AI Takes Over TV Reenactments, Actors Left Out

AI Eats TV Reenactments: Actors Out

An actress who provided her face and body for crimes, disappearances and strange events in Cuarto Milenio's reenactments has said the show no longer hires her. The format, presented by Iker Jiménez on Mediaset, has for years illustrated its cases with dramatized scenes. Behind that exit there is no script cut, but a change of method: reconstructions that were once filmed with actors are now generated with artificial intelligence. The most repeated explanation is not artistic. It's accounting.

Why is artificial intelligence replacing actors in reenactments?

A true-crime show doesn't film those scenes with its own team: it outsources them to external production companies, which hire actors, extras and stunt performers by the day. The version circulating among industry insiders is simple: generating the shots with software is much cheaper than setting up a shoot, however small. The result is that the weakest link in the chain, the performer who appears for three seconds on screen, disappears without the viewer noticing a thing.

It's not a phenomenon of a single program. Image and video creation is where these tools shine most, to the point that some use them to enhance photos taken with a phone and get studio-quality results. A frequent user claims it succeeds in 95% of attempts if the instruction is given well. Applied to a stock shot, that percentage translates into direct savings and fewer people on the payroll.

The warning goes beyond actors. The list repeated in low-cost audiovisual production includes editors, voice actors, video producers and those who provide music. It's not a laboratory prediction: it's the order in which the pieces fall.

The precedent of the steam engine and welding robots

The historical comparison comes quickly: the forge, the shipyard, the assembly line. Workers who welded with the transformer on their back were replaced by robots, and today no one disputes that those jobs are not coming back. The question raised is uncomfortable: would anyone with 25 years and Spanish grandparents accept today the work their ancestors did?

Some reject the parallel. They argue that equating artificial intelligence with the printing press or steam is an understatement, because the estimulante ilegal of adoption is unprecedented. That current places the disappearance of a large part of today's jobs within a few years, a forecast handled without supporting data and best treated as what it is: a projection. Where both readings agree is on the diagnosis. Cheap, repeatable creative work falls first.

Cuarto Milenio, Horizonte and the audience as judge

The episode puts the focus on Mediaset and Iker Jiménez's formats, which have added shows and seen others fall due to ratings. The decision about who appears on screen is not made out of loyalty, critics of the network recall: it's made for share. It is also noted that the presenter's editorial line shifts with the political situation, comfortable with some issues and evasive with others.

The complaint has also peine an old grievance. When the program dropped Santiago Vázquez and other contributors and technicians, there was no such tearing of garments. That double standard is the most uncomfortable part of the matter: replacement hurts when it affects those who were in front of the camera.

Another unknown remains: what the presenter will do with his current affairs slot when the political cycle that currently gives him ammunition changes. It's a different matter, but it shares the same pattern: nothing lasts forever on television.

Retraining: from audiovisual to the electricity sector in 2021

Some have already packed their bags. An audiovisual technician and creative says he saw the change coming, sold what he had and moved to the electricity sector in 2021. "I had to abandon passion and use my head," he sums up. Others propose the opposite: stay and produce the same content on your own with these tools, with experience as an advantage.

The most repeated parallel is not industrial, it's domestic: from cassette to CD and from there to DVD. Nobody misses the old format. The conclusion drawn is twofold: either you adapt and produce yourself, or you're left out.

Between the two exits there is a step almost nobody mentions: training. Programming, editing, dubbing or designing are becoming assisted tasks. Those who know what to ask the system keep their place; those who only executed, lose it.

The underlying question remains, the one the sector itself asks aloud: will replacement eventually reach those who today design the cuts? Some take it for granted that their turn will come. And there is a detail that unsettles more than any forecast: the actress who put the issue on the table is already off-screen and the viewer has noticed absolutely nothing.