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Just when you thought generative AI was starting to calm down, a Hollywood studio partners with a leading AI vendor to bring AI-generated films to life.
Last week, Lionsgate, a film studio behind big motion pictures like The Hunger Games and John Wick entered into an agreement with generative AI vendor Runway to train a new AI model based on the company’s film and TV archives.
While many will undoubtedly be excited to see how AI can enhance film production, it’s hard not to see this as an attempt to replace human creatives in the industry, who helped build this library of content in the first place.
PR spin aside, many artists are going to have their work scraped and used to create content that’s going to displace them in the pre-production and post-production process.
What is the Lionsgate-Runway Deal?
At this stage, the exact details of the Lionsgate-Runway deal are limited, but we do know that it will lead to the creation of a new AI model to help generate “cinematic video.” This means that content from films like Dirty Dancing, The Twilight Saga, Saw, Rambo, and The Crow will be scraped and used to create new video content.
Of course, Lionsgate has been quick to position the move as an attempt to empower rather than displace human creatives.
“Runway is a visionary, best-in-class partner who will help us to utilize AI to develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities,” said Lionsgate Vice Chair Michael Burns in the announcement press release.
“Several of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications to their pre-production and post-production process. We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing, and supplementing our current operations.”
Runway co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela was also eager to stress how the move will help creatives to augment the creative process.
“We’re committed to giving artists, creators and studios the best and most powerful tools to augment their workflows and enable new ways of bringing their stories to life,” Valenzuela said in the official release.
This all sounds great on paper, but the talk of creatives being empowered by these types of tools rings hollow when an AI model is going to be trained on their work, with the possible intention of replacing them in the creative process as part of a “capital efficient” approach to content creation.
It’s worth noting that the deal not only comes while Runway is in the midst of a class action lawsuit for allegedly using artists’ works to train its AI models without consent, but just after Lionsgate production The Crow underperformed at the box office.
How AI-Generated Film Will Impact Human Creatives
So far there has been significant criticism surrounding the partnership online, particularly among creatives.
Film concept artist Reid Southen quickly voiced his disapproval of the decision, tweeting “I wonder how the directors and actors of their films feel about having their work fed into the AI to make a proprietary model. As an artist on The Hunger Games? I’m p*ssed.
“This is the first step in trying to replace artists and filmmakers.”
This is a relevant point, because though writers, directors, animators and other creatives will have signed over rights to their work, and it’s unclear whether they would have done so if they knew that their performances, designs, and likenesses could be repackaged by artificial intelligence in synthetic media.
Of course that’s not even mentioning whether or not it would be fair for deceased actors, notably Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing or Brandon Lee from The Crow, to have their performances and likeness used to train AI models that could potentially use and recreate their work in new content? (which has not been suggested but may be possible based on what limited information there is available about the arrangement).
All the creative language in the world can’t get around the fact that this deal doesn’t look good for creatives. There’s a reason that The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) went on strike against the use of AI script writing in 2023; they felt there was an existential threat in Hollywood Studios using AI in the creative process.
The Runway deal poses similar issues. If pre and post-production jobs are gobbled up by AI, there’s going to be less entry points for human creatives. Consumers are also going to face a scenario where the stylistic direction of films is increasingly influenced by AI.
Who Wants to Watch AI-generated Films?
Even from a financial standpoint, will audience-goers want to watch AI movies?
Would the Alien franchise have the longevity it does without the direct influence of H.R Giger’s designs? Maybe not. Would George Lucas’ Star Wars have generated the generational interest it has if the artistic generation was guided by AI? Unlikely.
The moment AI starts getting added into the creative process, the integrity of the end product will start to suffer as decisions and designs become more isolated from authentic human expression, and become watered-down with aesthetically-pleasing but hollow outputs created by machines.
Part of the fun of watching films is seeing what journey the director wants to take you on. The best films take you along for the ride, whereas with the current state of AI-generated media, it is guessing and regurgitating what you want to see.
This is not to say that AI doesn’t have a place in filmmaking — that is ultimately up to directors and other creatives to decide, but that there is always the risk that it will obscure the human expression that viewers crave.
The Bottom Line
No matter what way you slice it, many writers, actors, directors, and animators are going to have their work scraped to produce a model that competes against them in the future.
Some creatives may be excited to experiment with this technology to bring their ideas to life — and a good case for that is made by Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela on the Acquired podcast, but many see serious danger to the role of human creatives in the industry.
