Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot has a prominent role in director Doug Liman’s Bitcoin, a feature film in which all the actors, including Oscar winner Casey Affleck, did all their work on a bare-bones stage because AI will create the sets and lighting.
According to the movie’s producer, Ryan Kavanaugh, this was the only way Bitcoin could get made. What would have cost $200 million if filmed conventionally will cost only $70 million.
Gadot wisely understands that you can either embrace AI or be left behind.
“The [AI] train has left the station. You’re going to work with it or be out of the game completely,” she said on a recent podcast. “I am trying to make the best of it and protect what I can protect. The AI component in this movie is for sets and the lighting. We had a broad crew and a lot of people were working on this movie.”
“This was the longest contract I have ever worked on. It was six months for my lawyers to go through every scenario we could think about as far as the AI component of it,” explained Gadot about the work she and her lawyers put in to protect her performance from being altered. “I did not want AI to have anything to do with my performance. We had to protect that, to such an extent that SAG called my lawyers to ask for pointers to update the SAG contract to protect other actors. As far as the performances, it’s all me.”
“I am afraid of AI,” she admitted, “but I am going to be afraid and look away? No. I am afraid but I am playing with it and learning it and trying to educate myself.”
She added that as an actress, not having to wait around for lighting set-ups (which eats up most of everyone’s time on set), was a liberating experience.
“Here we would film nonstop because we didn’t have to wait for lighting,” she said. “We would film on and on and on for 10 hours. So that was amazing. As actors, you’re always hot. You don’t cool off.”
She has the exact right approach. Gadot is an adult who seems to understand that fighting against the inevitable is a shortcut to misery. You either accept the world as it is, or you get swallowed up by it. Of course AI will decrease production costs. And because of that, everyone will have no choice but to embrace it. And who cares? Why should we care? CGI or AI? What’s the difference? It’s all computer-generated. There is no difference.
When CGI came along, where was the uproar to protect the stop-motion and practical effects industries?
There was none.
This is the same thing.
All the opposition to AI is ignorant nonsense.