Hollywood Needs AI | Guest Column

The industry’s call to action should be to prove that we are the best in the world at AI filmmaking. By only focusing on regulating generative AI, studios, writers and directors are losing vital time figuring out how to lead audiences into this new era of movie storytelling.

New technologies have aways excited movie goers. A recent audience poll conducted for The Wrap showed that 72% of respondents wanted more original films in theaters. At a time when the yearly box office is stubbornly stuck at 78% of its pre-pandemic high, generative AI is an exciting new cinema grammar in the tradition of innovations like sound, color and CGI, which transformed live action VFX and animation. In 1995, the very first Pixar feature, Toy Story was the No. 1 domestic box office movie.

Thousands of entertaining AI video shorts get billions of daily views and shares across the internet. This shows there is already an audience primed for a new genre in multiplexes.
 
Change can’t be stopped. The panic over Seedance 2 — with photo-real digital cloning of stars like Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt — means the future is already here and accelerating. DALL-E 2, the first AI image program in 2022 was primitive compared not only to Seedance 2, but also today’s Sora, Grok, Veo 3, Kling, and Runway. 100% generative AI feature films are imminent, certainly by the 100th Anniversary of the Academy Awards in 2028. 

Of course, we need clear ethical guidelines to protect jobs and copyright. The guilds, along with The Creator’s Coalition on AI and “Stealing Isn’t Innovation,” the filmmaker campaign against AI companies training models with copyrighted work without permission – are leading the way. But if Hollywood doesn’t champion the unique, revolutionary tools of generative AI, tech companies will have the power to control the future of film.
 
The most talented AI creators are intuitive artists at the birth of a new medium, just like the pioneers in the early days of film. Kids at home on laptops are the next generation of Hollywood directors like Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan who made Super 8 movies, and Tarantino shooting a feature on his video camera while clerking in a video store. 

Why is generative AI filmmaking revolutionary? Because with AI, if you can imagine it, you can generate it. The filmmaker creates directly in images from the first moment. A script, paragraph, or rough visual reference becomes an immediate scene — camera, lighting, performance, sound, edit. The director sees the movie instantly and makes changes in real time. If you don’t like the footage you’ve got, you don’t need a costly reshoot — you simply give prompts like “move closer,” “change the light,” or “shift the background.” Anyone can tell movie stories for fun and visual experimentation.

Take the iconic folding-city sequence in “Inception.” Nolan’s script says: The entire city BLOCK FOLDS UPWARD — streets tilting vertically, traffic and pedestrians continuing as if nothing has changed. The horizon flips. The sky becomes ground. Paris curves overhead. That 90-second sequence cost millions of dollars and required months of work across multiple VFX vendors. Today, AI creators can output scenes like it for ten dollars. As a result, we are now seeing characters, worlds, and narratives unlike anything that has ever been done before in movie storytelling.

Generative AI is what’s called “a frontier technology.” The rules and boundaries are still being figured out. What will shape it is taste — the ability to tell stories that move audiences. The greatest concentration of that talent is in the film industry. 

What is irreplaceable is human imagination. James Cameron used motion-capture and CGI to create Pandora from his singular imagination. Who better to experiment with AI than his peers? Movies will always need us humans because AI only copies and recombines what exists; it does not live, suffer, laugh, or love.

Screenwriters and directors will always need the expertise of human production
designers, composers, actors, and other craftspeople. The digital performer Tilly
Norwood feels wooden because “she” is bland and generic without the complex
emotional choices and life experience of a human actor to inspire it. Stars already voice animated characters — there’s no difference if they narrate a photo-real, computer-generated human that doesn’t look like them.

Actors should be legally guaranteed full compensation if they are digitally replicated for profit. But imagine the possibilities of licensing old stars. Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen and Katharine Hepburn, appearing alongside George Clooney and Julia Roberts, or Timothy Chalamet and Jennifer Lawrence. 

Hollywood cannot hold back the tide because everyone growing up today will never know a world without AI, just like cell phones today seem like they always existed. The Academy has already made a statement welcoming AI as a tool for human creation: “With regard to Generative Artificial Intelligence…the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination. The Academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.”

There is a low-cost way for studios to do AI R&D. “Luxo Jr.,” Pixar’s first theatrical release after Steve Jobs bought the company, proved that computers in the hands of humans could convey emotion, not just novelty. It was nominated for an Oscar and led the way for feature length animated films.

Studios should invite pitches for AI shorts from writers, actors and directors, stage competitions for new voices, and test original IP theatrically at low cost — just as shorts once ran before features. This model would also help resolve workflow issues around job protection and establish copyright standards.

There were only two minutes of synchronized dialogue in The Jazz Singer. Al Jolson improvised the famous lines: “Wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.” But overnight, talkies changed the business. They only ended Lina Lamont’s career. AI is not the end of Hollywood. It is a new era of storytelling.

Michael Shamberg is a producer and longtime Academy member known for collaborating with distinctive directors and turning fresh stories into smart, commercial films —which is why he is now interested in generative AI as the next frontier in cinematic storytelling.

The post Hollywood Needs AI | Guest Column appeared first on TheWrap.