Will AI swallow Hollywood?

Yes, AI is coming to a big screen near you. In fact, it's already arrived.

Variety just published a truly extensive look into the many ways Hollywood is (and isn't) embracing AI. The report's author, Audrey Schomer, was kind enough to share a copy of it with me. If you want to read it, you'll have to pony up for a subscription. (Hey, I don't make the rules.)

The bottom line: Hollywood is on board with the robots, mostly.  

"Overall, 79 percent of U.S. media and entertainment decisionmakers indicated their company was in stages of either exploring, testing or actively deploying generative AI," says Schomer, who is media analyst and research editor for Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+). "Nearly half have already implemented it in a few or several areas." 

As the report details, studio executives are both extremely eager to take advantage of gen AI while also being somewhat terrified of it. For them, embracing the technology is a bit like going to a potluck at Hannibal Lector's house. That lasagna looks enticing, but nobody's really certain what's in it.

Say hello to my little (robot) friend

As we all know by now, generative artificial intelligence isn't actually intelligent – it just plays something approximating that on your computer screen. Imagine, for a moment, Keanu Reeves in one of the Really Smart Guy roles usually assigned to Jeff Goldblum. [1] 

That's gen AI. It excels at repackaging existing material in a way that seems realistic, but there's usually something a bit off. In some ways this makes it a perfect match for Hollywood, which is also constantly regurgitating and repackaging. Does the world really need yet another reboot of Spiderman or remake of A Star Is Born? No, it does not. And yet, until the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally runs out of spandex, here we are.

Studio execs are hoping to replace well-paid but non-famous creative types with robots for things like storyboarding, conceptual art, story pitches, dubbing, lip syncing, voice cloning, B-roll, footage that would be impossible for humans or even drones to capture, de-aging, and "complex face replacement." [2]

(It turns out that using AI to digitally paste the face of that handsome action star onto the body of his bruised-and-battered stunt double costs a fraction of using garden-variety CGI. And Tom-Brad-Harrison-Arnold-Dwayne never has to leave his trailer.) [3]

But generating whole movies or 100 percent AI actors isn't viable, because the quality isn't there... yet. Per the report: "Nuanced actor performances wouldn't easily or reliably emerge from a video model." Not even AI Keanu.

Large Language Models also didn't study physics in high school, so they still have difficulty going from the 2D images they've been trained on to accurately recreating how objects interact in 3D. Gen AI models still also sometimes have trouble with finer details. It would be a little embarrassing for Marvel, for example, if an AI-generated Thanos tried to squeeze five Infinity Stone rings onto six fingers. 

Even then, OpenAI's yet-to-be-officially-unleashed-upon-the-world video engine, Soros Sora, is still pretty impressive. Survey firm HarrisX asked a thousand US adults if they could tell the difference between videos generated by Sora and those created by puny humans. Mostly, they couldn't.

Be afraid, be very afraid

The quality issues will resolve themselves over time, and tools like Sora will eventually be able to generate original videos longer than their current limit of around a minute. 

A much thornier issue is intellectual property — both due to the fact that many LLMs were trained on (ahem) copyrighted material, and the very unsettled legal questions about whether materials generated by robots can themselves be copyrighted.

Hollywood execs feel about IP lawyers the way Indiana Jones feels about snakes. No producer of a mega-blockbuster movie franchise wants to wake up to a subpoena saying they stole someone else's work, even if that someone else looks a little like The Terminator. 

This gets really messy really quickly. Per the report:

For example, AI images aren’t protected, but human arrangement [of them] is. Even if AI images were to be materially edited before being used in a production, copyright might only apply to the edits, such as the specific digital brushstrokes made by a human artist. 

There's also the question of how Hollywood protects its own creations from the insatiable appetite of other AI models. 

And once the monster has escaped, there will be no stopping it until the final reel.

Hasta la vista, baby

How does the popcorn-buying candy-wrapper-krinkling checking-their-phones-in-the-theater-when-they-really-should-know-better American Public feel about this? 

Most of the polls cited in the report say people are generally not pleased by the notion that Hollywood will soon be run by robots. Four out of ten say they do not want to consume AI-generated movies "because it is important that the content is created by someone with living experiences and emotions." [4]

Eight out of ten are opposed to the use of audio and video deep fakes in place of their matinee idols. Roughly the same number also believe that writers, musicians, and artists should be compensated for entertainment derived from their work (or something closely imitating it), and should have the right to opt out of such use if they object. 

Unfortunately for those people, the masked crusader has already flown the bat cave. I got the image near the top of this post by asking Midjourney to draw "Keanu Reeves as the Jeff Goldblum character in Jurassic Park." The AI has seen this movie before.

I imagine if you polled film fans in 1976 about the use of CGI effects, many would have said something similar — they would rather not take the work away from human artists. 

Then Star Wars came out the next year, and nobody thought about it ever again, because the effects were so damned cool. The same is likely to happen with AI, once the legal issues are sorted. [5]

Is this a good thing? Bad? Inevitable? Yes.

Judging by the credit sequences of nearly every movie, the near-ubiquitous presence of multiple CGI teams has employed a hell of a lot of artistic tech people. So it's likely AI will taketh from some and giveth to others. 

CGI has also enabled very creative people to generate unforgettable, mind-blowing images. I can't begin to imagine what a visionary director like George Miller or Denis Villeneuve or Guillermo del Toro will do with AI, but I want to find out.

Will AI make movies better? No. Just like CGI alone doesn't make movies better. I doubt AI will ever write a script as brilliant as any of Charlie Kaufman's or tell a story better than Spielberg does. 

AI also won't fix Hollywood's obsession with making safe bets on known/tired franchises. Personally, I'd like to think that originality still counts for something. But what do I know? I'm only human. 

A programming note: The Tynan Files will be taking a couple of weeks off in June, then returning on a weekly basis. Until we meet again, please share your thoughts in the comments below or email me: [email protected].  

[1] No, those odious Apartments.com commercials do not count.

[2] Studios are also using tools like MARZ Vanity AI to "make minor cosmetic enhancements to an actor’s appearance, including removing under-eye bags, texture, wrinkles and fine lines." Nicole Kidman, the botox bots are ready for you now.

[3] Spoiler alert: This is a key plot point in the "new" reboot of The Fall Guy, starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. It's actually surprisingly good.

[4] So, not Keanu then.

[5] When billions of dollars are riding on the result, such issues usually do.