TFT1957 Interviews Will Kreth, CEO of HAND at IBC2024.
– What new products and solutions is your company showcasing at IBC2024?
HAND is a digital talent ID registration agency and business intelligence platform. I’m based in New York City, and most of my team is on the West Coast, but we have affiliates and advisors all over the world. HAND is a registry. What does that mean? We identify objects via the supply chain. These three objects are legal entities of people, their connected digital replicas, and fictional characters.
Digital replicas are potentially a great asset in fighting deepfakes because of consent-based licenses. A replica is the opposite of a deep fake because it’s created with the actor’s or talent’s consent. The third object we register is fictional characters. For instance, characters like Spider-Man or Batman have been portrayed by different actors over the years.
We call this identity intelligence. It is a form of artificial intelligence designed to create an ID namespace for notable individuals, based on their work, citations, photography, and other measurable attributes. This identity intelligence brings all of that information into a database at an ISO-standard level. We are an ISO standard tele-identification registry.
What does that mean? The industry has, for many years, relied on proprietary solutions for talent databases. These databases have been bought, sold, and often kept private. Our standards-based solution focuses on interoperability, resolvability, and free public identifiers for use in media supply chains and workflows. That’s a big shift because many companies operate on proprietary models, requiring commercial agreements to use their databases. Our model provides free access to certain aspects while maintaining a paid option behind a paywall for public identifiers and additional information.
One of our core values is clarity and differentiation. For example, there are multiple individuals named Will Smith in Hollywood—there are three. Which Will Smith are we referring to? Our database provides clarity by differentiating between Will Smith the actor, Will Smith the writer/producer, and Will Smith the actor from the UK. This kind of clarity is essential, especially as new objects are introduced into the supply chain.
One of these new objects is the digital replica. A significant development occurred in December when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) concluded their strike with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). They formalized language that allows actors to negotiate the creation and use of their digital replicas—3D scans of their personas—for advertising, film, or other media, independently or with their management. This includes fictional characters as well.
HAND’s brand promise is to provide a permanent, indelible ID for talent, much like an IP address—resolvable and ubiquitous. Over the past two and a half to three years, we’ve established this at the standards level, and now multiple companies are using HAND’s talent ID in their media workflows and media supply chains.
The ability for companies to have a common reference point for identifying individuals, fictional characters, or digital replicas is essential. We did an accelerator project here at IBC with teams from Paramount, ITV in the UK, SMPTE, Wild Capture, ScanTrek, and EasyDRM. All those partners collaborated on an IBC accelerator project around replica provenance automation. Automation is great, but it’s difficult to achieve unless you can identify the objects you’re dealing with. You can’t automate what you can’t identify or scale. HAND provides the identification for talent objects or digital replicas—whether for the talent themselves or the replicas.
In this concept, we scanned an actor at the ScanTrek Studios in Los Angeles—Evan Shafran, a notable character actor who appeared in Barbie. We captured a scan of him, and in our video, we have a scene where he’s fingerprinting Margot Robbie. Evan isn’t an A-lister or a D-lister; he’s a B-lister—a working actor who is making his living. Evan consented to have a digital replica of himself created, and this replica is secured within a framework of content security and authentication that travels through the media supply chain. This ensures Evan is financially compensated for the use of his digital replica, whether it appears in advertisements, films, games, or any other virtual environments.
Evan’s replica is a licensed, consent-based digital asset with a unique ID. It is linked to him through a parent-child relationship, meaning his physical self and his digital self are connected. This identification is published, so anyone can verify whether a replica is consent-based or unauthorized, such as with deepfakes. In contrast, deepfakes lack cryptographic metadata, watermarks, or fingerprints, which clearly indicate they are unauthorized. We’ve seen this with celebrities like Tom Hanks or Taylor Swift. Deepfakes are increasing in number, and we need to ask: if deepfakes are the virus, what’s the vaccine? What are the antibodies that the industry will develop to protect talent before governments step in with legislation? Our identifier is part of that solution.
– What do you think are the main trends of the exhibition this year?
As someone involved in automation, I believe the main trend is how automation helps companies become more efficient, accurate, and cost-effective. Systems automation is here to stay as a goal, but it’s a challenging journey to make all the pieces fit together. We’re also seeing AI and machine learning automate manual processes that couldn’t be automated before. We’re proud to be part of a project that protects new objects in the supply chain—like digital replicas—and ensures the right people get paid for their talent.
You, as a writer, must have noticed the trends across halls and booths. Over the years, we’ve seen trends like high-definition, cloud computing, SMPTE 2110 standards, and automation adoption. This is still the top broadcasting conference, and 5G will remain significant for a long time. While I don’t have a definitive answer for the top trend this year, I believe it’s about companies trying to do more with less—faster, cheaper, and with automation.
– Thanks a lot for an interesting interview!
Full coverage of IBC2024 here
