The future is closer than we think.
The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind when it comes to artificial intelligence. It’s no surprise to frequent readers that I have been playing around with systems that write and produce images. After all, AI seems like something Hollywood will inevitably use in many different ways.
It would be good to get ahead of the tool they may thrust upon you.
You don’t have to trust me about this. Avengers: Endgame and The Gray Man director Joe Russo recently talked about this phenomenon on a panel at the Sands International Film Festival.
When asked when AI would be taking over Hollywood, Russo said, “This is like a mind-bending question, right? I mean, we’ve had conversations about how it can be used, and look, Gen Z is very unique because it’s a generation that has… If there were incremental movements in technology over the last, say, 100 years, 150 years, they were the first generation with an exponential movement, right?”
Russo continued, saying, “So there’s a real possibility now for technology to become a really important factor in our lives because it’s been embraced by Gen Z, and they grew up with it, they understand it, they know how to use it. That’s important, right? We’re not in a world where, you know, your uncle doesn’t know how to send emails anymore. We’re in a world where the entire generation has a facile expertise in it, and is also not afraid of it.”
I think he’s right about embracing the changing system. Sure, we need rules and we need protections for our unions, but it’s really impossible to stand in the way of a tool that’s designed to make life easier.
I hate the idea of AI taking jobs away from writers, animators, and all the other jobs in the industry, but if we can build a system where we are in control of using programs, then that may work better for us all.
Russo continued to expound on AI, saying, “So potentially, what you could do with it is obviously use it to engineer storytelling and change storytelling. So you have a constantly evolving story, either in a game or in a movie, or in a TV show. You could walk into your house and save the AI on your streaming platform. ‘Hey, I want a movie starring my photoreal avatar and Marilyn Monroe’s photoreal avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I’ve had a rough day,’ and it renders a very competent story with dialogue that mimics your voice. It mimics your voice, and suddenly now you have a rom-com starring you that’s 90 minutes long. So you can curate your story specifically to you.”
Obviously, this world is not here yet. But it feels like Blade Runner 2049, and I don’t know if that type of future is very far away from us.
As fun as that world he described sounds, I’m worried about the world we live in now. And jobs! I want Hollywood and filmmaking to be expansive areas where many people can work.
Russo finished with this prediction:
“That’s one thing that it can do, but it can also, on a communal level, populate the world of the game, have intelligence behind character choice, you know, the computer-run characters in the game that can make decisions learn your play style, make it a little harder for you, make it a little easier for you, curate the story. Say you want Fortnite to be more of a horror game, right? Then you could ask the AI to ramp up the horror elements of it. So again, you could curate your experience. I think that’s where it’s going. How quickly we get there, I don’t know, but that’s where it’s going.”
Let me know what you think in the comments.
