Stan

Artificial intelligence and its invasiveness in our everyday lives might be endlessly discussed among academics, government officials and social media provocateurs, but Los Angeles Comic Con has injected a dose of gamma radiation and showmanship into that debate.

Stan Lee has entered the chat.

L.A. Comic Con is introducing its Stan Lee Experience, a 1,500-square-foot booth in Aisle 200 that features an AI-powered holographic image of the late comic book legend that interacts with attendees. Curious fans can ask questions of “Stan Lee” and probe dozens of years’ worth of comic book and comic book-related data that’s been fed into the AI, which has been drawn from footage, conversations and even Stan Lee’s Soapbox — where Lee would expand on happenings of the day or riff on comic book goings-on in the back pages of Marvel comics from 1967 through 1980.

Chris DeMoulin, chief executive and general manager of L.A. Comic Con parent Comikaze Entertainment Inc., says the Stan Lee AI project took months of planning and years of being connected to the parties involved.

“For me, personally, one of the most thrilling things of my entire life was getting to work with Stan Lee when this was Stan Lee’s Comic Con and Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo before that. What was such a joy was watching him interact with fans. Old fans and then people that were bringing their 8-year-old kid who had just read their first Spider-Man comic book,” said DeMoulin, who has collected comics from an early age.

“This avatar, to us, is an entry point into the world of storytelling that he created. We wanted to create something which can be part of maintaining and expanding on that legacy so that Stan’s role in creating a lot of this is acknowledged.”

The hologram, at least the one on the show floor, is not really a hologram. With a box built by Proto Inc., the company that also launched an interactive mirror from “The Conjuring,” and Hyperreal, a company whose chief executive Remington Scott helped bring Gollum and Smeagol to life for Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” movies and creates realistic avatars, it is an interactive Stan Lee image that processes questions and formulates responses.

“Hologram is a technology that’s different than this. This is more of an avatar presence, or a telepresence, if you will. Unlike ChatGPT, this is not a web crawler. This is a large language model which has got guardrails on it,” says George Johnson, a member of the Hyperreal technical team.

“It’s specifically Stan’s words. Red carpet interviews, everything he wrote, like Stan’s Soapbox, but with guardrails. Meaning, if you ask him sports questions or politics questions, he’s not going to answer those. But the Stan Lee Universe is feeding us more and more stuff that we can add to the model.”

David Nussbaum, Proto Inc. founder and chairman, knows that Stan Lee is only the first step for this technology.

“Any Proto device can have any piece of content in it, and we also beam people in live. So if you’re interviewing someone in Japan, you could beam there and appear like you are physically among them,” Nussbaum said. “These are great for classrooms, museums, labs, retail.”

Proto technology is also HIPAA-compliant, he said, meaning doctors and patients can use it to have “in-person” consultations without being in a room together.

As it learns, it can — as AI does — go a bit off script. While folks behind the scenes said they didn’t want Stan Lee to be used as an advertising gimmick, its makers had asked it so many questions about Coca-Cola, it had changed its answer from a generic “I don’t deal with that kind of thing” to a thoughtful answer where, at the end, Lee says, “Who wouldn’t want to be in business with the company that been quenching thirsts for a hundred years?”

That was Stan — ever the showman.

The Stan Lee Experience costs $15 plus service fees with tickets available for purchase via the L.A. Comic Con website. The pop culture gathering runs through Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Fancy footwork won him Wimbledon.

Simple footwear won him everything since.

“The shoe has had a life of its own,” said Stan Smith, 78, whose eponymous Adidas kicks, with their timeless lines and leather uppers, are the king of all tennis sneakers with more than 100 million sold. “People from all walks of life have embraced them.”

Not surprisingly, Smith has a head for business to match his feet for tennis.

With that in mind, he and longtime business partner Gary Niebur wrote the just-released “Winning Trust: How to Create Moments that Matter,” aimed at helping businesses develop stronger relationships with their clients, with tips that readers can apply to their personal relationships and to sports.

“The book is about developing relationships that can elevate the element of trust, which is a depreciating asset in today’s world,” Smith said this week in a call from the French Open.

Stan Smith and Gary Niebur’s book, “Winning Trust,” was released earlier this year.

(Courtesy of Stan Smith)

When it comes to building and maintaining high-stakes relationships, Smith and Niebur have distilled their process into five key elements they call SERVE, a recurring theme throughout the book. That’s an acronym for Strategize, Engage, Recreate, Volley and Elevate.

For instance, recreate — as in recreation — means to build bonds through fun shared experiences, and volley means to trade ideas back and forth to find solutions.

“When people realize that you care more about the relationship than the transaction,” Niebur said, “trust follows.”

A onetime standout at Pasadena High and USC, Smith was a close friend of the late Arthur Ashe, the UCLA legend whose name graces the main stadium court at Flushing Meadows, N.Y., home of the U.S. Open.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ashe’s victory at Wimbledon, when he beat the heavily favored Jimmy Connors in the 1975 final. Ashe remains the only Black man to win the singles title at that storied tournament.

“Arthur was a good friend,” Smith said. “He made a huge impact, and much more of an impact in the last few years of his life when he was fighting AIDS and the heart fund, and obviously for equal rights.”

Arthur Ashe celebrates after winning the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1975.

(Associated Press)

Ashe, who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion he received during heart-bypass surgery, died in 1993. Although he was four years older than Smith, the two developed a close friendship when they traveled the globe as Davis Cup teammates and rising professionals.

Smith has vivid memories of traveling with him, Ashe in his “Citizen of the World” T-shirt with his nose forever buried in a newspaper or magazine. Smith was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. at the time, two spots ahead of his pal, yet the wildly popular Ashe always got top billing.

“When we went to Africa, I was the other guy who played against him in all these exhibitions,” Smith told The Times in 2018. “They would introduce him as Arthur Ashe, No. 1 player in the U.S., No. 1 in the world, one of the greatest players to ever play the game … and Stan Smith, his opponent.”

Smith laughs about that now, but it used to chafe him. Finally, he raised the issue with his buddy.

Recalled Smith in that 2018 interview: “Arthur came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry about that. If we do a tour of Alabama, I’ll carry your rackets for you.’ He was in tune with everything.

“Arthur was a quiet leader walking a tightrope between a traditionally white sport and the black community.”

Smith will be at Wimbledon next month, where his UCLA friend will be honored.

As for his shoes, they’re everywhere, and have been since the 1970s. Adidas originally developed the shoe for French player Robert Haillet in the mid-1960s, and the sneakers were known as the “Haillet.”

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Tennis great Stan Smith talks about some of the ideas he hopes his new book will convey to readers.

In 1972, the company switched to Smith, naming the shoes in his honor and printing a tiny picture of his mustachioed face on them. There were subtle changes to the Haillet, including a notch in the tongue for laces to pass through and a heel better shaped to protect the Achilles tendon.

They sold like crazy. In 1988, Stan Smiths made the “Guinness Book of World Records” for the most pairs sold at 22 million. Yet that was only the beginning as sales surged with the release of the Stan Smith II and retro Stan Smith 80s. The most common ones were solid white with touch of green on the back.

“Hugh Grant turned around last year in the [Wimbledon] royal box and said, `First girl I ever kissed, I was wearing your shoes,’” Smith told The Times in 2022. “Another guy said he met this girl when he was wearing my shoes. It was so meaningful that they both wore the shoes for their wedding seven years later.

“It started off as a tennis shoe. Now it’s a fashion shoe.”

Tennis great Stan Smith with his namesake Adidas shoe.

(Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times)

Smith’s personal collection has climbed to more than 100 size 13s in all sorts of colors, including his favorite pair in cardinal and black, an homage to his USC roots.

In 2022, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Smith’s Wimbledon singles title, Adidas gave all of its sponsored players a pair of shoes with SW19 on the tongue — Wimbledon’s postcode — with the date of that match against Ilie Nastase inside the right shoe and the score of the match inside the left.

At Wimbledon this year, the spotlight swings to the other side of Los Angeles, to an unforgettable Bruin, a sports hero who impacted so many lives.

For Smith, his friendship with Ashe was an early example in his career of a relationship forged with trust.

The book, incidentally, is affixed with a unique and fitting page marker.

A shoelace.

Fearnley was ranked outside of the world’s top 500 just 12 months ago but the 23-year-old has risen rapidly up the rankings to a career-high of 55.

He will face either Christopher O’Connell of Australia or French 22nd seed Ugo Humbert in the second round.

After clinching the opening set via a tie-break, Fearnley broke early in the second and raced out to a 4-1 lead before serving the set out to love.

Wawrinka, who knocked Andy Murray out in the first round last year, dropped serve immediately in the third set but fought back to move level at 2-2 – much to the delight of the crowd on court 14.

However, their joy was short-lived as Fearnley quickly restored his lead and won four straight games to wrap up victory.

Fearnley has now won on his main draw debut at each of the three Grand Slams he has featured at so far – Wimbledon, the Australian Open and Roland Garros.