“You have to learn the basics,” he says. “Technology will change, but storytelling will not.”
To make his miniature “Mnemonade” really sound good, Meta Puppet says he focused on giving the story some emotional charge. “I don’t think AI movies will go mainstream until there are emotional dialogues,” he says. He played all the roles in his miniature film about the power of sense memory and an elderly woman’s memory loss, using artificial intelligence from a Silicon Valley “unicorn” Eleven laboratories transfer your vocals to each character’s range and voice.
Maddie Hong, who went head-to-head with Meta Puppet in the Culver Cup finals, says she understands Hollywood’s trepidation when it comes to artificial intelligence. “There is a greater risk of heavy legal backlash and financial loss,” he says, referring to the danger of unintentional (or even flagrant) copyright infringement during generation. Studios also have “a higher standard for picture continuity,” says Hong, “given that they’re thinking about distribution across all types of platforms and screens.”
With that in mind, Hong agrees with people like Luma co-founder Amit Jain, who says Gen AI filmmaking could give the time-honored studio system some flexibility in terms of budget and product variety.
“If you look at Hollywood today,” Jain says, “most big-budget productions just use old franchises because it’s too difficult to take a chance on a new idea or a new franchise.” He says it’s simply safer to recreate something than to imagine something fresh.
According to (admittedly biased) Jain, doing more projects, even with lower budgets, means more people will work and more money will flow. “I would actually assume,” he adds, “that people will actually have much better careers than they are more fulfilling and lasting when they are able to create things that people actually want to see.” He suggests that if there are job losses in Hollywood due to AI, the people who leave will be the most resistant to AI.
Recent research contradicts this view. A survey conducted earlier this year among 300 entertainment industry leaders I found it 75 percent believed that generational AI had led to the elimination, reduction or consolidation of jobs in their departments. It also led to the creation of some jobs, but it was “unclear” whether the fresh jobs would make up for the lost jobs.
Other research has examined how increasing AI in production could impact the world of visual effects in particular, with artists typically reporting interest or excitement in tools that could streamline their sometimes tedious work, but concerns about the ethical and financial implications of the technology . While it would be chilly, as Jain suggests, to team up with 11 friends and “make a feature film about a Boston terrier with superpowers” for relatively little money, it remains to be seen what effect the widespread availability of AI will have on the industry as a whole.
With Meta Puppet, it all comes down to skill and who has it. “I compare the AI gene to a piano,” he says. “Everyone knows about the piano. Not everyone is Mozart. When writing real masterpieces with AI, you have to wear many hats, which is a good thing and a bad thing, because if you have experience, that’s great. If you don’t, whatever you do will probably be wrong.