Generated Weekly: Hollywood resurrects Val Kilmer with AI, raising questions
A new trailer for As Deep as the Grave has resurrected Val Kilmer’s image to put him into a movie he had been slated to appear in before his death. From Variety:
Director Coerte Voorhees said the role was written for Kilmer and tied closely to his background and interests. The filmmakers argue the approach is ethical because it involved the family, followed SAG guidelines, and compensated the estate. The material used to build the performance came from Kilmer’s own past work and recordings, not from a generic model trained on unknown data. 
The project lands at a tense moment in Hollywood. Studios are testing AI tools that can recreate voices, faces, and performances, and actors worry about what that means for their work and their likeness. Contracts now include clauses about digital use. Unions push for limits and consent. If a performance can be built from past footage, the need to hire a living actor can shrink. The filmmakers behind this project push back on that reading. They frame their decision as narrow and specific. Kilmer had already been cast. His health made filming impossible. The film itself was shaped around him, his background, and his connection to the story. In their view, the choice was not between hiring someone else and using AI. It was between removing him entirely or finding a way to keep him in the film. The question, then, is whether this move by the filmmakers honors the dead or dishonors the living. While we can’t really say much if the family signs off on the decision, the precedent still holds: we’re all culturally OK with bringing back the dead at this point and it will only get worse or, if we’re Hollywood’s bankers, better. After all, the dead can’t invoice. Iran Embassy in Tajikistan posts AI video of Jesus punching Trump in the face
Iran’s Embassy in Tajikistan posted an AI-generated video on X depicting Jesus Christ punching President Trump in the face, sending him tumbling into a fiery pit — a direct mockery of an image Trump had shared on Truth Social portraying himself in a Christ-like, healing role. The video is part of a broader Iranian social media campaign, with AI-generated content from the Iranian firm Explosive Media lampooning Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, while the Trump administration has fired back using imagery from Grand Theft Auto and SpongeBob SquarePants. Trump’s original post had already drawn backlash from his own conservative and Christian supporters who called it blasphemous, and the back-and-forth plays out against the backdrop of ongoing U.S.-Iranian tensions and Trump’s public spat with Pope Leo XIV.
Experts sound alarm as new AI-generated videos of Iran war spread across social media
Sky News anchor Jayne Secker called out a video on X that depicted her talking about the Iran war. The problem? She was depicted in the video reading a seemingly real news item when the entire thing was fake. “Hi - this video is fake. I am the newsreader in the image. Have reported to X. Please remove,” she wrote to the poster, a self-described “#RESIST #BLM #EQUALITY☮️ #LGBTQ🌈 #FEMINIST💗.” The poster purports to be part of MeidasTouchNews, a left-wing media organization. Netflix plans to add a vertical video feed, use AI for recommendationsNetflix announced plans to launch a TikTok-style vertical video feed within its apps this month, part of a broader push into AI-driven features. The short video feed is intended to help users discover content like video podcasts alongside its existing shows and movies, and builds on testing the company has been doing since last year. On the AI front, co-CEO Gregory Peters highlighted plans to improve Netflix's recommendation systems using newer model architectures, while co-CEO Ted Sarandos described AI as a tool to give artists better capabilities throughout the content creation process.
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Keep Going: How this comedian survived a career in comedy
“When you're going through hell, keep going." This podcast is about failure and how it breeds success. Every week, we talk to remarkable people who have accomplished great things but have also faced failure along the way. By exploring their experiences, we can learn how to build, succeed, and stay humble. The podcast is hosted by author and former TechCrunch and New York Times journalist John Biggs.
He also hosts The Innovators, a podcast focused on brand new startups and C-Level Executives and Creators.
If you’d like to appear on either show, email john@biggs.cc.
Our theme music is by Policy, AKA Mark Buchwald. (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/policy/)
Keep Going: How this comedian survived a career in comedy
I sat down with comedian DC Pearson and what struck me wasn’t the success. It was the patchwork.
From the outside, it looks clean. Comedy group, Sundance film, books, writing for TV. A straight line. But it isn’t.
“Our life is composed of days,” he told me. “And this is one of them.”
That’s the job. Not the career. The day.
Because most of the time, it’s not the dream. It’s the gap between dreams.
DC spent the last year working in social media advertising. Not because he wanted to pivot. Because the work slowed down. Because strikes happened. Because the industry does what it always does, it dries up and then floods again.
“It was challenging to my identity as a creative person,” he said. “But then it was also cool… and I was grateful for it because it’s a job and it allows you to be alive.”
That’s the truth nobody puts in the highlight reel.
You don’t “make it.” You stitch it together.
You jump from one thing to the next. You write jokes for someone else all day, then try to find enough energy at night to write something for yourself. You take the corporate gig, then try not to let it eat the part of you that wanted this life in the first place.
And most of the time, it almost does.
The only thing that saved him was simple. Another person.
Someone else in the same situation. Same background. Same problem.
“We would kind of be accountability partners… I’d say I’m gonna write this thing this weekend… and then I’d come back and say, I did it.”
Not a system. Not a course. Not a master plan.
Just two people refusing to let the work die.
That theme came up again when we talked about how he started. It wasn’t strategy. It was proximity.
Five people. One group. Each doing a different thing well enough to make something real.
“We had… the ability… to go and make sketches that looked better than a lot of stuff that was out there at the time.”
Not because they were perfect. Because they were there.
This is the part people miss now. Especially with AI sitting there, ready to do everything faster.
You can generate the thing. You can fake the output. You can make something that looks right.
But you lose the reason you started.
“I would rather come up with ten dumb toilet puns… that nobody’s ever going to notice… and be like, I did every single one of those.”
It’s the quiet satisfaction that you made the thing yourself, even if no one sees it.
We talked about AI, and he didn’t panic. He didn’t celebrate it either.
He just called it what it is.
“Plausible.”
It looks right. It feels right. It passes at a glance.
But it doesn’t hold up.
And more importantly, it doesn’t carry the weight of a real life behind it.
“A server farm can’t do that,” he said, talking about the weird, difficult experiences people put into their work.
That’s the bet now.
Not that AI disappears. It won’t.
But that the connection between a person and the thing they made still matters.
Even if it gets harder to make money. Even if the pipeline gets worse. Even if everything gets noisier.
Because the alternative is easy.
Too easy.
And easy work rarely means anything.
At the end, I asked him where this is all going. Where media goes. Where attention goes.
He didn’t pretend to know.
But he said something I keep thinking about.
“There are things fomenting that we don’t even know what they are… it’s probably already happening, and the algorithm is not picking up on it.”
That’s where the next thing is.
Not in the feed. Not in the obvious place.
Somewhere small. Somewhere ignored. Somewhere real.
And if you’re paying attention, you’ll find it.
Or better, you’ll build it.
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If you’ve been reading or listening to Keep Going for free, you’ve already seen the value of having independent work that isn’t shaped by corporate sponsors or the news cycle’s noise. But independence has a cost. If you find something useful here, if these words make you pause or think, I’m asking you to step up. A few dollars each month means I can keep doing this work without compromise. Without your support, this project stays fragile, balanced on the backs of a few.
© 2026 John Biggs
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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