Stay In LA To Hold Sun Valley Rally In April
The group behind the campaign is now launching their first live event, a rally in Sun Valley.
More from Deadline
Andy Garcia, Jonathan Nolan & Paul Feig Join Stay In LA As Campaign Continues To Build Momentum
Keanu Reeves & Bette Midler Join Stay In LA Campaign As 15,000+ Call For Local Production Boost
Stay In LA: 6,000+ Including LeVar Burton & Alison Brie Sign Petition Calling For More Incentives To Bring Back Production After Wildfires
The event will take place at SirReel Studios at 8500 Lankershim Blvd, Sun Valley, CA between 2pm and 6pm with organizers expecting 'hundreds' of people to attend.
The rally will feature speeches from industry leaders, union representatives, and community members, with a full list expected next week, along with opportunities for attendees to learn how they can support the movement.
'Los Angeles is at a crossroads,' said Pamala Buzick Kim, CA United Board Chairperson and Stay in LA co-founder, 'If we don't act now, we risk losing the very industry that built this city's reputation. This rally is about sending a clear message: We're staying in LA, and we need real solutions to keep our jobs here.'
This comes after the likes of Keanu Reeves and Bette Midler publicly supported the cause.
The campaign was launched by the Buzick Kim as well as Channel Zero writer Alexandra Pechman, Lessons In Chemistry director Sarah Adina Smith, Wes Bailey, Marie Dunaway, Nick Antosca, Julie Plec, Michael Sucsy, and Alex Winter.
The group has proposed uncapping the tax incentive for productions that shoot in LA County for the next three years as part of the overall disaster relief effort as well as calling on the studios and streamers to pledge at least 10% more production in LA over the next three years.
They want to uncap mediums to also bolster short-form productions such as commercials as well as post-production work, want to reduce or eliminate permit fees to lower the cost of production and address insurance restrictions.
Best of Deadline
2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
How To Watch 'Wicked: Part One': Is The Film Streaming Yet?
All The Songs In 'Severance' Season 2: From The Who To Ella Fitzgerald
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
WIRED
9 hours ago
- WIRED
‘Cheapfake' AI Celeb Videos Are Rage-Baiting People on YouTube
Aug 15, 2025 7:00 AM WIRED found over 100 YouTube channels using AI to create lazy fanfiction-style videos. Despite being obviously fake, there's a psychological reason people are falling for them. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and guest, Keanu Reeves. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph: Scott Kowalchyk/Geety Images Mark Wahlberg straightens his tie and beams at the audience as he takes his seat on daytime talk show The View, ahead of his hotly anticipated interview. Immediately, he's unsettled by the host, Joy Behar. Something isn't quite right about her mannerisms. Her eyes seem shifty, suspicious, even predatory. There's a sense, almost, of the uncanny valley—her presence feels oddly inhuman. His instincts are right, of course, and he's soon forced to defend himself against a barrage of cruel insults playing on his deepest vulnerabilities. But Wahlberg stays strong. He retains composure as Behar screams at him to get off the stage. 'I'll leave, but not because you're kicking me off,' he announces. 'I'll leave because I have too much respect for myself to sit here and be abused by someone who's forgotten what decency looks like!' The audience are stunned—none more so than those watching at home on YouTube, who swiftly thumb in their words of reassurance. 'Way to go Mark. We love you,' gushes one commenter. 'The View should be off the TV,' adds another. 'I hope everyone they insult sues them for millions and millions till they can't even pay for production.' It's a scene that has been described as one of the most talked about moments in daytime television history. Except, Mark Wahlberg hasn't been a guest on The View since 2015. The inevitable twist? None of this happened in reality, but rather elapsed over the course of a 25 minute long 'fanfiction' style video, made with the magic of artificial intelligence to potentially fool 460,000 drama-hungry viewers. Hardly surprising given the towering pile of AI slop on the web has reached unpolicable levels—with recent clips so realistic, they're tripping up the most media literate of zoomers. But, perhaps what is surprising about this otherwise unoriginal clash of the titans is that none of this happened in the video, either . Despite its characters' kinetic confrontation, 'Mark Wahlberg Kicked Off The View After Fiery Showdown With Joy Behar' is entirely motionless, save for a grainy filter added over a still image. It entertains its audience simply with an AI voiceover, narrating an LLM written script laden with cliches as theatrical as 'fist-clenching' and 'jaw wobbling.' It's cheap, lazy—the very definition of slop—but somehow, the channel it's hosted on, Talk Show Gold, has managed to round up over 88,000 subscribers, many of whom express complete disbelief when eventually informed by other commenters that what they are watching is 'fake news." 'These videos are what we might call 'cheapfakes,' rather than deepfakes, as they're cobbled together from a motley selection of real images and video clips, with a basic AI voiceover and subtitles,' explains Simon Clark, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bristol, who specialises in AI-generated misinformation. 'At a superficial level, we might be surprised that people would be fooled by something this unsophisticated. But actually there are sound psychological factors at play here,' he adds, explaining that the videos typically focus on rhetorical techniques that encourage audiences to abandon critical thinking skills by calling to emotion. A WIRED investigation found 120 YouTube channels employing similar tactics. With misleading names like 'Starfame,' 'Media Buzz,' and 'Celebrity Scoop,' they camouflage themselves alongside real compilation clips from shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Today with Jenna & Friends to gain credibility. Their channel descriptions give the illusion of melodramatic tabloid outlets—some bury their AI-disclaimers under walls of text emphasizing 'all the best highlights,' and 'the most unforgettable, hilarious, and iconic moments,' while others omit them entirely to add to the flair. YouTube updated its policies on July 15 in a move to crack down on content made with generative AI. The platform's Help Center stipulates that content eligible for monetization must adhere to YouTube's requirements of being sufficiently 'authentic' and 'original'—but there is no outright mention of generative AI alongside it, with the policy simply stating that eligible content must 'be your original creation,' and 'not be mass produced or repetitive.' A separate policy on 'Disclosing use of altered or synthetic content' also states that creators must disclose when content 'makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn't do,' 'alters footage of a real event or place,' or 'generates a realistic-looking scene that didn't actually occur.' WIRED reached out to YouTube for comment on over 100 AI-generated celebrity fanfic channels, as well as clarification on how their new policies would be enforced. 'All content uploaded to YouTube must comply with our Community Guidelines, regardless of how it is generated. If we find that content violates a policy, we remove it,' Zayna Aston, Director of YouTube EMEA Communications said in a statement to WIRED. Aston also reiterated that channels employing deceptive practices are not permitted on the platform, including those using misleading metadata, titles and thumbnails. WIRED can also confirm that 37 of the flagged celebrity talk show and other fanfiction-style channels were removed, chiefly those without AI disclaimers and some with the most egregious channel names, such as 'Celebrity Central' and 'United News.' This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. The storylines in these videos follow a predictable pattern that plays on age-old narrative tropes that justify fanfiction comparisons. A well-loved celebrity—usually an older male actor like Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, or Keanu Reeves—is poised as the hero, defending themselves against the villain, a left-leaning talk show host who steers the professional conversation into ad hominem. It's obvious who the right-leaning, older audience is primed to relate to—who serves as the visual fic's Mary Sue. There's an undeniable political element at play when it comes to who is targeted, with videos focusing exclusively on political figures also constituting their own subgenre. 'They're tweaking my voice or whatever they're doing, tweaking their own voice to make it sound like me, and people are commenting on it like it is me and it ain't me,' Washington recently told WIRED, when asked about AI. 'I don't have an Instagram account. I don't have TikTok. I don't have any of that. So anything you hear from that—it's not even me, and unfortunately, people are just following and that's the world you guys live in.' For Clark, the talk show videos are a clear appeal to incite moral outrage—allowing audiences to more easily engage with, and spread, misinformation. 'It's a great emotion to trigger if you want engagement. If you make someone feel sad or hurt, then they'll likely keep that to themselves. Whereas if you make them feel outraged then they'll likely share the video with like-minded friends and write a long rant in the comments,' he says. It doesn't matter either, he explains, if the events depicted aren't real or are even clearly stated as 'AI-generated' if the characters involved might plausibly act this way (in the mind of their viewers, at least), in some other scenario. YouTube's own ecosystem also inevitably plays a role. With so many viewers consuming content passively while driving, cleaning, even falling asleep, AI-generated content no longer needs to look polished when blending into a stream of passively-absorbed information. Reality Defender, a company specializing in identifying deepfakes, reviewed some of the videos. 'We can share that some of our own family members and friends (particularly on the elderly side) have encountered videos like these and, though they were not completely persuaded, they did check in with us (knowing we are experts) for validity, as they were on the fence,' Ben Colman, cofounder and CEO of Reality Defender, tells WIRED. WIRED also reached out to several channels for comment. Only one creator, owner of a channel with 43,000 subscribers, responded. 'I am just creating fictional story interviews and I clearly mention in the description of every video,' they say, speaking anonymously. 'I chose the fictional interview format because it allows me to combine storytelling, creativity, and a touch of realism in a unique way. These videos feel immersive—like you're watching a real moment unfold—and that emotional realism really draws people in. It's like giving the audience a 'what if?' scenario that feels dramatic, intense, or even surprising, while still being completely fictional.' But when it comes to the likely motive behind the channels, most of which are based outside the US, neither a strict political agenda nor a sudden career pivot to immersive storytelling serves as an adequate explainer. A channel with an email that uses the term 'earningmafia', however, hints at more obvious financial intentions, as does the channels' repetitive nature—with WIRED seeing evidence of duplicated videos, and multiple channels operated by the same creators, including some who had sister channels suspended. This is unsurprising, with more content farms than ever, especially those targeting the vulnerable, currently cementing themselves on YouTube alongside the rise of generative AI. Across the board, creators pick controversial topics like kids TV characters in compromising situations, even P. Diddy's sex trafficking trial, to generate as much engagement—and income—as possible. Sandra Wachter, a professor and senior researcher in data ethics, AI and algorithms at the University of Oxford, explains that this ragebait style content is central to the platform's business model. 'The whole idea is to keep you on the platform for as long as possible, and unfortunately, rainbows and unicorns are not the things that keep people engaged. What keeps people engaged is something that is outrageous or salacious or toxic or ragey,' she says. 'And that type of content is created much cheaper now with AI. It can be done in a couple minutes.' Most channels give their locations as outside the US, yet chosen celebrities seem almost stereotypically American, as if picked off a list of 'The most popular US actors,' by those wishing to attract the most trigger-happy (and therefore lucrative) online denizens. Several channels seen by WIRED also appeared to have shifted focus throughout the years—many once posted educational content and tutorials on cars, agriculture, or fitness, having seemingly abandoned these amidst the AI boom. Perhaps it's an attempt to trick an algorithm that prioritizes creators with longer lifespans, or is simply a sign of users blindly following the latest trend in an attempt to bolster otherwise low income. When told about YouTube's new policies, Wachter says she's hopeful that a move towards demonetization will make a positive impact—but she says we're not 'getting to the base of the problem.' 'This is a system that breeds toxicity because it's based on generating clicks and keeping eyeballs attached to a screen.' If X posts like this are anything to go by—it won't be long before they start to resurface. The modus operandi of channels like these is clear, and seems capable of outsmarting YouTube's authenticity policies. They aim not to trick using sophisticated special effects, but instead employ age-old psychological techniques, combined with the platform's unique habitat, to seem realistic enough as to be believed by those harboring those attitudes. They appeal to those who do not care about their realism—cashing in on views that don't impact them. They intend to ragebait, to instigate debate, to trigger moral outrage. They need not put much effort into their appearance, at all. Arguably, they mark a transition point between the mechanical desire to replicate human content exactly—and the eerily human trait of creating something, just good enough, to coast by. Manisha Krishnan contributed to the reporting of this story.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Bette Midler Revealed Surprising Weight-Loss Secret to Oprah in Resurfaced Interview Clip
Bette Midler Revealed Surprising Weight-Loss Secret to Oprah in Resurfaced Interview Clip originally appeared on Parade. Bette Midler, 79, is as famous for her iconic performances in films like The Rose, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and Hocus Pocus as she is for her legendary, anything-goes talk show appearances. In a recently resurfaced clip from a 1999 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the performer shared her surprising weight-loss secret—and her hilarious response to Winfrey's tour bus the interview, Winfrey casually asked Midler how she maintained her svelte physique. 'I have to go on the road,' Midler confessed, sparking Winfrey to ask about life on the tour bus. That's when Midler hilariously feigned offense at Oprah's assumption that she travels by bus while on tour. Fans of Oprah Winfrey and Bette Midler loved the charming banter between the two Hollywood icons. 'Diva. Divine,' wrote one fan about Midler's interview persona, while another added, 'She is the star.'Some commenters took offense at Midler seemingly throwing shade at comedian Whoopi Goldberg, but most found the exchange lighthearted and not meant to be insulting. Overall, fans saw the resurfaced clip as a charming bit of nostalgia—and a reminder of the unfiltered interviews more common in the '80s and '90s. 'So fun… those were fun decades in entertainment ('80s, '90s, and early '00s). Gone forever, most likely!' wrote one fan, capturing the sentiment of many. What Are Bette Midler's Famous Songs? The 1998 hit 'Wind Beneath My Wings' is arguably Bette Midler's biggest song. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned the singer her third Grammy Award. Who Is Bette Midler's Husband? Bette Midler has been married to her husband, Martin von Haselberg, for 40 years. The two met in 1981 and married in Las Vegas in 1984. The couple shares one child, daughter Sophie von Haselberg, age 38. Will There Be a 'Hocus Pocus 3?' While no firm production details have been confirmed for a potential third installment of the Hocus Pocus franchise, co-star Sarah Jessica Parker shared that 'conversations' were taking place between the cast and producers to bring a third film to life when she recently appeared on Watch What Happens Live. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 Bette Midler Revealed Surprising Weight-Loss Secret to Oprah in Resurfaced Interview Clip first appeared on Parade on Aug 5, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 5, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Keanu Reeves Gets Totally Awesome Little Golden Book Biography
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission. Just a couple of months after seeing him in Ballerina, Keanu Reeves fans have something new: a Little Golden Book biography about the action star. More from Rolling Stone 13 Taylor Swift Books to Buy Before You Can Get Your Hands on 'The Life of a Showgirl' Matthew Perry Memoir Back On Charts Following Jennifer Aniston Interview Sling's New Streaming Packages Offer Short-Term Cable Streaming Passes Starting at $5 The collectible, 'totally awesome' Keanu Reeves: A Little Golden Book Biography gives an overview of The Matrix actor's life and professional work, presented in easy language with pictures, making it enjoyable for fans of all ages. The Little Golden Book biography also highlights Reeves' many charitable endeavors and famous virtuosity as one of the nicest guys in Hollywood. 'This Little Golden Book Biography is perfect for Keanu Reeves fans of all ages and families looking for stories about working hard and being kind,' reads the book's description. Keanu Reeves: A Little Golden Book Biography will be released on Sept. 2, but it's available for preorder now on Amazon in hardcover or Kindle format. PRE-ORDER 'Keanu Reeves: A Little Golden Book Biography' $5.99 pre-order On Amazon The short biography is one in a series from Little Golden Book, all meant to 'share the life stories of extraordinary artists, world leaders, performers, and athletes.' Other books in the biography series include profiles on Dwayne Johnson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michelle Yeoh, Steven Spielberg, and Michael J. Fox. 'Keanu continued to stretch himself as an actor, starring in comedies, dramas, and action-filled thrillers,' reads the book. 'But fame was never his goal.' Besides his feature in the Little Golden Book collection, Reeves has been busy reviving his role as John Wick in the recently released spin-off Ballerina alongside lead Ana de Armas. Reeves has also been prepping for an upcoming Broadway production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which sees him reunited with fellow Bill and Ted star Alex Winter. The show, directed by Jamie Lloyd, opens this fall. Be sure to pick up Keanu Reeves: A Little Golden Book Biography on Amazon — either for yourself or a Keanu fan in your life. Best of Rolling Stone The Best Audiophile Turntables for Your Home Audio System
