How AI Is Reshaping Hollywood

Hollywood has come to a grinding halt. Guest post by Conrad Gray.

Hey Everyone,

Who might have predicted the strike in Hollywood and visions of Hollywood screenwriters and maybe one day actors being replaced by Generative A.I.? Well it’s come to this, Hollywood unions are striking over concerns about how AI affects the entertainment industry and pay in the middle of 2023. As actors strike for A.I. protections, Netflix is hiring for some lucrative positions that might impact their future.

Hollywood actors and writers unions are jointly striking this summer for the first time since 1960 (60 years), calling for better wages and regulations on studios’ use of artificial intelligence. 

Investments being made by the likes of Disney and Netflix in A.I. might turn Hollywood upside down. Should we be concerned?

In this guest post,

Conrad Gray

of H+ Weekly breaks down what the hell is going on. His Newsletter sheds light on the bleeding edge of technology and how advancements in AI, robotics, and biotech can usher in abundance, expand humanity's horizons, and redefines what it means to be human.

How will Generative A.I. change the meaning of Work?

With layoffs in tech being masked in the mainstream by A.I. hype, Hollywood is showing us another take on the future of jobs. Check out the job at Netflix in question. The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically $300,000 - $900,000.

While Streaming is not yet profitable, what happens to the screen writers in the future with LLMs now in the picture? In May, 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike, demanding fair wages; better residuals, which have shriveled in the streaming era; and assurance that AI would not take their place as screenwriters in the future.

Let’s dive right in:

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By

Conrad Gray

of

H+ Weekly

On May 2nd, 2023, 11,500 TV and movie screenwriters went on strike in the US. On July 14th, actors from SAG-AFTRA union joined the strike. It is the first time since 1960 that both actors and screenwriters went on strike together and brought Hollywood to a stop.

Why are screenwriters and actors protesting?

The main reason for this strike is the changing landscape and the business model of making movies and TV without adequate changes in screenwriters’ and actors’ contracts. 

The streaming revolution resulted in shorter periods of time when screenwriters and actors are working. Previously, screenwriters could count on 20-40 weeks of guaranteed work, but now they can count on a mere 6-10 weeks of work per season.

There is also the issue of residuals. During the time of network TV, screenwriters and actors could count on payments from reruns on TV, providing some financial stability between projects. However, with streaming, these residuals have significantly decreased, leading to less stable jobs and lower income.

And then there is the threat of screenwriters and actors being replaced by artificial intelligence.

Screenwriters and actors are concerned their work could be replaced by AI. Creating scripts could be delegated to tools like GPT-4, reducing the need for hiring human screenwriters.

Actors are concerned about studios using AI to recreate their likenesses without consent or without compensation. Studios approached striking actors with a “groundbreaking deal” suggesting that they could scan background actors and use their likenesses indefinitely, offering only a one-time payment equivalent to a single day's pay.

How AI is being used in Hollywood

The movie industry is not only about artistic expression but also a technology-driven industry. From the inception of cinema, advancements in film technology opened new possibilities for storytelling. From the introduction of sound and colour in movies to 3D animation, and computer-generated effects, filmmakers have embraced and harnessed technology to enhance their creative visions. They have eagerly adopted various tools and innovations, including robotics, digital cameras, software-based editing, and numerous other advancements that can help their artistic visions to life.

Artificial intelligence is just another tool in the filmmaker’s toolbox.

Over the last few years, we have seen multiple examples of deepfakes used in movie production. In Rogue One, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) digitally recreated Peter Cushing (who died in 1994) to "play" Grand Moff Tarkin. In the same movie, ILM also recreated Carrie Fisher's younger face, as seen in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, from 39 years earlier. ILM then employed a similar technique to de-age Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in The Irishman. And recently, they have de-aged Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Deepfakes are not only limited to actors' faces. In 2021, the creators of a documentary movie about the late Anthony Bourdain used AI to recreate Bourdain's voice. This year, James Earl Jones stepped down from voicing Darth Vader and allowed Disney to replicate his iconic voice in future Star Wars projects.

Another area where machine learning can be applied is in post-production. At this stage in movie production, the footage has been shot and is now being put together to create the final movie. Making any significant changes at this point could necessitate costly reshoots. This is where deepfakes can be helpful, as the makers of Fall have shown. Using deepfakes, they have altered a shot full of explicit language to clean it up and adjust the actress's facial expression to seamlessly match the new lines.

 

Generative AI has been used in creating an intro to Marvel’s Secret Invasion. Method Studios, who created the intro, openly acknowledged in an interview with Hollywood Reporter that they used AI to achieve the unique and otherworldly aesthetic of the intro. As Method put in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter:

“The production process was highly collaborative and iterative, with a dedicated focus on this specific application of an AI toolset. It involved a tremendous effort by talented art directors, animators (proficient in both 2D and 3D), artists, and developers, who employed conventional techniques to craft all the other aspects of the project. However, it is crucial to emphasize that while the AI component provided optimal results, AI is just one tool among the array of toolsets our artists used. No artists’ jobs were replaced by incorporating these new tools; instead, they complemented and assisted our creative teams.”

AI and machine learning are also making a significant impact on the movie industry beyond what we see on the screens. Studios are now employing data science teams to analyze audience behaviour, track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and gauge public reactions to their products, just to name a few applications.

Generative AI tools for movie makers

Generative AI tools for making movies are already here.

General-purpose generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can generate at least a good enough outline for a human screenwriter to build upon.

There are also generative AI tools built specifically for making movies. Runway (which we featured in Six more companies competing with OpenAI article) offers an entire suite of AI-powered tools, ranging from text-to-image generators to text-to-video generators to tools for removing objects from shots and even tools for transforming the style of the footage.

Adobe, known for its popular tools like Premiere and After Effects, offers its own generative AI tool called Firefly and showed a vision of a Firefly-powered video editor that can generate a soundtrack from a text prompt, adjust the colours or find the correct B-roll shots.

 

There are voice cloning tools and voice generators specifically designed to replace human voice actors. And if you need a face for that generated voice, Unreal Engine offers Metahuman where you can easily generate and then animate a completely new human face. Speaking of Unreal Engine - it is a powerful tool that is starting to be used not just in gaming but also in the movie industry, too. Unreal Engine has been used in Mandalorian to generate virtual sets, replacing green screens and allowing actors to see the environment. Unreal Engine is so good at rendering virtual worlds that is sometimes hard to believe it was all generated by a computer, as The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience has shown.

The advancements in AI can one day lead to tools generating entire movies from a single prompt. Last week, researchers showed a glimpse of such a future with SHOW-1 - an AI that “will write, animate, direct, voice, edit for you”. As an example, they showed an entirely new episode of South Park generated from a prompt.

What’s next?

Hollywood and the movie industry are in crisis. The studios are playing safe. The movies we see in theatres are either superhero movies, remakes, sequels or movies based on established brands like Barbie. Many of those movies, with budgets in hundreds of millions of dollars, struggle to break even.

The last time both actors and screenwriters went on strike was in 1960. Back then, a new emerging technology threatened the movie industry - the TV. Studios played safe and were making only westerns, war movies or musicals. The big blockbuster movies such as Cleopatra were financial disasters. The old studios went out of business or had to reinvent themselves. From this dark time in Hollywood history emerged a new wave of creative filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and others who had good stories to tell. This wave of New Hollywood created many of the best movies ever created - Star Wars, Jaws, The Shining, Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, and every iconic movie of the late 1960s, 70s and 80s.

Maybe something similar will happen now. Maybe a new generation of creative filmmakers will see AI as a tool to enhance new and interesting stories.

How AI tools can unleash a new wave of creative storytelling

Filmmakers are already experimenting with AI tools to see what is possible. For example, the short movie below has been created using AI-powered tools to help with writing the script and creating the concept art. The AI also generated all the voices and participated in some creative decisions. But everything else - editing, the idea, sound design, etc. - was made by a human.

 

AI Movie Festival, organised by Runway, also showed what a talented creator can make with AI tools.

Another example is this trailer made by Nicolas Neubert. Using Midjourney and Runway, Neubert created the trailer in just 7 hours.

These tools will bring the barrier to entry down and reduce the time and cost needed to turn an idea into a movie.

The place we are in right now reminds me early 2010s. The convergence of accessible digital cameras, professional editing software, and easy-to-use 3D modelling, animation and VFX tools, combined with the emergence of new media platforms like YouTube, has created a fertile ground for aspiring filmmakers to master the craft, experiment and share their stories. We have creators such as Corridor Digital, RocketJump and many more entering the stage, pushing what is possible with these new tools. We have also seen passion projects such as Astartes, created by a single talented person over many years, being created and becoming viral successes.

Maybe we will see a new explosion of creativity, thanks to AI-powered tools that make movie-making more accessible. This new wave of filmmakers will shoot their movies on phones, enhance them with AI-powered tools and then upload them on YouTube or TikTok for millions of people to experience them. 

Maybe from the current crisis, a new, healthier movie industry will emerge, just like the New Hollywood emerged in the 1960s, full of new creators working together with AI to tell new stories.