Reconstruction of Actors' Performative Subjectivity and Aesthetic Boundaries Under the Influence of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence, digital humans, motion capture, and virtual production are reorganizing the production chain of screen acting, in which the actor’s body, performance data, algorithmic generation, and post-production increasingly participate together in character construction. The central issue is therefore not whether AI can reproduce a face, a voice, or a movement, but how actors can remain subjects of character meaning when visible performance no longer has to be executed frame by frame by a human body. Drawing on studies of AI-art subjectivity, digital cinematic bodies, and performance theory, this article defines actor subjectivity as the actor’s capacity to organize character meaning through embodied experience, action decision, relational response, and aesthetic judgment while retaining identifiable creative agency and artistic responsibility within technologically mediated collaboration. It proposes a five-dimensional framework-embodied experience, action decision, relational response, aesthetic judgment, and technological collaboration-and argues that AI does not simply erase actor subjectivity; rather, it repositions the actor from a subject of visible presentation to a subject of meaning generation within distributed production. On this basis, the article identifies three analytical boundaries for acting aesthetics: visual generation versus character generation, motion simulation versus relational response, and technical verisimilitude versus performance truth. It concludes by discussing the implications of this reconstruction for acting education, screen production, and the ethics of digital bodies.