybrid of irregular warfare and conventional warfare." According to the 2017-inaugurated European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, "hybrid threats are methods and activities that are targeted towards vulnerabilities of the opponent" where the "range of methods and activities is wide".

Relation to the grey-zone

Further information: grey-zone (international relations)

The concept of grey-zone conflicts or warfare is distinct from the concept of hybrid warfare, although the two are intimately linked, as in the modern era states most often apply unconventional tools and hybrid techniques in the grey-zone. However many of the unconventional tools used by states in the grey-zone such as propaganda campaigns, economic pressure, and the use of non-state entities do not cross over the threshold into formalized state-level aggression.

Effectiveness

Taiwanese inter-agency counter-hybrid warfare exercise

Traditional militaries find it hard to respond to hybrid warfare since it is hard to agree on the source of the conflict. An article published in Global Security Review, "What is Hybrid Warfare?" compares the notion of hybrid warfare to the Russian concept of "non-linear" warfare, which it defines as the deployment of "conventional and irregular military forces in conjunction with psychological, economic, political, and cyber assaults." The article partially attributes the difficulty to the "rigid" or static military taxonomy used by NATO to define the very concept of warfare.

To counter a hybrid threat, hard power is often insufficient. Often, the conflict evolves under the radar, and even a "rapid" response turns out to be too late. Overwhelming force is an insufficient deterrent. Many traditional militaries lack the flexibility to shift tactics, priorities, and objectives constantly.

History

When going through the work of philosophers who dealt with propaganda and governance in the last 3,000 years, one can find that hybrid war is not a new concept as many social anthropologists believe today. The combination of conventional and irregular methods is not new and has been used throughout history. A few examples of that type of combat are found in the American Revolutionary War (a combination of George Washington's Continental Army with militia forces) and the Napoleonic Wars (British regulars co-operated with Spanish guerrillas).

There are examples of hybrid warfare in smaller conflicts during the 19th century. For instance, between 1837 and 1840, Rafael Carrera, a Conservative peasant rebel leader in Guatemala, waged a successful military campaign against the Liberals and the federal government of Central America by using a strategy that combined classical guerrilla tactics with conventional operations. Carrera's hybrid approach to warfare gave him the edge over his numerically-superior and better-armed enemies. The Soviet Union engaged in an early case of hybrid warfare in 1944. When the Tuvan Army was away in Europe, fighting along the Red Army against the Third Reich, Moscow annexed the Tuvan People's Republic by successfully pressing the Tuvan government to ask for membership in the Soviet Union.

After 1945

The Vietnam War saw hybrid warfare tactics employed by both sides, with the US using the CIA to support civil war parties in Laos and the Cambodian Civil War as well as ethnic groups inside Vietnam for its cause, and the Soviet Union supporting the Viet Cong militia.

After 1989

The end of the Cold War created a unipolar system with a preponderant American military power. Though that has tempered traditional conflicts, regional conflicts and threats that leverage the weaknesses of conventional military structures are becoming more frequent.

At the same time, the sophistication and the lethality of non-state actors has increased. They are well armed with technologically advanced weapons, which are now available at low prices. Commercial technologies such as cellphones and digital networks are also being adapted to the battlefield. Another new element is the ability of non-state actors to persist within the modern system.

Modern examples

2006 Israel–Hezbollah War

One of the most often quoted examples of a hybrid war is the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a sophisticated non-state actor that is sponsored by Iran. While the group often acts as a proxy for Iran, it has its agenda. It was Hezbollah's policy, rather than Iran's, that led to the kidnapping of Israeli troops, which was the impetus for the war. The war featured about 3,000 Hezbollah fighters embedded in the local population attacked by about 30,000 Israeli regular troops.

The group used decentralized cells composed of guerrillas and regular troops, armed with weaponry that nation-states use, such as anti-tank missiles, rockets, armed unmanned aerial vehicles, and advanced improvised explosive devices. Hezbollah cells downed Israeli helicopters, damaged Merkava IV tanks, communicated with encrypted cell phones, and monitored Israeli troops movements with night vision and thermal imaging devices. Iranian Quds Force operatives acted as mentors and suppliers of advanced systems.

Hezbollah leveraged mass communication immediately distributing battlefield photos and videos dominating the perception battle throughout the conflict. Israel did not lose the war on the battlefield but lost the information battle, as the overwhelming perception then of Israeli defeat.

2014 ISIL advance into Iraq

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a non-state actor that uses hybrid tactics against the conventional Iraqi military. ISIL has transitional aspirations and uses irregular and regular tactics and terrorism. In response, Iraq turned to hybrid tactics itself by using non-state and international actors to counter the ISIL advance. The United States was a hybrid participant and used a combination of traditional air power, advisers to Iraqi government troops, Kurdish peshmerga, sectarian militias; it also trained opposition forces within Syria. The hybrid war is a conflict with an interconnected group of state and non-state actors pursuing overlapping goals and a weak local state.

Russian activities in the 2010s

Main article: Russian hybrid warfare

Further information: Russo-Ukrainian War, Russo-Georgian War, Tajikistani Civil War, Transnistria War, Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Russia–European Union relations § Russian destabilization of EU states, and Cyberwarfare by Russia

See also: Cyberwarfare in the United States, United States intelligence operations abroad, United States involvement in regime change, Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and European migrant crisis

The Russian government's wide use in conflicts the Syrian Civil War and the Russo-Ukrainian War, of private military contractors such as those of the Wagner Group was in 2018 singled out by experts as a key part of Russia's strategy of hybrid warfare to advance its interests and obfuscating its involvement and role. Specifically, Russia employed a combination of traditional combat warfare, economic influence, cyber strategies, and disinformation attacks against Ukraine.

Regarding Russia, Jānis Bērziņš, the director of the Center for Security and Strategic Research, has widely published to argue that using the term "hybrid" to characterize the Russian strategy is misleading since Russia has its own definitions and concepts: "the word 'hybrid' is catchy since it can represent a mix of anything. However, its basic framework differs from the one developed by the Russians due to the former being a military concept and the result of American military thought. Moreover, the concept of New Generation Warfare includes conventional operations. In other words, Hybrid Warfare might be part of New Generation Warfare but cannot define it."

Michael Kofman, a senior research scientist at CNA and a fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, noted in March 2018 that the West′s frequent references to hybrid warfare were in effect "an unintelligible Western reaction, after decades of wars of choice against paltry adversaries, to confrontation with another power that is capable across the full spectrum of conflict."

Russia's activities in the former Soviet states have been described as Hobbesian and redolent of Cold War thinking.

General Philip Breedlove, in a US Senate hearing in February 2016, claimed that Russia is using refugees to weaken Europe and is directing the influx of refugees to destabilize areas and regions in terms of economy and to create social unrest. On 10 February 2016, Finnish Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö told a meeting of NATO Defence Ministers that Finland expects Russia to open a second front, with as many as 1 million migrants possibly arriving over the Finnish-Russian border. A similar statement was made by Ilkka Kanerva, Finland's former foreign minister and now the chairman of the country's parliamentary Defense Committee.

United States on Russian activities

Moscow has accused Washington of conducting hybrid warfare against Russia during the colour revolutions. Its perception of being at war or in a permanent state of conflict with the US and its allies was furthered by the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine.

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in November 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said:

It is an interesting term, but I would apply it above all to the United States and its war strategy – it is truly a hybrid war aimed not so much at defeating the enemy militarily as at changing the regimes in the states that pursue a policy Washington does not like. It is using financial and economic pressure, information attacks, using others on the perimeter of a corresponding state as proxies and of course information and ideological pressure through externally financed non-governmental organisations. Is it not a hybrid process and not what we call war?

Iranian activities in the 2010s

Further information: Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict, Iran–Israel proxy conflict, Iran and state-sponsored terrorism, and Cyberwarfare and Iran

Iran's foreign policy exhibits characteristics associated with hybrid warfare. According to the BBC, "Iran, along with its Houthi allies [in Yemen], is conducting a classic war of the weak against the strong; a "hybrid conflict" as it is known in the strategic textbooks. It is borrowing many of the tactics from the Russian play-book – the use of deniability; proxies; cyber-operations and information warfare."

Iran perceptions of US

See also: Iran–United States relations, Timber Sycamore, and United States sanctions against Iran

The US was accused in 2019 by Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, of conducting hybrid warfare against Iran and other countries.

Saudi and Emirati activities in the 2010s

Further information: Qatar diplomatic crisis and Saudi Arabia and state-sponsored terrorism

Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have been accused of conducting hybrid warfare against Qatar.

Chinese activities

See also: Cyberwarfare by China, Chinese information operations and information warfare, and Chinese salami slicing strategy

China has been accused of conducting hybrid warfare against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

Belarusian activities in 2021

See also: 2021 Belarus–European Union border crisis and Belarus–European Union relations

Poland and the Baltic states have accused Belarus of conducting hybrid warfare against the European Union by organizing illegal border crossings with migrants into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with the aim of destabilizing the 27-nation bloc.

New generation warfare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_generation_warfare

New generation warfare or NGW (Russian: Война нового поколения) is a Russian theory of unconventional warfare which prioritizes the psychological and people-centered aspects over traditional military concerns, and emphasizes a phased approach of non-military influence such that armed conflict, if it arises, is much less costly in human or economic terms for the aggressor than it otherwise would be. It was first enunciated in 2013 by Valery Gerasimov as part of his Gerasimov Doctrine.

Numerous analysts cite the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas as specific examples that followed the guidelines of new generation warfare.

According to one analyst, "the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, ... morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population. The main objective is to reduce the necessity for deploying hard military power to the minimum necessary."

Terminology

Further information: Hybrid warfare § Definition, Grey-zone (international relations) § Definition, and Gerasimov doctrine

The term new generation warfare was first introduced in Russian (Война нового поколения) in 2013, as synonyms for grey zone and hybrid warfare in the Gerasimov doctrine. These are all terms that refer to modern military theories of warfare that go beyond conventional warfare. The terms began to spread and take on various meanings, and were not always used with clarity. Some analysts use them more or less interchangeably, while others identify differences among them.

In his 2009 paper, Frank Hoffman noted the rising use of the term hybrid threat, and analyzed the multiple meanings of the term. Hoffman pointed out that there had been resistance among some analysts for the new term, who preferred older concepts of "conventional" and "irregular" warfare, while Hoffman believed that the older terms were insufficient to describe conflicts in the modern world. He defined hybrid threat as an adversary that "simultaneously and adaptively employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism and criminal behavior in the battle space to obtain their political objectives".

Since being introduced, the term hybrid warfare has become trendy and is used often in debates on modern warfare. The term has gone through various stages of evolution of its meaning, and has been criticized for being overused. The term is used in official doctrines of nations, and permeates academic and policy discussions. The meaning has been extended to non-state actors, and shifted to be synonymous with "malign Russian activities" under Vladimir Putin. At first, the term was not used in Russia, but has recently been adopted and undergone its own shifting usage: before the Russo-Ukrainian war it tended to refer to trends in American military thinking, but after 2014 Russia views hybrid warfare as entirely emanating from the West, in that every conflict anywhere in the world, from hot wars to sports to vaccination to the Eurovision song contest are all aspects of "hybrid warfare" waged against them by the West. The West on the other hand views it more as a way of preventing subversion and interference from Russia, including cyberwarfare.

Russia created the concept of new generation warfare, but has also absorbed the hybrid warfare term. According to Suchkov (2021), the difference for Russian analysts is that new generation warfare is outward-facing, i.e., it's about "how to pro-actively engage with foreign adversaries", whereas hybrid warfare is about how to defend against interference from the West.

Background

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, which began following the end of World War II and lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A period of openness under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the first post-Soviet one Boris Yeltsin ended with the 1999 accession to power of Vladimir Putin, who took a harder line and sought to reestablish Russia as a world power with a sphere of influence including the former Soviet republics.

Cold War

Further information: Cold War

The Soviet Union was one of the Allied powers of World War II fighting on the same side as the United States to defeat the Nazis. After victory over Hitler in 1945, the Allies disagreed on what the map of Europe should look like and where the borders would be drawn. The Soviets effectively occupied Central and Eastern Europe, while US and Western allied forces remained in Western Europe. The Soviet Union sought to establish a sphere of influence and dominate the internal affairs of countries in its border regions. Soviet-style regimes arose in the Eastern Bloc.

The US government pursued an increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri and called for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets. Stalin dismissed the accusation that the USSR was exerting increasing control over the countries in its sphere. He argued that there was nothing surprising in "the fact that the Soviet Union, anxious for its future safety, [was] trying to see to it that governments loyal in their attitude to the Soviet Union should exist in these countries".

Forty years of simmering tensions, rearmament, and proxy wars followed between the two nuclear-armed nations, and their allies. The western bloc created NATO to protect western Europe and contain the Soviets, and the Soviets created the Warsaw Pact in response, uniting eastern European countries behind the Iron Curtain. Direct armed conflict between the two nuclear-armed superpowers was avoided (sometimes only barely), such as during the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the 1960s, the United States became bogged down in the "quagmire" of Vietnam in an attempt to contain Communism; twenty years later the Russians were bogged down in Afghanistan; each superpower left an Asian war without a victory. Conflicts multiplied in Third World nations, including in Latin America, Indonesia, Israel, South Asia, and Africa. After a period of détente in the 1970s, tensions were reawakened in the 1980s and US president Ronald Reagan "went all out to fight the second cold war". Pope John Paul II provided a moral focus for anti-communism; a visit to his native Poland in 1979 stimulated a religious and nationalist resurgence centered on the Solidarity movement that galvanized the opposition, which was met by a harsh crackdown in 1981.

Thaw and end of the Cold War

Further information: Era of Stagnation, Strategic Defense Initiative, Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika, and Glasnost

Massive spending in the Soviet Union on the arms race exacerbated already deep-seated structural problems in the Soviet system, In response to the massive buildup on the Soviet side, US presidents Carter and Reagan built up the US military, culminating with the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"), which the Soviets were not able to respond to. By 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary, the Soviet economy was stagnant. Gorbachev announced economic reforms called perestroika, or restructuring. and glasnost ("openness") which increased freedom of the press and the transparency of state institutions. This contributed to the accelerating détente between the two nations, resulting in agreements which led to a scaling-back of the arms race. Tensions subsided; the START I arms control treaty was signed, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, and the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

On 3 December 1989, Gorbachev and Bush declared the Cold War over at the Malta Summit. By 1990, Gorbachev consented to German reunification, and later that year the two former rivals were partners in the Gulf War against Iraq.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Main articles: History of the Soviet Union (1982–1991) and Dissolution of the Soviet Union

Further information: Revolutions of 1989

In 1989, the Soviet alliance system was on the brink of collapse and communist leaders of the Warsaw Pact states were losing power. The Pan-European Picnic in August 1989 in Hungary became a test of how far the Soviet leader Gorbachev was willing to go with glasnost. Thousands of holiday-makers exited Hungary at the border with Austria without interference by Hungarian border guards, and the Soviet Union did nothing to stop it. The dam broke, and tens of thousands of East Germans crossed into Austria. The Hungarian borders were opened on 11 September, and the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November. The 1989 revolutionary wave swept across Central and Eastern Europe and peacefully overthrew all of the Soviet-style east-European states; Romania was the only Eastern-bloc country to topple its communist regime violently. The Warsaw Pact disintegrated in 1991.

Greater political and social freedoms in the Soviet Union instituted by the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev created an atmosphere of open criticism. The Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin seized power in the aftermath of a failed coup that had attempted to topple reform-minded Gorbachev. The Baltic States seceded, and Ukraine and Belarus were recognized as independent on 8 December. The Soviet flag was lowered at the Kremlin for the last time on 25 December 1991, replaced by the Russian tricolor. The successor state was headed by Yeltsin until 1999.

Putin era

Main articles: History of Russia (1991–present) § Putin era, and Russia under Vladimir Putin

Since 1999 Vladimir Putin has headed Russia either as president or Prime Minister. The economy has improved, but he has also been widely accused of corruption, authoritarian leadership, and widespread human rights abuses.

Precursors

Further information: Collapse of the Soviet Union and Gerasimov doctrine

See also: Hybrid warfare and Information warfare

Vladimir Putin in November 2021

Phillip Karber at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency identified 1999 when former KGB agent Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia as a "pivotal turning point in European security". Putin has stated that "the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." Ever since, Putin has labored to reestablish Russia as a world power and dominance in Eastern Europe, and pushed to restructure the armed forces, and introduced new tactics in the 2000 Second Chechen War.

The Russian Army General Staff redesigned the Russian Army for decentralized operations including the possibility of unconventional operations, conventional weapons, and tactical nuclear environments, in order to face different kinds of threats from the high-tech West, massed armies in the east, and unconventional threats from the south. This was used in 2008 in the Georgian conflict, and practiced in field simulations against NATO, through 2013.

Gerasimov in 2015

It was also in 2013 that publications by Russian military writers about "new generation warfare" became available, and Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov called for "rethinking on the forms and methods of warfare." Many analysts consider the Gerasimov doctrine the best description of Russia's modern strategy of total warfare, which uses politics as well as war, and attacks on multiple fronts at once including hackers, business, media, disinformation, as well as military means. The internet has made available the possibility of new tools and approaches to destabilize or influence foreign actors, and the Gerasimov doctrine describes a framework for using them, and says that they are not just adjuncts of military force, but are in fact, the primary or preferred means to victory. The strategy is to foment chaos within an enemy state, and develop permanent unrest and conflict there. West Point analyst John Chambers uses the terms Gerasimov doctrine and new generation warfare synonymously. Chambers views the Gerasimov/new generation warfare doctrine as having been formulated specifically to exploit the weaknesses of large enemy bureaucracies such as the United States.

The Gerasimov doctrine is a foreign policy doctrine named after a February 2013 publication of an article by Valery Gerasimov, Russian chief of the General Staff, which laid out a new theory of modern warfare combining old Soviet tactics and strategic military thinking about total war which was based more on societal aspects than traditional military ones. Gerasimov wrote:

The very 'rules of war' have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.

The prime example of the use of the Gerasimov doctrine in the field, is the 2014 unrest in Ukraine, where Russia supported extremists on both sides to exacerbate tensions and create unrest, and then used the unrest as a pretext to take over Crimea.

Key aspects

Previous military strategies focused on traditional military concerns such as logistics, strength and location of enemy forces, whereas new generation warfare identifies the battleground as the mind of the civilian public. One analyst wrote:

Thus, the Russian view of modern warfare is based on the idea that the main battlespace is the mind and, as a result, new-generation wars are to be dominated by information and psychological warfare, in order to achieve superiority in troops and weapons control, morally and psychologically depressing the enemy’s armed forces personnel and civil population."

Characterizing this emphasis on the mind, Berzins describes the theory as prioritizing "influence over destruction; inner decay over annihilation; and culture over weapons or technology", and is a "total war battlespace" that includes "political, economic, informational, technological, and ecological" aspects. The goal is to implement the theory via eight phases, starting long before there is any military conflict. "Phase Zero" is about preparing the terrain by implementing psychological, informational, and other measures that prevent conflict.

Chambers views New generation warfare as designed to use grey-zone hybrid threats, and "is focused on using non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals as well as military means 'of concealed character' to include the open use of forces 'often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation' to accomplish objectives. These tactics and techniques are particularly effective against the United States in the gray zone due to laws and regulations affecting our ability to act in Phase 0."

Strategic communication

In New generation warfare, communications and the media are used to uphold a narrative aimed both at the international community as well as at a domestic audience, using the language of law to evade the usual deterrence and whip up support at home for operations they characterize as legal uses of force to support "protection and self-defense of Russian nationals" living in Donbas and Crimea, and an invitation for intervention by local leaders there who have been the object of years of softening up by the Russians in the preparatory phases. On the surface, Russia appears or claims to be acting in support of self-defense and sovereignty, as supported by Article 51 of the UN Charter, and supported by acts of the Russian parliament. New generation warfare seeks to take the acts themselves out of the realm of military action, such that it's unclear if an armed attack has, in fact, occurred, confusing their enemy's ability to define the response as a military attack and respond to it as one.

Elements

Defense and national security expert on Ukraine Phillip Karber identified five elements of New generation warfare:

• political subversion – intelligence agents; agit-prop operations using mass media to exploit internal differences; corruption, bribery and intimidation of local officials; kidnapping, assassination and terrorism; creating local opposition cells from discontented elements
• proxy sanctuary – seizing local government centers of power, airports and military depots; arming and training insurgents; creating checkpoints; destroying ingress transportation infrastructure; cyberattacks; phony referendums; establishment of a "People’s Republic" under Russian domination.
• intervention – deploying Russian forces to the border with large-scale exercises involving ground, naval, and air force troops; clandestine introduction of heavy weapons to insurgents; creation of training and logistics camps adjacent to the border; integrating proxy troops into Russian equipped and led formations.
• coercive deterrence – secret strategic force alerts; deployment of tactical nuclear delivery systems; theater and intercontinental maneuvers; aggressive air patrolling of adjacent areas to limit their freedom of movement.
• negotiated manipulation – use and abuse of Western negotiated ceasefires to regroup and rearm their proxies; using violations as a tactic, while inhibiting other states from helping due to fear of escalation; split the Western alliance by using oil or economic incentives; selective and repetitive phone negotiations that go nowhere.

Chambers compared New generation warfare planning processes with American processes, and identified an eight-phases construct on the Russian side, and six phases on the American side. They don't line up well, and the first four phases of New generation warfare all fall within Phase 0 of US planning, the latter requiring a lot of interagency planning and communication, slowing it down, while the Russian process is designed to be nimble and work within the US phases. As Chambers puts it, "The fundamental problem with countering operations in the gray zone takes place when the United States cannot clearly identify gray-zone actors and actions (ambiguity) nor develop a clear common operating picture of actions taking place. In this case, the United States will be constrained by a bureaucracy that will likely not authorize operations until there is a clear threat. At this point, it is too late and the adversary has already used gray-zone operations to shape the battlefield and achieve its strategic objectives."

In practice

The New generation warfare theory became used in practice in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, in Russia's proxy war with Ukraine. Karber stated that "As practiced in Ukraine, Russia's new generation warfare is manifested in five component elements: political subversion, proxy sanctuary, intervention, coercive deterrence, and negotiated manipulation."

The invasion of Crimea was carried out quietly using the excuse of humanitarian intervention. In just three weeks and with less than 10,000 troops, Russia managed to dislodge Crimea from Ukraine and annex it, without a shot being fired, and the surrender of 190 Ukrainian bases to the Russians. The ground was prepared for this long before, via a multi-pronged "soft" approach including bribing local officials, paying off oligarchs, providing local separatists with intelligence information, investing heavily in local Ukrainian energy and industrial businesses, and the continual emission of pro-Russian propaganda through networks owned or funded by Russia, and a process of deception known as "maskirovka" ("camouflage" in Russian) to hide its operations. It does the same thing domestically, with its vast control of local print media, but especially via television reporting, which is very dominant news source for most of the population of the country.

The strong governmental control over the media gives it a direct pipeline to influence public opinion in the country. Public support of the media is very high, with 88% believing that Europe and the United States are involved in an "information war" to manipulate Russian media, while the Russian government merely reports the facts.

Accompanying Russian aggression on the ground in Ukraine in 2014, Russia made direct nuclear threats against Ukraine, who had earlier given up their nuclear weapons under the 1994 Budapest Agreement in exchange for an explicit guarantees of its sovereignty from Moscow. Russia has continued to push the limits, operating close to NATO borders with dangerous over-flights, demonstrations of nuclear force, and hostile wargame exercises, causing anxiety among border NATO member countries as well as neutral countries.

Compared to other theories

New generation warfare doctrine differs from hybrid warfare in that it combines both low-end, clandestine operations with high-end direct superpower involvement. On the other hand, William Neneth in 2015 wrote of "Russia’s State-centric Hybrid Warfare", while in the same year Balasevicius wrote of "state level hybrid war doctrine". Before May 2015, USAREUR commander Ben Hodges, who was particularly interested in the Russian plan for the "simultaneous employment of multiple instruments of war, including non-military means where information warfare, such as mass political manipulation", had referred to it as "hybrid or multidimensional war". However, in 2016 McDermott opined that hybrid warfare was alien to Russian military theory.

Virtual actor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_actor

A virtual actor or also known as virtual human, virtual persona, or digital clone is the creation or re-creation of a human being in image and voice using computer-generated imagery and sound, that is often indistinguishable from the real actor.

The idea of a virtual actor was first portrayed in the 1981 film Looker, wherein models had their bodies scanned digitally to create 3D computer generated images of the models, and then animating said images for use in TV commercials. Two 1992 books used this concept: Fools by Pat Cadigan, and Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner.

In general, virtual humans employed in movies are known as synthespians, virtual actors, vactors, cyberstars, or "silicentric" actors. There are several legal ramifications for the digital cloning of human actors, relating to copyright and personality rights. People who have already been digitally cloned as simulations include Bill Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Ed Sullivan, Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Marie Goddard, and George Burns.

By 2002, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, Kate Mulgrew, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington, Gillian Anderson, and David Duchovny had all had their heads laser scanned to create digital computer models thereof.

Early history

Early computer-generated animated faces include the 1985 film Tony de Peltrie and the music video for Mick Jagger's song "Hard Woman" (from She's the Boss). The first actual human beings to be digitally duplicated were Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart in a March 1987 film "Rendez-vous in Montreal" created by Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann for the 100th anniversary of the Engineering Institute of Canada. The film was created by six people over a year, and had Monroe and Bogart meeting in a café in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The characters were rendered in three dimensions, and were capable of speaking, showing emotion, and shaking hands.

In 1987, the Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company (now Synthespian Studios), founded by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak coined the term "synthespian" and began its Synthespian ("synthetic thespian") Project, with the aim of creating "life-like figures based on the digital animation of clay models".

In 1988, Tin Toy was the first entirely computer-generated movie to win an Academy Award (Best Animated Short Film). In the same year, Mike the Talking Head, an animated head whose facial expression and head posture were controlled in real time by a puppeteer using a custom-built controller, was developed by Silicon Graphics, and performed live at SIGGRAPH. In 1989, The Abyss, directed by James Cameron included a computer-generated face placed onto a watery pseudopod.

In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, also directed by Cameron, confident in the abilities of computer-generated effects from his experience with The Abyss, included a mixture of synthetic actors with live animation, including computer models of Robert Patrick's face. The Abyss contained just one scene with photo-realistic computer graphics. Terminator 2: Judgment Day contained over forty shots throughout the film.

In 1997, Industrial Light & Magic worked on creating a virtual actor that was a composite of the bodily parts of several real actors.

21st century

By the 21st century, virtual actors had become a reality. The face of Brandon Lee, who had died partway through the shooting of The Crow in 1994, had been digitally superimposed over the top of a body-double in order to complete those parts of the movie that had yet to be filmed. By 2001, three-dimensional computer-generated realistic humans had been used in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and by 2004, a synthetic Laurence Olivier co-starred in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Star Wars

Since the mid-2010s, the Star Wars franchise has become particularly notable for its prominent usage of virtual actors, driven by a desire in recent entries to reuse characters that first appeared in the original trilogy during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The 2016 Star Wars Anthology film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a direct prequel to the 1977 film Star Wars: A New Hope, with the ending scene of Rogue One leading almost immediately into the opening scene of A New Hope. As such, Rogue One necessitated digital recreations of Peter Cushing in the role Grand Moff Tarkin (played and voiced by Guy Henry), and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia (played by Ingvild Deila), appearing the same as they did in A New Hope. Fisher's sole spoken line near the end of Rogue One was added using archival voice footage of her saying the word "hope". Cushing had died in 1994, while Fisher was not available to play Leia during production and died a few days after the film's release. Industrial Light & Magic created the special effects.

Similarly, the 2020 second season of The Mandalorian briefly featured a digital recreation of Mark Hamill's character Luke Skywalker (played by an uncredited body double and voiced by an audio deepfake recreation of Hamill's voice) as portrayed in the 1983 film Return of the Jedi. Canonically, The Mandalorian's storyline takes place roughly five years after the events of Return of the Jedi.

Legal issues

Critics such as Stuart Klawans in the New York Times expressed worry about the loss of "the very thing that art was supposedly preserving: our point of contact with the irreplaceable, finite person". Even more problematic are the issues of copyright and personality rights. Actors have little legal control over a digital clone of themselves. In the United States, for instance, they must resort to database protection laws in order to exercise what control they have (The proposed Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act would strengthen such laws). An actor does not own the copyright on their digital clones, unless the clones were created by them. Robert Patrick, for example, would not have any legal control over the liquid metal digital clone of himself that was created for Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The use of digital clones in movie industry, to replicate the acting performances of a cloned person, represents a controversial aspect of these implications, as it may cause real actors to land in fewer roles, and put them in disadvantage at contract negotiations, since a clone could always be used by the producers at potentially lower costs. It is also a career difficulty, since a clone could be used in roles that a real actor would not accept for various reasons. Both Tom Waits and Bette Midler have won actions for damages against people who employed their images in advertisements that they had refused to take part in themselves.

In the USA, the use of a digital clone in advertisements is required to be accurate and truthful (section 43(a) of the Lanham Act and which makes deliberate confusion unlawful). The use of a celebrity's image would be an implied endorsement. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held that an advertisement employing a Woody Allen impersonator would violate the Act unless it contained a disclaimer stating that Allen did not endorse the product.

Other concerns include posthumous use of digital clones. Even before Brandon Lee was digitally reanimated, the California Senate drew up the Astaire Bill, in response to lobbying from Fred Astaire's widow and the Screen Actors Guild, who were seeking to restrict the use of digital clones of Astaire. Movie studios opposed the legislation, and as of 2002 it had yet to be finalized and enacted. Several companies, including Virtual Celebrity Productions, have purchased the rights to create and use digital clones of various dead celebrities, such as Marlene Dietrich and Vincent Price.

In fiction

• S1m0ne, a 2002 science fiction drama film written, produced and directed by Andrew Niccol, starring Al Pacino where he created a computer-generated woman which he can easily animate to play the film's central character.
• The Congress, a 2013 science fiction drama film written, produced and directed by Ari Folman, starring Robin Wright deals with this issue extensively.
• In Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, the Metaloid Filmloid created evil clones of the Go-Busters. In Power Rangers Beast Morphers, they were adapted as the Evil Beast Morpher Ranger clones created by Filmloid's English adapted equivalent Gamertron.