#Tom Hanks Warns of an AI Version of Him Used to Promote Dental Plan: “I Have Nothing to Do With It”

Tom Hanks is warning fans not to trust a video of him circulating about a dental plan.

The Oscar-winning actor took to his Instagram on Sunday to give his fans a heads-up that anything they may see about him online linked to a dental plan was not actually him.

“BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it,” Hanks wrote over a photo of a computer-generated image of him from the clip.

The Asteroid City star previously opened up about the use of AI in the entertainment industry, noting it’s been a long time coming and citing The Polar Express as the first time he did a movie that had a huge amount of his likeness locked into a computer.

“We saw this coming,” he said on The Adam Buxton Podcast in May. “We saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. Now that has only grown a billionfold since then, and we see it everywhere.”

He also discussed how, with the use of AI, a version of him could continue acting, even if something were to happen to him.

“I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and that’s it, but performances can go on and on and on and on,” Hanks said. “Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone. And it’s going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That’s certainly an artistic challenge, but it’s also a legal one.”

The actor’s appearance on the podcast took place shortly after the writers strike began and before the actors strike kicked off. Both the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA took issue with points in their contracts about AI, leading to the dual strikes that took place in Hollywood for the majority of the summer.

While the writers strike officially ended on Wednesday, it took nearly 150 days for studios to agree to protections for writers against AI penning or rewriting original scripts or being used as “source material” to adapt. Per their new deal, writers also cannot be required to use AI, and companies must disclose if they are giving writers any sort of AI-generated material.

The actors strike is still going, with SAG-AFTRA and the studios issuing a statement the day the writers strike ended that they would be returning to the negotiating table on Oct. 2.