Charisma Carpenter Waves Red Flag Over Artificial Intelligence Casting – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: There’s not much about the self-tape audition process that Charisma Carpenter likes. Almost no feedback. There are no do-overs. And if he doesn’t pay a coach to read with him, he has to rely on friends in his midwestern town.

But he would choose that scenario – no matter how wrong the new reality – over relying on artificial intelligence to help him find a job. So when he received a random email to join Largo.ai’s “100 Actors Program,” he waved the red flag on social media like fellow SAG-AFTRA members hitting the picket lines to fight for AI protections.

An email from a Switzerland-based Largo.ai salesperson promises “direct connection with producers and directors (by) allowing you to receive auditions directly from them.” It also says that Largo.ai will “automatically suggest matching characters to producers/directors” and “you won’t be charged any commission for the roles you secure.”

“Welp, AI is coming for Casting Directors, Agents and Managers too,” Carpenter wrote on his Instagram account. “Viewed as mediators.’ AI protections across the board! ✊”

One of the actors who responded to Carpenter’s post was Yellowjacketby Melanie Lynskey, who wrote that “having ‘intermediaries’ who believe in you and consider you for roles that don’t seem 100% right for you but they know you can do it, is how to build an actor’s career. It’s nuts.”

Reached by Deadline, Carpenter called the AI ​​shaping process “ridiculous” and insisted that “AI is not a belief system.” “They can take data and statistics and spit out a formula that says this person is right for this part, but there’s no perspective,” continued the actress best known for her work in Angels and Dynasty. “The AI ​​doesn’t know me, they don’t know the richness of my soul. They don’t know my life experiences. They don’t know the books I read. They haven’t talked to me to get how right I am for a feature that might not be visible in the data.

The Casting Society declined to comment on AI casting, but a spokesperson pointed to a recent Reddit thread that suggested it was a possible scam. No, insists CEO Sami Arpa of Largo.ai, which also has a “presence in Los Angeles, London, and Istanbul,” according to its website.

“We see that the current reactions are quite superficial by positioning the general AI as a direct enemy, by launching directors or voice actors,” Arpa wrote to Deadline. “Our system has nothing to do with both. Largo.ai is mainly made for producers, studios and distributors, and many of them have been using our platform since 2019. The main purpose of our platform is to analyze content as early as the stage of development from screenplays, and provide feedback to producers on the story, casting, and potential audience along with expected financial results. “

“Our system did not destroy any work as claimed by some of the Instagram posts, which are people who have no idea about the platform,” Arpa continued via email. “For the casting part, the system has suggested more than 100K actors to producers completely free of charge in the last 4 years. Our new system for Actors is just an additional system that we have released for actors, after getting the demand from many actors. Because our AI already suggests actors to producers automatically based on their previous credits in the last 4 years, and we receive requests when we can provide option for them to connect directly with producers in such a connection created by AI. That’s how we started this additional service in a narrow and experimental way for actors.”

Carpenter has no interest in exploring what Largo.ai has to offer. After he posted on IG, fans called it “creepy” while actor Jordan Gavaris (The Lake) called it “absolute nonsense.” “The only reason I got the job was because the casting championed me for reasons that didn’t form,” Gavaris wrote. “AI will never be a fan.”

“I’ve had amazing casting directors take me back and forth to get me work,” he told Deadline. “I really struggle to see what the advantage is for actors to go this route.”