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Something is changing in Hollywood. After the Writers Guild of America protests in 2023, many human creatives made it clear that they were opposed to the use of artificial intelligence for tasks like scriptwriting.
However, film studios appear to be ignoring these concerns, with an increasing number doing deals with major AI vendors. Just last week, Blumhouse made a deal with Meta that will enable selected filmmakers like Aneesh Chaganty, The Spurlock Sisters, and Casey Affleck to use the tech giant’s Movie Gen model to create short films.
The timing comes one month after Lionsgate cut a deal with Runway, which allows the AI company to create and train an AI model on the film studio’s content. It’s worth noting that OpenAI has also been pitching its text-to-video model to Hollywood studios.
Based on these deals, studios across the film industry are considering generative AI as a potential solution for cutting costs throughout the production process.
What can Hollywood’s uses of GenAI today tell us about the future? That’s the plot we want to unravel today.
Key Takeaways
- Film studios, including Blumhouse and Lionsgate, are partnering with AI vendors.
- AI offers filmmakers and film studios an opportunity to develop productions more cost-effectively.
- There are concerns that human creatives in the industry could be negatively impacted by increased adoption.
- Hollywood director Scott Mann helps us pick through some of the different uses of GenAI in films.
- Notable issues include jobs lost to automation, actors losing control over their physical likeness, and films being used to train AI models without consent.
What Does AI Mean for the Future of the Film Industry?
Generative AI is a technology of interest to film studios because it has the potential to cut costs in an industry where production expenses can reach well into the hundreds of millions per production.
If virtual media assets can be created automatically with a generative AI model, then the studio doesn’t need to pay for the services of a graphic designer or animator.
Lionsgate outright stated that its partnership with Runway presented an opportunity for “capital-efficient content creation opportunities” and noted that several of its filmmakers were excited to explore potential use cases in the pre-production and post-production process.
Scott Mann, co-CEO and founder at Flawless AI, a Hollywood director and producer who has directed talent including Robert De Niro, Pierce Brosnan, Kate Bosworth, and Bruce Willis, suggests that AI has a critical role to play in the future of the industry.
Mann said:
“Currently, our beloved legacy industry is hurting – slow production times, high costs, and limited audiences are choking the entertainment space and severely constricting the investment in quality and original content.
“But new products that can use AI legitimately have the ability to transform and save the industry and turn it into a thriving artistic business that can benefit creative and audiences alike.”
Mann has first-hand experience using AI to manage production costs, in particular using AI to alter Robert De Niro’s facial expression so that his performance better matched the German dub of the 2015 film Heist.
In this instance, AI helped to avoid the need for a costly reshoot or a poorer viewing experience.
You might argue that this use was a benefit to production rather than a cost to the creative industry. But let’s dig deeper.
How AI in Movies Impacts Human Creatives
The moment design, animation or other production elements start to be automated, the fewer roles there are available for creatives in the industry.
The Writers Guild of America sought protections against the use of AI in scriptwriting because industry professionals were concerned that tools like ChatGPT could produce scripts instead of human writers.
So, if directors and studios like Blumhouse and Lionsgate start using AI in pre- and post-production processes, there will inevitably be fewer roles available for human creatives in the industry, and many other challenges will need to be addressed.
Mann said:
“In an industry powered by human creativity and imagination, there are a lot of dissenting voices with legitimate concerns about how and where AI is used — and to what end.
“Actors worry about losing control over their digital likenesses, writers fear being replaced in scriptwriting, and filmmakers are concerned AI could be used to cut costs, possibly at the expense of quality.”
Films’ artistic quality would likely suffer significantly if AI is used to influence narrative and design choices. At a high level, the moment generative models are used to contribute to the design and production of a film, the filmmaker’s creative vision becomes obscured.
While human filmmakers can oversee how these models are used, their influence over a project becomes watered down as decisions about stylistic choices and other design elements are made by a third-party machine learning model rather than a human.
The Risk of AI Models Scraping Films
Looming in the background, we also have the significant issue of films being scraped to train AI models without the creator’s permission. There have already been allegations that Runway used YouTube videos and pirated films to train its models.
Mann added:
“The ethical decisions we make now regarding AI’s use in the industry are crucial. The benefit needs to go to the right stakeholders.
“A significant issue is how major tech companies are training their AI models, often by scraping creative content from the internet without permission or compensation.
The entertainment industry’s finest work is being stolen to build these AI models without a proper system in place to manage rights or offer licensing.”
More proactive licensing agreements between film studios and AI vendors could help avoid unethical scraping in the future, but it’s hard to tell whether the damage has already been done.
After all, AI vendors can cut deals with film studios and publishers, but human artists who’ve signed over rights to these same studios appear to have little protection against their works being used.
The Bottom Line
AI has the potential to disrupt the film industry far beyond the realm of CGI. While it’s hard to say whether filmmakers’ experimental pilots will come to anything just yet, it’s worth being skeptical of the claim that AI will be a net positive for the industry.
Perhaps gentle AI uses will be tolerated by creatives and the audience, but if human creatives end up playing less of a role in film production and design choices are made by an AI model, then we are all likely to have a hard time engaging with the end product.
