The debate around AI reminds me of the debate around transsexuals. At first, everyone tiptoed around, not sure of what to think and worried about saying the wrong thing. Then, after a couple of years of cowardly pussyfooting, someone finally said, “Y’all, a guy can’t magically become a woman.” And because one person said it, more and more people found the courage to repeat an obvious truth: that no amount of surgical mutilation, online censorship, media propaganda, and emotional blackmail makes it possible to switch sexes.
It’s been the same around AI. At first, everyone felt the need to huddle in the herd and condemn AI as anti-art, as a scourge on movie making, as dangerous and anti-human. Most of all, everyone’s scared of the all-powerful Hollywood unions that understandably fear that their tradesmen will be replaced by AI (because they will). No one wants to drive ahead of the headlights that will eventually reveal what the acceptable opinion is.
Well, as I have been saying since day one, the only acceptable opinion about AI is that it’s awesome and will make it possible for everyday people to create a $300 million motion picture for $14 on their laptop.
It will also allow the entertainment industry to cut costs dramatically, removing what has become — with production and promotion — one half-billion-dollar risk after another.
The TV industry is equally risky…
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reportedly costs $50 million per episode — same with the fifth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things. Disney’s Andor cost over $25 million per, and HBO’s House of Dragon hovers around $20 million per.
That is insane, and I’d guess a huge percentage of that budget goes to visual effects that AI will soon replicate for peanuts.
Despite the alarmists, AI will never become sentient, so you will always have to pay for writers and directors, which means that AI is just another digital tool, no different from CGI or animation.
My guess, based on the breathtaking improvements we’ve seen over the last few years, is that AI will eventually look more realistic than CGI. It will fool us all, and there is nothing wrong with that. CGI fools us all the time. What’s the moral difference? There is none, and now George Lucas has stepped into the breach with the truth:
Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies. It’s very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them, and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’ There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.
That is 100 percent correct.
Think of all the jobs my profession could create if we chose not to embrace progress. Instead of loading up this article into the Breitbart system, I would write it on a typewriter, make a copy at the copy store, and snail mail it to Breitbart HQ. There it would be typeset, run off a printing press, stuffed into envelopes, and mailed to our readers. That’s how ridiculous the arguments against AI are.
Lucas also said something interesting about test screenings…
I don’t like focus groups. The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker, I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie. Of course, now they go crazy with that. Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie. You make a movie by finding someone that knows how to make movies, that has a story to tell and is passionate about it.
Then he gets a little defensive about Jar-Jar Binks and the Ewoks:
“‘Oh, that’s terrible. Jar Jar Binks is terrible!’” — before returning to his usual honeyed register. “Everyone said the same thing about R2-D2 and C-3PO. At the beginning there was a huge push for me to get rid of C-3PO, and then in the third one [Return of the Jedi (1983)] people said the same thing about Ewoks. ‘What are you thinking? Get rid of these teddy bears, we want to see an adult movie!’” When asked whether he is bothered by his later films failing to connect with adults in the way his earlier films did, Lucas returns to fundamentals. “Well, it’s a kid’s movie,” he says. “It’s always been a kid’s movie.”
The idea that Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and the first two-thirds of Jedi are “kids’ movies” is ridiculous.
Granted, not allowing the fans to make your movie makes sense… up to a point. Test screenings are practical when it comes to issues like pacing — comedic timing and dramatic beats — and if the movie plays. Seeing your movie with a room full of people is terrifying but enlightening.
At the same time, the best movies come from the gut of a storyteller desperate to tell his story his way, the guy who wants to wow you, move you, thrill and entertain you. AI removes the corrupt Hollywood gatekeepers and will allow everyone to do that.
Yes, most people will suck at making movies. I sure did.
But everyone gets a shot.