The cost of moviemaking is growing while audiences in theaters continue to shrink. Studio execs love the idea of using AI to reduce costs while creators (directors, producers) are excited about the visuals they can create using new AI tools. There are concerns about IP but in the end, it’s no longer a question of “if” but “how” AI can be used in effective and ethical ways. But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t frustrated and the path uncertain.
Everyone Is Already Using AI (And Hiding It)
Some fun quips:
As [Bryn] Mooser saw it, Asteria fit into a lineage of creatives who had ushered in new eras of filmmaking. He reminded me that Walt Disney was a technologist. So was George Lucas. “The story of Hollywood is the story of technology,” he said.
And
[Natasha Lyonne] had begun to do her own research. She read the Oxford scholar Brian Christian and the philosopher Nick Bostrom, who argues that AI presents a significant threat to humanity’s long-term existence. Still, she had come to feel it was too late to “put the genie back in that bottle.” “It’s better to get your hands dirty than pretend it’s not happening,” she said.
Also:
- “It’s happening whether we like it or not.”
- “Everyone’s using it,” the agent said. “They just don’t talk about it.”
Many of these studios are developing sophisticated methods of working with generative video — the kind that, when given a prompt, can spit out an image or a video and has the potential to fundamentally change how movies are made.
Lastly:
“If you’re a storyboard artist,” one studio executive said, “you’re out of business. That’s over. Because the director can say to AI, ‘Here’s the script. Storyboard this for me. Now change the angle and give me another storyboard.’ Within an hour, you’ve got 12 different versions of it.” He added, however, if that same artist became proficient at prompting generative-AI tools, “he’s got a big job.”
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