My Son Is Going to Film School – What’s the Point in an AI World? | PRO Insight

It’s hard not to at least contemplate the worst when leading AI experts on the planet warn of human extinction at the virtual hands of artificial intelligence. While certainly less planetary in scale, wise minds raise similar concerns about generative AI’s potential destructive impact on creators, their jobs and the arts in general.

In my recurring columns, I have tried to remain stoic and non-alarmist, presenting all aspects of the AI debate in the world of entertainment. Yes, AI directly threatens creative livelihoods. But many artists also already consider AI to be a powerful new tool to expand their art, not threaten it.

I struggle with these conflicting thoughts myself, decades into my career. But how about those just now entering the world of work — like my son, Luca, who attends the great NYU film school?

In a world confronted with the many challenges of AI, does an investment in film school still matter? Is it worth it? To answer that, we have to ask still-bigger questions: Will human creative works find value in a world increasingly flooded by the artificial?

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Luca himself addressed Hollywood’s treatment of AI over the years in a video essay that is worth watching, even if you’re not someone prone to saying, “Luca, I am your father!” (You can check out his other films here.)

It’s all a matter of scale and perspective, of course. AI used as a tool is a fundamentally different proposition than AI as a self-directed workflow from ideation to creation. Yet both are already possible. So which is more probable?

To see AI as an artistic tool, as I’ve written recently, look to pioneering tech-forward musical artist Grimes as Exhibit A. She created her own generative AI website to enable her fans to create entirely new works that utilize her voice and even stems of her music through AI. She has already praised its result, calling one fan’s recent AI-generated song “Cold Touch” a “masterpiece.” The cost of admission to use her app, rather than illegally scrape her music, is to share 50% of the revenues generated thereby.

In the world of filmmaking, Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, co-founder of AI production studio Seyhan Lee, recently wowed a crowd of entertainment executives as she and leading visual effects artists discussed her multi-layered Cuebric AI tech at the AI on the Lot industry confab I attended.

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Demirdag later told me that Cuebric, named in homage to legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, exists “to go from concept to camera in minutes.” Just type in text of the background setting or scene you want, and in seconds out comes a photorealistic, high-res insta-scene, no physical location or crew needed. In Demirdag’s view, Cuebric takes away drudgery and leaves more time for filmmakers to ideate and ultimately create.

Not surprisingly, tech impresario Marc Andreessen sees AI’s role in the creative arts in the same way. In a new blog post titled “Why AI Will Save the World,” he predicts “a golden age, as AI-augmented artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers gain the ability to realize their visions far faster and at greater scale than ever before.”

Of course, technology has continuously transformed production over the years. We saw that with green screens, Lucasfilm’s special effects and later with Pixar and animation. More recently, Disney’s “The Mandalorian” series created an entirely new kind of virtual production studio, dispensing with the need to venture out into deserts altogether. Cuebric takes that next step to streamline things even further. So, many would say, nothing new here: This is just tech’s inexorable march. Innocuous enough, right?

But all of this also raises the question of what’s next. What is AI’s endgame in the world of entertainment? Generative AI is already capable of complete end-to-end filmmaking: from generating the script and creating and voicing the characters, to full production and post-production — and it’s winning awards in the process. The fully AI-created short film “The Crow” won the coveted Jury Award at the 2022 Cannes Short Film Festival. And remember, we are only six months into a world left astounded by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

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In the not-too-distant future, actors may not even be needed to play their parts. Generative AI will enable filmmakers to cast, say, Timothée Chalamet — his voice, likeness and movements — and place him into fully AI-generated productions while he sits on the beach sipping margaritas, likely inspiring an entirely new field of “prompt directors.” The Screen Actors Guild, in its ongoing negotiations with the studios, doesn’t necessarily want to block this development — as long as actors get a hefty cut of the action.

Some will ask, why not forget the human element altogether? Ever-more-sophisticated generative AI ultimately may be able to scrape whatever parameters it wants from Hollywood productions of the past, like the most significant common elements from Best Picture winners and top-grossing films at the box office — to create its own stories and fully realized visions.

This isn’t just a possible future for Hollywood. It’s probable.

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But that doesn’t mean that it paints the full picture and reduces human filmmaking and creative endeavors in general to zero. To the contrary, the escalating flood of generative AI works raises the value of human creativity, ultimately elevating it and cementing its preeminence in the order of things.

As I’ve written before, there is something non-programmable, non-algorithmic in works of true originality and humanity. My filmmaking son Luca puts it more eloquently. He tells me that true art flows from “the profound commentaries that come from lived human experience, a resonant understanding of beauty and the passion and character that results through the adaptation of a project through working out flaws, barriers and a range of other challenges.”

Seyhan Lee’s Demirdag ultimately agrees and pushed back sharply on the notion that creators should fear AI. When asked what ultimately differentiates human creativity from that of the artificial, she answered with one word: “Transcendence.” Faced with an ever-escalating flood of AI-generated works, “we will intuitively know” the difference, she said, with well-trained eyes distinguishing the robot from the human.

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I asked Demirdag about the practical realities of entertainment jobs and, more specifically, jobs likely to be lost due to generative AI. I couldn’t help but think of Luca and other young artists in that moment.

“I would like to invite you and the reader into a world view where nobody poses a threat for you other than yourself. You control your future,” she said. “You are in the driver’s seat.”

Academy Award-winning VFX expert Robert Legato agrees. Speaking at the AI on the Lot event with Demirdag, he told the crowd, “The people who hate [AI] or are fearful of it are insecure about their own talent.”

All well and good, of course, but tell that to Hollywood writers currently on strike, many of whom I have no doubt are very secure in their talent. Just because understandable trepidation about AI exists doesn’t mean that their response is due to outright hatred. They, like all of us, are simply trying to figure out our place in our fast-transforming worlds.

Demirdag’s response: “The point of fear is to take action.” She’s at least directionally correct, of course. Any other reaction would be self-defeating.

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And action they took! Hence, the writers’ strike to push the major studios and streamers to define guardrails right now to prioritize Team Human over Team AI (something I discussed in detail in one of my recent articles). They’re seeking to enshrine Demirdag’s and Legato’s pronouncements into basic fundamental tenets that ensure Hollywood sees AI as a tool, rather than a competing potential replacement and lead actor.

So yes, dear Luca, NYU’s film school is worth every penny. It’s worthwhile not only to enhance your craft and overall creative palette, but also to learn from others before you, engage with your creative peers and participate in the great act of trying to lift up humanity through your stories (not to mention for the experience of living in the great city of New York).

True originality flows from our engagement with the physical world, our bodies, our minds and the minds of those around us. That specific lighting and shot you framed in that particular moment will lead you to create a scene that AI may try to later replicate, but cannot not truly originate.

Luca, without you and other human creators, we face “the normalization of mediocrity,” as Demirdag put it. And I know that you and other young creators — not to mention your young audiences — don’t want to live in a world like that.

For those of you interested in learning more, visit Peter’s firm Creative Media at creativemedia.biz and follow him on Twitter @pcsathy. 

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