Lionsgate has become the first significant Hollywood studio to go all-in on AI. The company today announced a “first-of-its-kind” partnership with AI research company Runway to create and train an exclusive new AI model based on its portfolio of film and tv content.
Lionsgate’s exclusive model will be used to generate what it calls “cinematic video” which can then be further iterated using Runway’s technology. The goal is to save money – “millions and millions of dollars” according to Lionsgate studio vice chairman Michael Burns – by having filmmakers and creators use its AI model to replace artists in production tasks such as storyboarding.
In corporate jargon terminology, Burns said that AI will be used to “develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities.” He added that “several of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications to their pre-production and post-production process.”
Again, why are we having AI take over the creative jobs? Making music, art, writing, voice acting, etc. Let’s train AI to work retail so that burnout cashier can finally learn how to play guitar like they’ve been putting off because they have to work 50+ hours a week.
Clerks don’t cost as much as creatives. Eventually they’ll come for the clerks too.
Exactly fuck AI companies. Seriously all fucking shit jobs that could be done by robots and yet instead they taking all the fun stuff and our hobbies and runing them.
As a writer I guess just mark my books human written and people should only read, buy and watch content only made by humans and let AI die until corporations get the fucking hint.
Go get a fucking robot to work the factory jobs and leave our creative work alone.
Because mistakes are less obvious, and when they do happen tend to be subjective and hard to “prove”. You can do a creative job poorly and it might be a while before anyone catches on, so AI gets to just sort of squat there while AI companies pretend LLMs are capable of genuine creative output.
Any job that has an objectively correct result from the work being done will be screwed up by AI on day one, if not immediately.
Any job that has an objectively correct result from the work being done will be screwed up by AI on day one, if not immediately.
See also: AI written code
Like learn how to play guitar in the street cause they lost their job and need new money now? Cause I don’t see how using AI forces a company to contribute anything at all in a funding of general basic income or how it’s called…
I get what you’re saying, and agree, but “cashier” is perhaps not the best example? Self check outs have been around for ages and Amazon (I think?) has those “just walk out” stores that are supposed to be AI powered. I seem to recall reading that the just walk out stores were actually powered by cheaper “cashiers”, in another country, but - it shows they’re working on it.
I believe Amazon doesn’t do the “just walk out” thing anymore because it didn’t work very well.
Yes, and it wasn’t AI powered. It was a ton of exploited outsourced workers working for nearly nothing watching the camera feeds.
By design, AI is only able to regurgitate the info it’s been trained on in a slightly different pattern. So I’m not sure how this is supposed to work out.
I have a better proposal for you, Lionsgate: cut the CEO and all their cronies. I’m pretty sure you’ll save a lot more money that way, while keeping the people who actually produce the stuff that makes you money.
What a horrible timeline.
Replacing the CEO with A.I. will also save “millions and millions of dollars”.
By design, AI is only able to regurgitate the info it’s been trained on in a slightly different pattern. So I’m not sure how this is supposed to work out.
Just like any other Lionsgate film.
It seems most movies these days are just rehashing old content anyway - why not automate it?
Every artist in every field just walk away right now let them let AI take over. They will be begging you to come back in due time and you should force them to give you a pay raise.
yea pretty much this, AI is doing some pretty impressive things and even though orders of magnitude faster than a human, no where near in quality as what a human can do as of now (and who knows maybe not even in the next ten years). So any company who treats their employers like “extra costs to be get rid off” deserves the whack of reality.
There are some really cool things. Summarizing meetings or emails (at the low low cost of the last shred of your privacy), doing low stakes drafting to solve the “blank doc” problem etc. Advances in medical imaging are crazy cool as well, but that’s been bubbling since mid 2000s and we just called it “machine learning”.
Replacing creatives is utter insanity.
Complete model collapse can’t come soon enough.
Happy Cakeday! 🍰🎂
Thanks! I was having so much fun I didn’t notice.
Reminds me of the magazine that fired all its copy editors when the first grammar checker came out. That was sometime in the early nineties and yes, it went predictably.
so it’s not enough that we’re getting a bunch of remakes of remakes. We’re now going to get the average of all of them.
There are movies which are literally made by storyboard. As in they storyboard out the entire thing very carefully and deliberately over a significant period of time before they start shooting and stick to that storyboard religiously. And it makes for really good movies in terms of cinematography.
You’re not going to get that with AI. That takes talking to an artist who understands what you’re saying and can make well-reasoned suggestions.
Edit for example: Director Peter Yates was famous for that and got two best picture nominations for Breaking Away and The Dresser due to it. I grew up in the town where Breaking Away takes place in and was shot and, although I was far too young to remember anything about it, I know virtually every “making of” story out there because of friends and family. In the bike race scene the movie is well known for, Yates set up a big tent in the middle of the stadium and put the entire storyboard for those scenes inside the tent so he could refer to it for every shot.
wait, their boss is called M. Burns?!
do they also have a H. Simpson on the rolls?
It’ll probably be like anytime someone decides to outsource work to a less skilled worker. You’ll either end up with an inferior product or you’ll have to scrap what you got and redo it at the cost of more time and a higher price thus completely negating the whole reason for outsourcing in the first place. So many people making these decisions can’t see past the next quarter on the graph.
Lmao if I held stock I’d dump it so fast.
Cutting out everyone but the middleman
Sure, a bunch of people are gonna lose their incomes and our product is going to get worse, but think of the savings!
I’d say boycott, but odds are the movies will be so generic nobody will want to watch them anyway.
AI writes stories / storyboards. Hollywood continues to make trash. Nobody buys it. Hollywood: “Wow. Why didn’t THAT work?”
It’s like watching someone hit themselves in the nuts with a mallet.
So boycott Lionsgate now. Easy enough.
