Hollywood shouldn’t worry too much about generative AI — the transformer architecture that underpins AI models that can build images, videos, and songs from a single text prompt. While film executives may not like to say it out loud, AI is already being used to bring down costs and increase the speed of adding visual effects to movies. That means AI can help more artists make more movies, rather than seeing AI replace artists or the art.
In the classic, computer-generated movies we’re used to, like the ones in the Marvel cinematic universe, there is a massive amount of labor and processing power spent on each scene and asset. Human actors perform in front of screens. The images and physics of the imagined world around them is added in later.
With generative AI, the heavy lifting is done during the pre-training process. Once the model is built, it can be used to take a scene constructed by artists and tweak it, making the physics look realistic — not by modeling the physics, but by guessing at them based on absorbing an incredibly large dataset of real-world footage.
This process is collapsing the filmmaking process into fewer steps, Amazon Web Services’ General Manager of Media and Entertainment Samira Bakhtiar said in an interview. Instead of waiting weeks to see how a digitally rendered scene looks, they can see the outcome in real time and make adjustments or reshoot it immediately.
“It’s breaking down silos between the actor, the director, the producer, and then on the soundstage, they also have solution architects and data scientists that are working with them in real time,” she said.
If a film uses these so-called “real-time hybrid” techniques to bring down costs, should it be categorized as an “AI-created” film? It seems more like a faster, better generation of the CGI viewers know and love. But if a film uses AI-generated actors, extras, even artwork and costumes, it makes sense for the film industry to encourage transparency, letting the audience, critics, and awards judges know.
Based on my conversations at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week, the best creatives in the business will end up using transformer architecture in some way. In the highest-quality implementations, human artists will develop the look, feel, and sound of film and video — whether it’s a Super Bowl ad or a feature film. And, with a crisis of ballooning budgets in the film industry, this change couldn’t come at a better time.
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