Speaker 1: Welcome to tex stuff. This is a story. I'm mos
Speaker 1: Voloscen here with Cara Price.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: Ah, so I would like to show you something and
Speaker 3: just get your reaction, and I promise you it relates
Speaker 3: to today's story.
Speaker 2: Here we are planet Earth. It's impossible not to appreciate
Speaker 2: the sheer grandeur of our world, and yet there remains
Speaker 2: one forest unexplored by humans, a forest filled with life,
Speaker 2: with creatures living in the burrows of the firms, the
Speaker 2: branches of the trees, by the flowing streams, and the
Speaker 2: mossy box. I'm David Attenborough's neighbor Dennis, and welcome to
Speaker 2: a forest filled with little critters.
Speaker 1: So this is a sort of Pixar style animated film
Speaker 1: with a parody of David attenborough narration. The publication date
Speaker 1: is April tenth, twenty twenty three. So I am a
Speaker 1: little curious why you want me to watch this film,
Speaker 1: which is titled Critters with a Z.
Speaker 3: Critters what you just saw is the beginning of a
Speaker 3: five minute animated movie that was created using open AI's
Speaker 3: text to image software back in twenty twenty three. Critters
Speaker 3: with a Z was created using doll e. We're obviously
Speaker 3: now in twenty twenty five, and open Ai, in conjunction
Speaker 3: with a creative agency and film production company, are turning
Speaker 3: critters into a feature length film. Not only that it
Speaker 3: is set to premiere at can in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: so they have a drop dead deadline.
Speaker 4: The twenty twenty three short is not terribly engaging.
Speaker 1: In the first forty three seconds, it feels like a
Speaker 1: product demo, which of course it is. But what can
Speaker 1: we expect from the twenty twenty six version. Will this
Speaker 1: be a moment that has Pixar quaking in their boots.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, if open Ai and their partners in
Speaker 3: this can deliver a feature length hit, the very definition
Speaker 3: of studio could change, you know, especially given their goal,
Speaker 3: which is to make this movie for less than thirty
Speaker 3: million dollars, which is nothing really compared to the hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions it can cost a major studio to make
Speaker 3: a feature length animated film. And then there's the timeline
Speaker 3: that we talked about. You know, open Ai said they
Speaker 3: will wrap in nine months, while Pixar would probably take
Speaker 3: two to four years to make something similar.
Speaker 1: Assuming the film comes out in twenty twenty six and
Speaker 1: it's well received, it can standing.
Speaker 4: Ovation fifteen minutes, and then it.
Speaker 1: Drives real box office. I mean, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of big assumptions. If all of that happens, and it
Speaker 1: happens at a fraction of the cost, at a fraction
Speaker 1: of the time the pix I would do it in
Speaker 1: this would represent kind of a seismic moment for the
Speaker 1: whole of Hollywood.
Speaker 3: It would represent a seismic moment. I think that it's
Speaker 3: something that Hollywood definitely should be worried about. But there
Speaker 3: also are a lot of humans inside this loop. You know,
Speaker 3: OpenAI products like Dolly and Sora will be used for production,
Speaker 3: but humans will be the voice actors, and there are
Speaker 3: some human artists who are even overseeing the project. I
Speaker 3: think most importantly, the screenplay is being written by two
Speaker 3: of the writers from the Paddington franchise.
Speaker 1: How is the industry responding, I'm obviously generative AI was
Speaker 1: one of the huge issues of the writers strike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there are a lot of people
Speaker 3: outside Hollywood that assume that generative AI is no go
Speaker 3: in the industry, especially because of how tense the strike's got.
Speaker 3: But that's what today's episode is about. I actually got
Speaker 3: to talk to Lila Shapiro, who's a features writer for
Speaker 3: New York Magazine, and her recent piece was titled Hollywood
Speaker 3: already uses generative AI in parenz and is hiding it?
Speaker 3: And in this piece she talks about how generative AI
Speaker 3: is viewed and used in Hollywood. She actually heard from
Speaker 3: studio execs, VFX artists, writers, act directors, and even up
Speaker 3: and coming generative AI studios hoping to work within the
Speaker 3: studio system.
Speaker 5: The victories of the strikes were largely about like what
Speaker 5: people can sort of be forced to do, but people
Speaker 5: are being sort of pressed to do it off the
Speaker 5: record informally by people lower down the production chain because
Speaker 5: everyone is pressed for time, and here are some really
Speaker 5: efficient ways to do things. So it's like there are
Speaker 5: these guidelines, but it's limited to how much it's going
Speaker 5: to really like stave off these greater pressures of needing
Speaker 5: to be more efficient, productive, and deal with tightening budgets
Speaker 5: across the industry.
Speaker 3: I think it's important to remember that AI already plays
Speaker 3: a role in Hollywood, and it has for over a decade.
Speaker 3: Lila told me every studio uses some form of AI.
Speaker 3: The thing being argued over in Hollywood is like generative
Speaker 3: art like purely creative task that can take the artistry
Speaker 3: out of a job or threatened to replace jobs entirely.
Speaker 3: But there are a million uses for AI that are
Speaker 3: just replacing gruntwork. I mean, the writer's strike resulted in
Speaker 3: a contract that says scripts can't be generated by AI,
Speaker 3: but if a writer wants to use AI, they can
Speaker 3: use it.
Speaker 4: And this is how.
Speaker 6: AI is treated in most parts of the industry. Here's
Speaker 6: Lila again.
Speaker 5: Studios aren't advertising what they're doing with it because the
Speaker 5: public response is so negative and there aren't like tons
Speaker 5: of examples that we know about. To give you an example,
Speaker 5: like you've looked at what happened with The Brutalist, where
Speaker 5: the director came under criticism when it developed that they'd
Speaker 5: used generative AI to adjust the audio on some of
Speaker 5: the dialogue, you know, And I think it had to
Speaker 5: do with adjusting the actors like Hungarian accent, and so
Speaker 5: something like that I think is extremely widespread, and it's
Speaker 5: almost it's hard to argue with. You're like, well, there's
Speaker 5: not something sacred about like adjusting audio levels in a
Speaker 5: certain way, and now there's this technology that makes it
Speaker 5: much easier and faster. If you look at like specific
Speaker 5: little windows. You're going to find everyone is doing it,
Speaker 5: and why wouldn't they.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. The only people motivated to scream
Speaker 3: about it from the rooftops are AI companies like Open
Speaker 3: Ai or other creative studios that are dedicated to the
Speaker 3: use of generative AI, which means that Lila had to
Speaker 3: really dig to understand the true role of AI in
Speaker 3: Hollywood right now, not to mention the industry's collective opinion
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 4: So what you're saying is we're going to get an
Speaker 4: expose today.
Speaker 3: Well, I started my conversation with Lila asking about a
Speaker 3: swanky Hollywood party she attended. There were a ton of
Speaker 3: high powered people in attendance, but so many of the
Speaker 3: people Lilah interviewed there refused to be named. And that's
Speaker 3: because the party was a launch party for a new
Speaker 3: generative AI studio. I'll let Lila take it from here.
Speaker 5: So the party was put on by one of these
Speaker 5: new AI studios. This one is called Asteria, and it
Speaker 5: had described itself as sort of the Pixar of AI.
Speaker 5: And part of the reason the studio had some buzz
Speaker 5: around it was that it was run partly by the
Speaker 5: actress and showrunner and writer Natasha Leone who sort of
Speaker 5: this like Indie World Darling. And the other component of
Speaker 5: it is that this studio is sort of positioning themselves
Speaker 5: as the ethical AI studio in that they are training
Speaker 5: their model, they say, only on licensed material. So there's
Speaker 5: this sense that a lot of artists feel, rightly so
Speaker 5: that like their work is being scraped, they're not being compensated,
Speaker 5: and now they're being replaced by these models that can
Speaker 5: do what they did much more efficiently. So Asteria is
Speaker 5: trying to sort of get around that problem by saying
Speaker 5: that they're licensing all their footage and they're building a
Speaker 5: model with a group of engineers who kind of come
Speaker 5: out of the AI scene in the Silicon Valley. This
Speaker 5: party that I went to was the launch party for
Speaker 5: their model, and it's in this big room and there
Speaker 5: are these images that are created by their model projected
Speaker 5: across the walls, trippy things of like a cloud turning
Speaker 5: into a man and the man falling into the clouds
Speaker 5: and turning back into them, or like undulating fields and
Speaker 5: galloping horses.
Speaker 6: Everything is very dolliesque.
Speaker 5: Yes, there was no presentation or anything, so you don't
Speaker 5: really know how they made it or what the process
Speaker 5: was of producing those moving images. It was very like scene.
Speaker 5: They weren't leading with an explanation of sort of what
Speaker 5: they were and what they were about and how they
Speaker 5: were doing these things.
Speaker 3: There was sort of a weird thing that you described
Speaker 3: in your article that there were a lot of people
Speaker 3: who didn't want to give their names.
Speaker 6: What was that about, right?
Speaker 5: I think that people still feel that there is a
Speaker 5: kind of stigma like associated with using generative AI. When
Speaker 5: the article came out, a lot of people were really
Speaker 5: upset with Natasha because they're like, this is a betrayal.
Speaker 5: So people would tell me, like, I think this is
Speaker 5: going to like alienate me from my friends and colleagues
Speaker 5: if they know that I'm here and then I'm interested
Speaker 5: and I'm looking into it. Even though it's becoming increasingly
Speaker 5: widespread and it's happening everywhere, people still don't like it.
Speaker 3: I understand that there's still a stigma around the use
Speaker 3: of AI and supporting companies that use AI, even though
Speaker 3: every company now uses AI.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of what's being done with generative AI
Speaker 5: is replacing what CGI was, and it's not like there's
Speaker 5: something that's sacred about CGI or like rotoscopic where you're
Speaker 5: like very painstakingly cutting out a person's image and moving
Speaker 5: them into another background. That's not like a pleasurable activity.
Speaker 5: It's not a creative activity. It's like a roat task
Speaker 5: that has to be done over and over and over
Speaker 5: and over and over again. If you have a way
Speaker 5: to do that where it happens much faster, saving you
Speaker 5: like days or weeks of time and looks the same essentially,
Speaker 5: then like why wouldn't you want to do that? A
Speaker 5: lot of the people who are most interested in experimenting
Speaker 5: with it are like CGI VFX people because they're like
Speaker 5: tech people who are interested in emerging technologies, and their
Speaker 5: work itself is part was once in an emerging technology,
Speaker 5: so it's not like they're like dead set against it,
Speaker 5: but it does have the effect of no matter what
Speaker 5: way you sort of slice it, visual effects is now
Speaker 5: going to be much faster, which means from like a
Speaker 5: labor perspective, it takes less people to do it, and
Speaker 5: it takes those people a shorter amount of time. And
Speaker 5: that even leaves aside the ethical issue of is this
Speaker 5: based on stolen work? Which hysteria is trying to get
Speaker 5: around with their system.
Speaker 3: So one of the studios you spoke to is Runway.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me a little bit more about them,
Speaker 3: and like what do they do exactly.
Speaker 5: Runway is this company that they've designed a model that
Speaker 5: generates video and they also, you know, have the ambitions
Speaker 5: to become a studio themselves. And they've now produced a
Speaker 5: pilot and they run these film festivals that are AI
Speaker 5: film festivals. So they're really embedded in Hollywood at this point,
Speaker 5: and they've gotten a lot further there than the big
Speaker 5: tech companies have around. When I started reporting, I think
Speaker 5: the picture had been big tech doesn't know how to
Speaker 5: operate in Hollywood, whereas I think Runway came in and
Speaker 5: started having meetings, and at this point they're meeting with
Speaker 5: every studio. They had the first publicly announced partnership with
Speaker 5: the studio, which was Lionsgate. But they have a model
Speaker 5: which can do incredible special effects. When I was talking
Speaker 5: to the Lionsgate executive and other filmmakers who are working
Speaker 5: with Runway, they talked a lot about how, say you
Speaker 5: want to have a shot of ten thousand soldiers in
Speaker 5: the mountains during a snowstorm. To really shoot it, they'd
Speaker 5: have to go to the Himalayas, and it would take
Speaker 5: three days and cost many millions of dollars. And then
Speaker 5: using Runway, they can just create that for ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: And it can also do like much more insignificant things
Speaker 5: like say you have a shot, but you want an
Speaker 5: extra foot of image around every part of the scene.
Speaker 5: We can do that. So it can do a lot
Speaker 5: of things with varying degrees of excellence, all of which
Speaker 5: are much faster than alternative ways of doing those things.
Speaker 3: In your piece, there was one paragraph that really struck me.
Speaker 3: It's a paraphrase of something a lions Gate exact told you.
Speaker 3: With a library as large as lions Gates, they could
Speaker 3: use Runway to repackage and resell what the studio already owned.
Speaker 3: You know, I already feel like we're in.
Speaker 6: The We have sequelitis.
Speaker 3: Right now in Hollywood, and I think people who love movies,
Speaker 3: like myself are often lamenting the fact that everything seems
Speaker 3: to be something that already existed. I guess my question
Speaker 3: for you is, do you feel like we are increasingly
Speaker 3: just pushing into repackaged, repurpose content territory that is Hollywood
Speaker 3: or is that lament a little bit pollyannish.
Speaker 5: Like, of course you hear something like that and it's like,
Speaker 5: that's depressing. Now, I'd say the alternate argument to that,
Speaker 5: which I heard a lot from the people at Hysteria,
Speaker 5: certainly Natasha Leone, is that sure, that's one possibility. Another
Speaker 5: possibility is that this technology levels the playing field right,
Speaker 5: fresh voices, new people who would otherwise be unable to
Speaker 5: get a foothold in Hollywood will be in a position
Speaker 5: to make films. And so there are certainly people who
Speaker 5: are arguing that this can lead to a new golden
Speaker 5: era of independent filmmaking. I don't think that's impossible, but
Speaker 5: the worst case scenario doesn't seem that improbable either, Which
Speaker 5: is what which is that like it'll just be all
Speaker 5: slop from here on out. The slop will just get
Speaker 5: more and more and more slop, Like because we're so
Speaker 5: focused in like chure out content and if someone can
Speaker 5: just click a button and star in like seven seasons
Speaker 5: of Game of Throne knockoff, they're going to want to
Speaker 5: do that. What are the incentives for making quality content?
Speaker 5: But at the same time, like, I don't think it's
Speaker 5: an all or nothing. I'm sure it'll just continue to
Speaker 5: be kind of both.
Speaker 3: It's a matter of if people who care about movies
Speaker 3: and the art form of movies will invite these kinds
Speaker 3: of movies into their lives or worlds.
Speaker 5: Yeah. One thing I thought was really interesting in response
Speaker 5: to the piece is at the end of the piece,
Speaker 5: Natasha talks about how her neighbor was David Lynch before
Speaker 5: he died, and she related to me like this conversation
Speaker 5: she had with him about asking him his thoughts, and
Speaker 5: his response was to pick up a pencil and say
Speaker 5: this is AI, basically like, it's a tool. What matters
Speaker 5: is how you use it. And then all these people
Speaker 5: online were like, how dare she drag David Lynch's name
Speaker 5: through the mud like this? He would never have used AI,
Speaker 5: But I thought it was actually very probable that he
Speaker 5: would have said that because he was a constantly evolving
Speaker 5: filmmaker who did use many tools that were at the
Speaker 5: time that he began using them controversial and something that
Speaker 5: others were saying would lead to the death of art
Speaker 5: and the death of filmmaking. So I do think it's
Speaker 5: true that it's just a tool and that like, of course,
Speaker 5: people will make interesting things with it, and there are
Speaker 5: interesting artists right now who are experimenting with it, and
Speaker 5: we haven't seen their work yet, but I think once
Speaker 5: those projects start to come out, there will be a
Speaker 5: shift in attitude. I think the Netflix. Ted Surrando said this,
Speaker 5: like he thinks that it's not just going to make
Speaker 5: movies much cheaper to make, but also ten percent better,
Speaker 5: and that the reason it would make movies ten percent
Speaker 5: better is because like, oh, we'll be more freed up
Speaker 5: to spend more time on the creativity. And to me,
Speaker 5: it's like, well, that's certainly not an inevitable outcome. It
Speaker 5: could easily be just that it's faster and now you're
Speaker 5: expected to just churn out more and more and more
Speaker 5: and more, and you're never giving that time back to
Speaker 5: invest in the creativity.
Speaker 3: After the break, Will AI ever completely replace human filmmakers?
Speaker 7: Stay with us?
Speaker 3: I want to pivot a little bit here to the
Speaker 3: thing that people are focused on most in any conversation
Speaker 3: about AI, which is job. It's no secret that creative
Speaker 3: workers in Hollywood are struggling. Whether it be writers, actors,
Speaker 3: I don't know. It seems like there's a lot on
Speaker 3: the line right now. What were people saying to you
Speaker 3: in your piece, and in your reporting about the future
Speaker 3: of the quote unquote Hollywood workforce.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question that there
Speaker 5: has already been job loss and that there will probably
Speaker 5: be more job loss. It's very hard, though, to really
Speaker 5: pin down the reasons why. When I was talking to
Speaker 5: unions in Hollywood for the piece, no one was sort
Speaker 5: of able or willing to say, like, our members lost
Speaker 5: to this many jobs because of AI. There's also problems
Speaker 5: like the box office is down and budgets are tighter.
Speaker 5: But all of that said, I think there are some
Speaker 5: specific areas where it's pretty clear that like AI can
Speaker 5: do as good job as a person, which is not
Speaker 5: everywhere by any means. But for example, the junior studio executive,
Speaker 5: a big part of that person's job was to write
Speaker 5: script analyzes, and that's something that generative AI can do
Speaker 5: a really good job of and it's not really a
Speaker 5: creative enterprise exactly. When the studio executive talked to me
Speaker 5: about it, that was how she came up writing script
Speaker 5: summaries for her bosses, and now she doesn't need an
Speaker 5: assistant to do that for her. But at the same
Speaker 5: time she was like, but I am worried about what
Speaker 5: is the next generation of studio executives. How are they
Speaker 5: going to learn when this core function of their job
Speaker 5: is no longer necessary? And so who am I training now?
Speaker 5: No one.
Speaker 3: Is it fair to fear that AI will take over
Speaker 3: filmmaking altogether.
Speaker 5: I think that's a reasonable thing to be somewhat afraid of,
Speaker 5: although I do think that it's a pretty complicated question actually,
Speaker 5: because do I think that people will lose the urge
Speaker 5: to create art? No, But it could be that we
Speaker 5: reach a time where there's no economic incentive to do
Speaker 5: it because most people spend their time scrolling TikTok, and
Speaker 5: that there's no more like eyeballs that want to engage
Speaker 5: in serious art. And I mean that's kind of true
Speaker 5: for not just Hollywood, but also publishing, writing, podcasting, everything.
Speaker 5: Is there going to be money to keep making original work?
Speaker 5: But I don't think that we're in a place where
Speaker 5: AI could produce a good movie without human involvement. And
Speaker 5: I don't really know that we will ever be in
Speaker 5: a place where AI could make a good movie without
Speaker 5: human involvement. And core feature of AI is that it
Speaker 5: has no taste. I think sometimes when you have these
Speaker 5: conversations with people who are like thinking about this vision
Speaker 5: where like AI is replacing everything. It's predicated on the
Speaker 5: idea that there's going to continue to be like an
Speaker 5: exponential leap forward and what it can do. And like,
Speaker 5: right now, like AI can't write a good script, for instance,
Speaker 5: and nobody thinks it can. I mean, that's part of
Speaker 5: why the writer's victory during the strikes wasn't that meaningful,
Speaker 5: because right now it really can't create a.
Speaker 6: Good script, but it could in the future.
Speaker 5: Maybe it seems like a real question mark. Meaningful artwork
Speaker 5: has to reflect human choice. So you can imagine someone
Speaker 5: using chat GBT as part of their writing process, but
Speaker 5: it would still have to be led by a person.
Speaker 5: Because I don't think that AI can produce meaningful It
Speaker 5: doesn't have any motivation, It doesn't have any desire to
Speaker 5: express anything.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's why taste seems to be the final
Speaker 3: frontier that would need to be entirely disrupted, which is
Speaker 3: from where I stand, seemingly impossible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just like a different order of business entirely.
Speaker 5: A lot of people that I talk to in AI
Speaker 5: don't think that that is going to happen. They more
Speaker 5: think that it will in the realm of Hollywood, say,
Speaker 5: get better and better and better at doing these specific
Speaker 5: technical functions, which is so different than give me seven
Speaker 5: seasons of whatever TV show.
Speaker 3: Did you get a sense at all in reporting this
Speaker 3: that of like how lay people feel about more and
Speaker 3: more AI content coming out of Hollywood?
Speaker 5: I mean most people, I don't think feel great about it.
Speaker 5: There is, like, I think, a shift since the writer strikes,
Speaker 5: of just more and more acceptance, partly also because chat
Speaker 5: GPT is so widely used now and so more and
Speaker 5: more people are having some form of interaction with it
Speaker 5: and being like this can be helpful. Oh, I could
Speaker 5: do this thing, that would be helpful. So I think
Speaker 5: a big message right now is like, if you want
Speaker 5: to be employed, then you have to use AI. And
Speaker 5: that's true for like every industry right now, not just Hollywood.
Speaker 5: It's like, if you take away the environmental problems, if
Speaker 5: you take away the theft of the world's artwork and
Speaker 5: set those issues aside for a second.
Speaker 6: Those two small factors, those.
Speaker 5: Two small factors, then I do think that it is
Speaker 5: a tool, and there's nothing inherently frightening about it, and
Speaker 5: I think there are certain areas where it's just here
Speaker 5: to stay. So it's not that useful to be like
Speaker 5: that's bad, because it's just the nature of the world
Speaker 5: right now. So I think some of the reactions to
Speaker 5: it don't make a ton of sense. Like I don't
Speaker 5: think that using AI currently curdles the work, because I
Speaker 5: think there's tons of ways to use it that the
Speaker 5: viewer will never even be aware of. And I think
Speaker 5: that there is an increasing number of people lower down
Speaker 5: in the industry who come to their producers and are like,
Speaker 5: here's a good solution to this problem we've been dealing with.
Speaker 5: Should we try it? And I think that is something
Speaker 5: that I've heard was increasingly common.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you so much, Llila, this was a great conversation.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 7: For tect stuff.
Speaker 4: I'm Cara Price and I'm most Valocian.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis Tyler Hill and
Speaker 3: Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me Oswa Lashin
Speaker 3: and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our
Speaker 3: theme song.
Speaker 4: Join us on Friday for the Week in Tech.
Speaker 1: Karen and I will run through the tech headlines you
Speaker 1: may have missed, and please do rate and review the
Speaker 1: show wherever you listen to your podcasts, and reach out
Speaker 1: to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.