Every story needs a villain. For decades, artificial intelligence has been portrayed as a mysterious, powerful adversary in Hollywood. Hal (2001: A Space Odyssey)Ava (previous machine) and Ultron (Avengers) are all part of a larger narrative that paints a picture of the threat AI technology poses to humanity.
With the advent of generative AI, that concern has come off the screen at the negotiating table between a number of creative alliances and producers, studios and streamers represented by the Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance. As the industry tries to define the role of AI, it has become a major sticking point. Last week, SAG-AFTRA joined the WGA in staging its first “double strike” in more than 60 years, with hundreds of thousands of Hollywood creatives now on the picket line.
AI is only one point of contention in the discussion, but in the eyes of the groups, it has the potential to create an extinction level phenomenon in their craft. With both guilds in trouble, Hollywood’s production pipeline hangs in the balance.
See also: Entertainment Pros Worry About Gen AI
Advances in AI’s generative capabilities have sparked a Cambrian-style explosion of AI applications across industries, but generative AI is of particular importance to Hollywood. Generative AI has shaken up the way we look at content creation, fueling tensions over AI-powered production with the potential to cut human creativity from the film industry. As the world collectively assesses this technological paradigm shift, preserving human creativity and the art of filmmaking is of great importance.
Enhanced Intelligence: From Existing Threats to Essential Tools
We believe that the next paradigm of technological evolution will be defined by “Augmented Intelligence”. Lifting this curtain shows that the narrative around AI in Hollywood needs to shift away from seeing AI as a threat and instead towards new tools that empower every filmmaker around the world.
Also see: Will AI replace or supplement Hollywood’s workforce?
Despite recent concerns and negative media, we believe AI will propel the film industry forward by giving aspiring filmmakers access to previously unavailable tools, thereby unlocking human creativity to previously unimaginable levels. As we delve deeper into the capabilities of AI tools and their underlying models, it becomes clearer that AI can be a positive, democratizing force in Hollywood.
While the focus areas of the strike — such as script generation and more robust video production — are looming, the first wave of AI adoption in Hollywood will be felt most strongly in video editing and post-production, where AI tools will step in to aid human productivity.
Today, filmmakers can use AI solutions in video editing to significantly reduce production times and reduce the budget needed to fulfill their creative vision. Films that previously required large budgets can now use new technologies supported by large base models to expand their creativity into many aspects of their production, from storyboards to visual effects and CGI in post-production editing.
See also: How Gen AI brings efficiency to production
The art of filmmaking remains intact, but now, with augmented reality tools, we can democratize high-end production capabilities for thousands of filmmakers. Empowering them to execute their creative visions without limits promises to bring a new level of storytelling that will capture the hearts and minds of people around the world.
So what do these skills look like in practice? In the year Founded in 2018, Runway ML offers artists, filmmakers, and creatives a suite of AI tools powered by models trained on vast amounts of video data. VFX artists have been using Runway to complete work that previously took days and required a lot of expensive professional software and equipment to do by hand.
For example, with Runway’s in painting tool, filmmakers can use AI to seamlessly remove objects or backgrounds during the video editing process. (Remember the evil Starbucks coffee cup that somehow got him into Winterfell Game of Thrones?) The company’s suite of video editing AI tools enable motion tracking and even green screen.
Source: Runway ML
Editing video footage is a critical aspect of the post-production workflow for filmmakers. Runway’s Gen-1 is a video-to-video offering, a form of generative AI that uses words and images to generate new videos based on existing ones. Gen-1 represents the cheapest and most efficient way to create special visual effects, enhance footage or create new scenes based on recycled footage.
Finally, text-to-video AI represents a significant technological leap in content generation. Runway’s Gen-2 is considered one of the most advanced text-to-video AI models available. The technology is still in its infancy, but current iterations allow users to easily create four-second videos from text prompts. Although the current technological capabilities do not have longer video output, the Twitter user @TomLikesRobots They created this trailer by stitching together clips.
Another company making waves in this space needs no introduction: Adobe has been an industry leader in design for decades. Popular products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects have long been staples in creative industries and are a critical engine for their workflows.
In March, Adobe launched Firefly’s built-in Gen AI model that lives in Adobe products to enable all kinds of new functions, including post-effects. In the year Developed in 1993, the program ushered in a new era of creativity for filmmakers.
Since then, it has been used consistently in post-production for movies, TV, and video games. Powered by Firefly, After Effects is poised to unleash a new wave of creativity as it delivers a suite of resources previously only available to big-budget studios.
Now with After Effects, filmmakers can use AI-powered techniques to automate time-consuming manual tasks like motion tracking and visual effects. Adobe Firefly’s promise is to dramatically accelerate pre-production, production and post-production workflows to transform scenes and meet a filmmaker’s creative needs in natural language. A simple request like “make this scene warm and inviting” can kill the time between imagination and the final product.
Here are some snapshots of AI-powered technologies that are quickly becoming mission-critical in the filmmaker’s toolkit.
While digital likenesses of actors and the role of AI in screenwriting occupy most of the oxygen in Hollywood, little-heard advances in video editing and production suggest that the first wave of AI may be emerging elsewhere.
Through the added lens of intelligence, we see that AI doesn’t always have to be taken as a villain. The innovation that is the backbone of this industry often allows for unprecedented levels of efficiency and has a positive impact on advancing the art of filmmaking.
Sunny Dhillon Investor in Kyber Knight Capital, a $120M Silicon Valley and Los Angeles-based venture capital fund. Cyber Knight’s They were eating. Contributed to this article.
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