ARTIFICIAL intelligence is being used to bring dead actors to life and to replace living ones, the annual conference of the Northern region of the TUC was warned on Saturday.

Dolores Poretta-Brown from creative arts union Equity said AI could be of great benefit to society, including in medicine with the discovery of new treatments for cancer.

“But it is not taking doctors’ jobs away. It is taking our members’ jobs,” she said. 

She said AI could scan people’s bodies and use them instead of real people in crowd scenes on films and reproduce actors’ voices on audio recordings.

“AI has affected my industry and it is insidious,” she said. “AI is all-inclusive. If it has not affected your industry, it will.”

Ms Poretta-Brown said Britain had no laws governing the latest technology and its use.

The conference agreed unanimously to lobby the government to “recognise the threat posed by AI, update the law and get industry leaders onside to protect artists’ intellectual property.”