Watch the Chilling Trailer for 'Morgan' Created by IBM’s Super-Computer Watson
The upcoming sci-fi thriller Morgan is an Ex Machina-by-way-of-Alien drama that’s benefited from some strong pre-release trailers. But in an effort to maximize the creepiness of those promos, Twentieth Century Fox has turned to an unlikely creative ally: IBM’s super-computer Watson.
As explained in the above video, Watson was challenged with crafting an original trailer for Morgan on its own. The idea was to see if the artificially intelligent computer could use its complex algorithms to deduce what elements of the film would most intrigue and unsettle audiences. That task entailed analyzing every one of its scenes for their action and tone, all so it could then assemble the peak moments into something coherent. The result is the trailer above.
Watson’s work (which was aided, in the end, by an IBM filmmaker) isn’t necessarily any scarier than the earlier human-crafted trailers. But the implications of the ad’s very existence — notions directly addressed by the video’s IBM experts — are decidedly unnerving and dovetail nicely with Morgan’s own portrait of the potentially terrible consequences of artificial life.
If director Luke Scott’s film is any indication of what an A.I.-enhanced future will look like, we’re probably lucky that Watson isn’t yet capable of making its own movies — or, for that matter, doing other sentient things over which we have no control. You can check out the IBM machine’s first-ever trailer above, and see Morgan in theaters beginning Friday.
