Hollywood Opens Up to Artificial Intelligence
New York (AFP) – After an initially cautious stance, Hollywood is forging growing partnerships with artificial intelligence startups, becoming more open to the technology while still emphasizing its desire to preserve creativity within the industry.
The film and television industry took years to “grasp the concept” of artificial intelligence, according to Mike Muslem, of Shadowbox Studios, in an interview with Variety magazine.
Initially, Hollywood adopted a defensive posture in the face of the disruptions caused by AI, as studios feared the misuse of their intellectual property and actors worried about being turned into “raw material” for training AI systems.
Moreover, those who experimented with the technology encountered the limitations and flaws associated with AI-generated video clips, which, for example, often depicted hands with six fingers or mouths that did not move correctly.
However, the barrier of hesitation was broken in early March, when Netflix acquired a small, obscure company with fewer than twenty employees for a staggering sum of $587 million.
InterPositive, founded in 2022 by producer, director, and actor Ben Affleck, is an AI-based platform designed to assist in audiovisual production processes.
In early June, Lionsgate acquired a stake in Runway, a leading player in AI video generation, with the aim of developing joint creative projects. A few days later, Google took a similar step with another independent studio, A24.
Recent examples in advertising and short films have demonstrated that AI-generated videos, even those featuring human characters, have reached a new level of sophistication and skill.
In this regard, Runway noted in May that “in many cases, if the narrative is sufficiently well-crafted, the technology becomes so advanced that it is difficult to distinguish” from non-AI-generated content.
Jamie Frazier, head of creative at Runway, believes that this qualitative shift “stems less from the maturity of the technology itself and more from people learning how to better leverage AI-based video tools.”
Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, stated during the company’s mid-July earnings presentation that “we are producing high-quality content faster and more efficiently than we would have been able to using traditional methods.”
He specifically cited the documentary series “The American Experiment,” which saw more than seventeen minutes of footage “enhanced” using AI, particularly through the addition of computer-generated characters.
