Movies have a uniformly negative view of artificial intelligence. Think of “The Terminator,'' or any movie where a computer brain gains sentience, decides we humans are too troublesome to survive, and wipes us all out.
Well, AI-induced nuclear annihilation is one thing, and being replaced is another. So said the picketers of the recently concluded Writers and Actors Guild strike. They shut down their entertainment factories primarily because artificial intelligence was infiltrating scriptwriting and acting, areas that had previously been handled only by humans. It's like the Frankenstein myth, except the rampaging monster steals all our work.
Why is the use of AI in movies so controversial?
The strikers eventually settled on the issue of studios using AI services like ChatGPT to generate scripts (thus putting human screenwriters out of work) and rewriting existing scripts ( (Ibid.), and even after receiving assurances that he would back out of his plans to come up with ideas for new shows and movies. It doesn't need people, except for a kind of writing janitor who cleans the area. Actors are also concerned about studios inserting AI-generated performers into scenes. For example, a proposed daily fee for extras could allow a computer-generated portrait to be used forever without paying the original actor.
Hollywood has tried to kill screenwriters before.
Robert Altman's still-scathing 1992 Hollywood satire The Player, in which a group of film producers complain about the high costs and onerous creative needs of screenwriters, features Tim Robbins's murderous The executive ultimately mused: It is to exclude the writer from the artistic process. If we can eliminate these actors and directors, we might find something. ”
The curse of “content”.
Film and television are art, but that art requires a lot of cooperation and funding. People at the top want financial rewards at minimal cost, and AI is a bloodless technological workaround to the whole nasty “worker” situation with writer's block, human rights, etc. We provide. The word “content” has quietly entered the dictionary, so much so that it's easy to forget how anti-artistic the word is. By “content” I mean streaming his machines and producing enough entertainment to keep people from getting off the couch. Content devalues writing, acting, directing, and basically anything that strives for greatness in favor of “good enough to keep watching.”
Human artists have several ideas.
Naturally, only an artist can sum up an existential artistic dilemma. Introducing Australian songwriting legend Nick Cave, who was shown a Nick Cave song written by an AI. “This is what we humble humans can offer that AI can only imitate. The transcendental journey of an artist who forever struggles with his own shortcomings… With love and respect from all over the world, this song (expletive) is a grotesque mockery of what it means to be human.”
The backlash can be ugly.
Technological advances evoke as much fear and wonder at the greatness that humans are capable of achieving as they bring awareness that our time at the top is over. A really funny, ambitious, and raunchy horror movie just came out to stream called “Late Night With the Devil,” and it's an inventive, visceral, low-budget shocker (David Dastmalchian plays a great lead role). It also made the unforced mistake of using AI to generate collateral images during a bloody incident, which likely caused a huge backlash. The filmmakers claim that the final film consisted of AI Noodling consisting of only three still images of him, but the PR damage caused is that fellow creators claim that AI's infringement It shows how vivid it is.
But are all the AIs in movies evil?
There's a filmmaker in Maine named George Dalfin. He creates art under the stimulating conditions of Man Like Machines. In works such as the web series “Your Universe Is Weird'' and his science fiction short story “Stygian Blues,'' Dalphin and his (human) collaborators use AI image sources such as MidJounrey to create truly remarkable, highly creating an interesting alternative world. I love his work and voted for Stygian Blues to win several awards at the Maine Film Institute's Winter Film Challenge a few years ago.
A person's last thoughts.
In the hands of artists, AI is just a tool, like auto-tuning music. We don't want to hear all the automatic tuning, but in Daft Punk's hands, AI can take music to new and exciting places. Dalphin, a novelist, musician, and filmmaker, doesn't have computers churning out content to his name. He is an artist who is experimenting with interesting new mediums to create captivating work. As he assured me when we talked about “Your Universe Is Strange,” all the actual writing and voice acting was done by him and his (also human) partner. Still, I remember the warning in Dalphin's voice as he realized there was an AI service that might have written it. AI is coming. It all comes down to how much power you want to give to your AI.
Dennis Perkins is a freelance writer who lives in Auburn with his wife and cat.
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