AI in film and TV

[Guy Rowland]

This is a really interesting article from Cannes, with filmmakers hugely divided:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... nes-cannes

I ended up agreeing with almost every point made - by both sides.

AI is hugely complex. Those two letters cover everything from denoising a microphone to making an entirely automated film. So my starting point is that to say AI is simply good or bad as a bald statement can be pretty swiftly discarded.

Seth Rogen said "“If your instinct is to use AI, you shouldn’t be a writer”. As a writer, I completely agree. The thought of AI writing a single word for me is horrifying. But Stephen Soderbergh said "It’s essentially in the way that you would use VFX or CGI or any sort of non-photographic technology”. People said CG was soulless for years. And, as a tool, AI can take things further. There are practical applications - there are circumstances when filming, say, an animal or a baby would be essentially impossible conventionally, and AI can give new storytelling possibilities. I'm working on a film right now which is partly set in the past, and we're discussing AI being used to augment real footage in a real place with real people by making a background period-accurate. That sounds bloody brilliant to me.

It's 100% true that AI can enable stories to be told on a realistic budget that simply wouldn't be possible any other way. It's equally true that it's easy to generate soulless crap by the bucket load. Peter Jackson said "“AI used in the right way, it’s just a tool like any other tool. But like anything, it’s going to come down to the imagination and originality of the person feeding the instructions into the AI program. Is it actually interesting? Is it funny? Is it imaginative?”

There remain legitimate concerns of copyright theft and power usage, but broadly I feel that's where I am with AI in filmmaking. People will do great stuff with it, and I'd hate good, imaginative work at the behest of creative minds to be dismissed as "AI slop" just because it uses AI as a tool. But in no way does that mean I want to watch a movie on Netflix whose story and script were generated by AI and then turned into a video with AI characters and AI locations.

[weseb]

Aronofsky ... said it could create countless jobs.

Ah yes... AI, the famous creator of jobs. Brilliant foresight, Darren.

It's been baffling to see so many people working in creative industries leap to the defense of generative AI (well, many of these people are wealthy, privileged, and will suffer no immediate consequences of widespread adoption, so it's not that surprising).

The core issue remains unchanged. The technology's entire foundation is built on the blood, sweat, and tears of other people's work, without any permission or compensation. Nearly all of humanity's creative output has been scraped for training data, and these (private!) AI companies have then turned around and close-sourced their models, claiming them as their own intellectual property, with little scrutiny.

Of course, there are more pragmatic and significantly more pressing reasons to not support the use of generative AI, but it seems like this simple foundational point should be all that's needed for any self-respecting artist or creative person.

Yes, it can do some cool stuff, and I suppose that all of this really just speaks to the 'age of convenience' that we seem to live in-- if I like something and it makes my life easier, I'll use it. Everything (and everyone) else be damned.

(I should note that I'm exclusively referring to the big, closed-source, mainstream models, which at this point are the only ones being used with any real effectiveness. I'm aware of some smaller attempts at 'ethically trained' models using only content with prior consent and/or compensation, but those are still a very fringe part of the broader generative AI movement).

[Lawrence]

“But in no way does that mean I want to watch a movie on Netflix whose story and script were generated by AI and then turned into a video with AI characters and AI locations.”

Just for argument’s sake-what if it turns out really really well? Critically acclaimed and all?

[Guy Rowland]

“But in no way does that mean I want to watch a movie on Netflix whose story and script were generated by AI and then turned into a video with AI characters and AI locations.”

Just for argument’s sake-what if it turns out really really well? Critically acclaimed and all?

Good question. (And in the answer, I'll refer to Waseb's post too).

if we're not at this point already, we soon will be that someone can type a prompt that says "make me a movie about a mouse that rises to be mob boss who is a vampire". and soon after a finished movie pops out. It's a helluva party trick. It will be surprisingly good for a computer.

Now, when I say "someone" I really mean "anyone". AI - collectively - could consume all the Earth's resources making nothing but movies with no human input. Because that single human seed here can also be replaced. In fact, it is possible to just say "based on what is most popular with the broadest audience, make me a PG-13 rated action movie". And do it forever.

We will be drowning in artificial movies in limitless numbers. Watching any will be like listening to someone else tell you about the dream that had overnight.

Now here's the point. Who will appraise if any of these are good? Will an infinite number of monkeys eventually produce Shakespeare? The question no-one has thought of with that thought experiment is - even if they do, how do we find it in the quadzillions of movies that are not Shakesepeare? In fact, none of the artificial movies will be as bad as random monkeys themselves suggest. They all have a decent three act structure. Many of them will be amusing - intentionally or otherwise. Most of them will be better than bad human movies. So finding the jewels will be exhausting to the point of life-sapping.

It is - clearly - the most extraordinary foolishness. And the sheer economics of it dictate that I strongly doubt there will ever be a mass market for any of these films. They will all be as interesting as the dream Bob from New Jersey had last night, that faded from his memory somewhere between the alarm clock going off and filling the kettle.

So as a future for mass entertainment, colour me sceptical.

Now imagine a totally different scenario. In fact you don't have to imagine this - it's already here. Making an A list blockbuster costs $400m. It needs 3x that to make its money back. Good news - $400m pays for an awful lot of employment. Bad news - the economics become unsustainable. The kinds of movies that used to be made in the 90s, on this model, are just not possible any more.

Now let's say that AI tools can slash that bill by 3/4. A top, A list blockbuster for $100m. The bad news - less humans are employed in that movie. Not none, but a lot less. HOWEVER, more movies can be made with the same pot of money under the same model. 3 other blockbusters or maybe a dozen mid-budget films. All of them are human created, human stories, human actors. Invisibly, AI has assisted as a tool. And although the numbers may increase, it's not at industrial scale. People can still collectively tease out the good ones. And - overall - it is entirely possible that the same or more people can be employed.

With regard to the ethics of copyright here, I have huge sympathy with your arguments Waseb. I agree with much of it. But does denoising a microphone become unethical because it was harvested on stolen data? Probably not, maybe it was fed ethical data. But I ask the question because there are huge blurry areas where AI is useful to the creative industries where some ethics has been employed. Adobe I believe only uses its own archive to train Photoshop, for example.

I'm grossly over-simplifying, but that's kinda the point. I don't see how we can collectively, as humanity, say "all AI is theft, it's all evil, let's all stop using it right now". Never going to work or happen. Get the lawyers on it - absolutely. But the genie will never fully go back in the bottle on this as a broad technology. And the question will remain - are we going to collectively figure out how to use this technology in creative industries as tools rather than masters?

[Lawrence]

Guy, in your optimistic scenario regarding more content being created and therefore more employment, my guess would be that each new project will require fewer and fewer humans to create it, and also the pay scale will drop and drop because I don’t believe the unions can possibly keep their fingers in the number of dikes that will be springing leaks left and right. As someone who has recently lost work due to ai, my view might be a tad jaundiced!

Personally, if I could make a choice between ditching ai and ditching the horrible royalty rates being paid out for streaming, I’d ditch the latter. What’s the fate of humanity compared to my financial compensation, after all!

I’m not “anti-ai”, that’s just silly. It’s here and it’s not going away. It’s useful in some ways.
I hope for some regulation and control but even that seems like a forlorn hope.

Already, I think it’s sort of amazing for health assistance, supplementing MD visits. And of course, there’s that background noise reduction….

[Guy Rowland]

Guy, in your optimistic scenario regarding more content being created and therefore more employment, my guess would be that each new project will require fewer and fewer humans to create it, and also the pay scale will drop and drop because I don’t believe the unions can possibly keep their fingers in the number of dikes that will be springing leaks left and right.

Yes, of course each project will require less humans. That's mostly where the budget cuts come from. But in simple terms

1 movie @ $400m = 1,000 employees per movie = 1,000 jobs
4 movies @ $100m = 250 employees per movie = 1,000 jobs.

No idea how that would be in reality, but you get the principle.

As to unions - I wonder how much they will matter, at least in some areas. Rotoscoping has essentially vanished as a job. AI can do it faster and better. That ship has sailed.

Really the area this is going to affect most is post / visual effects. Costume, make up, production design, camera ops, lighting, writers and directors - unions will hold the line there I think pretty much. And hey, craft services will still be in demand.

That said, I think with current tech crew sizes can often be reduced - the little things they shot Adolescence on are phenomenal and cost £5k. Less set will need to be built - this is already with us with digital set extensions. You won't necessarily need to always wait for perfect light and sound conditions when filming, speeding things up.

Current crew sizes are completely unsustainable, and if you go back far enough you'll see they are a very modern phenomenon. I just looked, and the total crew size of Jaws (1974) was approx 250-300 people. Big stuff. But for Jurassic World Rebirth, it was approx 5,000, not my 1,000 plucked out of the air above. That's nuts - and passes for normal these days.

In the most optimistic scenario, I think the general revolt among the public at AI slop will focus minds into what really counts as human art. While a CGI whizz doing wire removal is highly skilled, with the best will in the world it is not the kind of job that benefits from being done by a human. Any job like that is vulnerable. That said, I know someone doing regular AI work on commercial projects, and it's always a huge fight with multiple tools to get useable results. That's still a skilled job.

[weseb]

With regard to the ethics of copyright here, I have huge sympathy with your arguments Waseb. I agree with much of it. But does denoising a microphone become unethical because it was harvested on stolen data? Probably not, maybe it was fed ethical data. But I ask the question because there are huge blurry areas where AI is useful to the creative industries where some ethics has been employed. Adobe I believe only uses its own archive to train Photoshop, for example.

I'm grossly over-simplifying, but that's kinda the point. I don't see how we can collectively, as humanity, say "all AI is theft, it's all evil, let's all stop using it right now". Never going to work or happen. Get the lawyers on it - absolutely. But the genie will never fully go back in the bottle on this as a broad technology. And the question will remain - are we going to collectively figure out how to use this technology in creative industries as tools rather than masters?

I'm certainly not in the 'all AI is bad' camp, which is why I try to make the distinction of 'generative AI', which at least in terms of the popular closed-source models, is...well...bad.

I'm not sure that any denoising algorithms have been trained on stolen data, and if Adobe uses their own material, then good for them (I have enough other reasons to despise Adobe, but I digress).

The big boys, however-- Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, Grok, etc... these dominate the overwhelming majority of the generative AI market, and virtually (literally?) all of their models are trained on the aforementioned stolen data. This is where the problem lies.

For the record, I do think that the technology, in a broad sense, is quite cool and interesting. But since it's almost exclusively controlled by the maniacally evil tech-broligarch class, the rollout and infiltration of it into our society over the past few years has been an unmitigated disaster on every front, and I unfortunately don't see that changing anytime soon.

I agree that there are many menial, tedious tasks that seem ideal candidates for generative AI that wouldn't infringe much on the element of human creativity, but unless some type of unprecedented class-action suit brings significant restitution to anyone whose work has been used in training these things (ha, yeah right), it'll always be a non-starter for me.

[Tanuj Tiku]

I don't think anybody really knows where this is heading but there some interesting thoughts. AI music is being used massively in India. Top songwriters, musicians, big shot film producers, top companies. They are generating (with pride) a lot of stuff with AI. Most of it is not any good but nobody seems to care. Films, commercials, small campaigns.

A really large legacy company asked a production house to change the face of a girl in their new advertisement because it is not the one they approved. The approved actor was not 'satisfactory' on the day of shoot so the production house cast someone literally they found off the street. Now the client has asked to change the face using AI. They did. True story.

I know first hand that top songwriters are auditioning voices of top singers in their tracks before it is replaced by the actual singer in the final mix. Entire songs are being generated then copped, edited, re-recorded etc. There are no ethics, no problems!

This is progressing exactly as I had thought it would in India and I think if it is not happening where you live, it is only a matter of time that it does. I am not convinced it will destroy everything creative but it is going to probably cause pain for entry level jobs (already happening in my industry) and it will spread the work thin.

Yes, you can make more things but remember - you also don't seem to need much skill so many more can do it.