Actors

37%

Vote

Comments (38)

Analysis

Will "Actors" be replaced by AI & Robots?

There is a small chance this occupation will be replaced by robots/AI. This is further validated by our poll, which suggests a 25% chance of automation within the next 2 decades.

Automation Risk Level

Start worrying

or 37% probability of automation

Projected Growth

10%

by 2024

People Employed

52,620

as of 2019

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Least likely

How this compares with other jobs: 263 out of 707

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How likely do you think this occupation will be taken over by robots/AI within the next 20 years?

People Employed (US)

Job description

Play parts in stage, television, radio, video, motion picture productions, or other settings for entertainment, information, or instruction. Interpret serious or comic role by speech, gesture, and body movement to entertain or inform audience. May dance and sing.

SOC Code: 27-2011

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Comments

Jack Carroll (No chance) says

Robots have no emotion and acting takes skill

Aug 28, 2020 at 03:43 PM

Joe Blogs (No chance) says

They can't imitate human voices

Aug 18, 2020 at 04:11 AM

Dude (Highly likely) says

Voice actors for cartoons can easily be replaced by AIs. That is like half the market right there.

Jul 24, 2020 at 07:53 AM

Johnny Appleseed (No chance) says

I can't think of a single robot or computer program that could replace Tom Hanks.

Jul 18, 2020 at 03:02 AM

James (No chance) says

the ucanny valley will make any attempts at automating acting futile

Jul 02, 2020 at 09:32 AM

Tides (No chance) says

Requires sensitivity

Jun 29, 2020 at 05:38 AM

Giulia (No chance) says

Because robots couldn’t portray emotion like a person would. And the beauty of acting is that you can live a true story through the characters, and that wouldn’t happen if there were robots acting. There are many more reasons but I’m lazy

Jun 12, 2020 at 12:07 AM

Amelia says

I do not think that it is very likely for robots to take over the job of acting because robots cannot show feelings.

May 04, 2020 at 11:17 PM

Just asking says

what about technology making Photoshop tears

Sep 16, 2020 at 01:44 AM

Kacy (No chance) says

To be an actor you need to have emotion, it has to be as if whats happening to you character is happening to you so having humans with actual emotions is the key to making it believable

Apr 21, 2020 at 08:16 AM

Melvin (No chance) says

Robots cant have the same emotions and stuff like that

Mar 08, 2020 at 11:02 PM

Boxes.Matter (Likely) says

Because technology has increased so much, they will soon find a way too match the same emotions a human has in their sense of tone in speech.

Feb 24, 2020 at 09:02 PM

Sameer Gupta (Highly likely) says

We are already on age where we are using highly augmented videos. We have just unleashed digital capacity and it's on it foot note. Slowly it will start gaining pace. Things will be done on bulk and when we would have more overlook on this more and more talent would grow engaging more people in entertainment industry leveraging on technology then now. Future is coming and changes have already started.. Soon you would see existing actors forever alive in cinemas... In fact we even see Rajanikanth an old actor who can become veteran but is still working and will keep on working in digital images of not even physically...

Changes can't be stopped we are evolving as a Humans...

Feb 08, 2020 at 06:43 AM

KV (No chance) says

Robots cannot sing, and I know that emotions will be very hard to program into a robot singing something like Burn from Hamilton.

Jan 21, 2020 at 05:03 PM

Dan (Highly likely) says

The industry is all about making money. If a movie can be made cheaper using AI actors, why wouldn't be made. Let's see, would your like to pay an actor 20 million dollars and royalties, or an AI actor. The AI actor only costs for the initial cost, no royalties. Royalties are a percentage of the movie profits that goes to the individual actor. https://www.nickiswift.com/118845/actors-make-insane-amounts-money-residuals/

So, If an AI character can be created by a team of programmers and all you are paying for is the time it took them to make this actor. It is all about the money........ it's gonna happen. Here is a list of some actors that made $20,000,000 for one movie. https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Actors-Who-Can-Make-20-Million-Acting-One-Movie-70500.html

Jan 07, 2020 at 08:35 PM

Love (Small chance) says

Because NOTHING is a better actor than humans and animals.

Dec 25, 2019 at 02:27 PM

Luis Guzman (Small chance) says

Robots have to have some sort of feelings to be a good actor i dint think they can take their jobs

Nov 20, 2019 at 07:11 PM

Natalia (Could go either way) says

They just do whatever you tell them to, without flaw. I think it could go either way, but I'd prefer actual humans

Nov 20, 2019 at 07:02 PM

Lucelia (Small chance) says

Seeing robots playing humans would not be interesting. I believe that the acting profession will be more valued with the automation of everything, since those who like to connect with others will be able to do so through the performing arts.

Nov 13, 2019 at 01:16 AM

u are wrong says

It would be better than child actors

May 04, 2020 at 02:51 AM

HIJHIIJ (No chance) says

who in would want to watch a movie with robots. It will make it look fake

Nov 11, 2019 at 05:22 AM

John Smith (No chance) says

I don’t think robots could ever express the level of emotion that humans can, and I think this makes it incredibly unlikely that actors will be replaced by robots in the next 20 years

Oct 31, 2019 at 08:32 AM

LikelyYou.com says

Computer graphics and machine learning mean that old actors need never die. Hollywood has resurrected Carrie Fisher, Oliver Reed, and many others post-mortem in order to finish movies. As the technology improves to replace actors, it may be that Hollywood won’t need new ones.

Sep 04, 2019 at 11:27 PM

Mark says

When they take these jobs, or any humanities job for that matter, we'll have a dystopia, where technology rules over what people want and we are subordinates to technology... oh wait

Aug 03, 2019 at 11:09 AM

:) (No chance) says

Though an AI may be highly advanced, it won’t portray the same emotion a human would. I’m not saying AI’s are bad; But even if they can record our voices and learn human cultures, actors can evoke emotions above a robots level to their role. For example, they could be on stage and (if your a stage geek like I am), they need to know how to belt. I honestly don’t think an AI can do that. Now some people would argue that “You can just put the lines into it’s head and it’ll know it all!”, but as an actor/actress, learning the lines let’s the actor/actress gain experience, and grow as a person.

Jul 01, 2019 at 12:46 AM

Guio says

Im lmao with this page! The main problem with robots is that...they are not human! amazing. I think they are not going to be able to replace Humanities jobs in any way (actors, voiceactors, translators, teachers,...) and even social jobs as bartenders or waiters...we do like human contact and also robots are a breach of security (they are not your pals, they can be hacked while u are drinking your ass off or whatever) It could work for a while and then they will crash.

Jun 20, 2019 at 04:17 AM

Christiaan says

Actors just love to... well, act. There's lots of actors struggling to get by - but they just love what they do, so they'll never quit. Money's just never been the object. Why let a robot do what i love to do myself?
As for CGI's, i reckon there will be a future for programmers and animators who 'own' specific builds as famous and popular as 'living' stars are right now. It could earn them lots of money probably. Bet they are just replacing puppeteers. There is a glorious future for puppeteering - who'd have thought...

Jun 05, 2019 at 02:55 PM

seojin (Highly likely) says

the reason why is simple, AI is good at memorying, so if you just tell AI what to do, record voices, BOOM! the show will go perfect

Jun 03, 2019 at 08:37 AM

Evelyn says

No, I disagree, because AI cannot act out the thrills that we get while watching horror movies, or the sadness in romance movies, or the laughter in comedy movies. They are highly skilled, but not that skilled.

Jul 16, 2019 at 11:49 PM

Sans says

and you said "record voices"

Sep 09, 2019 at 08:25 PM

aisha white says

Ya but the problem is that robots lack that human emotion so no I'd have to disagree with you. They may be able to memorize very well, but the execution will probably not be as heartfelt and great as a human's.

Dec 09, 2019 at 03:40 PM

A thought on Digital Reconstruction and Translation (Highly likely) says

Honestly, with the recent advancements in Deep Neural Networks and Computer Vision, as well as increased computing capacity for photorealistic rendering (just look at some of the realtime volumetric capture and reconstructions the Unreal Engine has made possible) the probability of robots (a word used not just for physical machines, but for software as well) replacing human actors is quite high.

The replacement of ALL human actors? Probably not. But when one actor with sufficient motion capture technology can be translated to any likeness needed, the need for large numbers of actors for a single project can be eliminated. Not to mention, with DNNs learning HOW we express emotion through physicality, a director will eventually be able to simply input general parameters, and then fine tune the character to their needs.

Obviously, this will be quite different for live theatre, but for film, tv, animation, and even voicework, digital reproduction will revolutionize the industry.

May 20, 2019 at 04:13 AM

n says

If you want to act just for easy money, I figure it's better if you don't, kiddo

May 19, 2019 at 09:29 AM

Matt says

Well I would like to be an actor when I grow up mainly because you make loads of easy money, which is the reason why robots maybe actually should take over this job because actors get paid a lot they are rich and spoiled.

If robots took over this job then that money would go to more useful things like helping the poor become richer.

Simply put no one will be rich and spoiled nor poor and starving. However, this doesn't mean good news for me because would love to make that kind of easy money.

May 09, 2019 at 09:28 PM

This is the shallowest comment I have read in this site.

May 23, 2019 at 04:56 AM

ByA says

Not all actors are rich and spoilt. Yeah, its easy money, but remember they worked for that opportunity of a job, sometimes they work most of their lives to become an actor. AI/robots could never take the job of an actor, we need sentient being to give us some real laughs, real tears, real- anything!

Jun 14, 2019 at 05:38 AM

me man says

Wow i hate you

Feb 03, 2020 at 01:37 AM

00001 says

90% of actors are out of job, and yes, Leonardo DiCaprio makes 20 millions out of one single movie, but most actors struggle to pay the bills. To be honest, if you want to be an actor just because you want to be rich, look into something else, because if you don’t have passion and talent you won’t get far, (and in my opinion there can’t be one without the other)

Jun 12, 2020 at 12:13 AM

Just_A_Person (Small chance) says

There could be a small chance but the fact is the robots won't be able to show the right amount of emotion and chemistry human actors can. Actors make people fall in love with there facial expressions and how they pour there hearts out. Robots won't be able to do that no matter how much programming they have.

Apr 30, 2019 at 03:50 PM

Jako (No chance) says

no way in hell

Apr 29, 2019 at 11:14 PM

Jay (Small chance) says

Even in a worst case scenario where cgi takes over, human actors will likely not be replaced

Apr 27, 2019 at 11:41 AM

ScarletRose (Small chance) says

robots are nowhere near being human enough for our brains to recognize it

Apr 23, 2019 at 06:43 AM

Rb (Small chance) says

I think it’s going to be a while before Robots will be able to act like humans fully

Apr 22, 2019 at 11:18 AM

Renan Tavares (No chance) says

robos can't emote and emotion is the best way to make comedy

Apr 20, 2019 at 04:11 AM

Ana (Likely) says

Robots can act better than humans, if programmed to.

Apr 11, 2019 at 09:18 PM

No (Likely) says

I think that actors will not be replaced by robots as much as by animations and artists.

Apr 08, 2019 at 01:19 AM

Carlos says

CGI actors are becoming more and more realistic.

Apr 02, 2019 at 10:38 PM