Lionsgate has signed a deal with AI company Runway, and hopes that AI can eliminate storyboard artists and VFX crews. The studio says that replacing human artists with AI will save “millions and millions of dollars.”
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Looking forward to the news of the first studio exec throwing themself out a window upon the realization that all the money they spent on this garbage creates nothing but inhuman, unmarketable nonsense.
It's all dependent upon what people will accept.
AI Enthusiasts are not expecting it to be "good". They are expecting it to be "good enough".
It may be janky and not follow physics correctly but it's much cheaper than human labor and that's all that corporations tend to care about. The numbers.
Wouldn't be surprised if this, along with The Crow flopping a week later, is part of the decision to announce that. Those two together are studio destroying, and they might be trying to stem the stock market bleeding.
For an intelligent group, yes. But these are executives with the creative capability of a snail who are just trying to save their short-term investments.
I'm hoping it turns out to be a "copilot" scenario where no sane developer wants to even touch the massive code-spaghetti generated by those things. Let alone take accountability for it. I wouldn't.
Art shares a lot with coding in that regard. It's much harder to fix crap than to redo it properly.
If you've worked in this industry at all (have you? let's assume not), the only way you're going to save Millions and Millions of Dollars by using AI to produce storyboards is by cutting the human artists (and their inconvenient payments/salaries) out of the equation. HTH.
I'm not defending Lionsgate. I'm being critical of Cartoon Brew making unsubstantiated claims for monetary gain by exploiting popular opinion on AI while also uncritically featuring AI projects on their site. I think it's a manipulative practice
you do save a bunch of money by giving existing employees better tools to do the things they already do faster; maybe you are an idiot and think the things they already do are all you need and fire them, but maybe you have them use the time to do *new* things you can't get have a tool do
I'm not convinced generative AI is a better tool that will save time and money without cutting jobs, but Cartoon Brew making that assumption and reporting it as fact without a source is what I'm being critical of
the vfx team does lots of explosions; a tool based on the explosions they made could certainly save them time making the explosion so they can go make flying cars they haven't done before. it all comes down to how dumb or smart Lionsgate is 🤷♀️
I'm sure Cartoon Gate could do with better editors. Maybe they might hire some. ...Meanwhile *my* attention, and sympathy, are on/with the human storyboard artists. Whom I've hired often enough, and whom I know no decent animation (or live action) property can do without.
this is a longstanding issue with CB. they frequently use loaded language in headlines and make unsubstantiated claims and then their articles spread across social media where tons of people give them money through ad revenue
They want to use it for storyboarding and VFX. Currently, those are human artists’ jobs.
We can reasonably extrapolate from general corporate behavior around AI, as well as how film studios continuously shit on animators & VFX folks, that they’ll scrap all the workers they can.
That's a reasonable assumption to make from the WSJ article, yes. Cartoon Brew, however, is jumping the shark and is reporting unsubstantiated claims as fact for monetary gain by exploiting popular opinion on AI
let me underline that I'm being critical of Cartoon Brew and their practices. I emphatically do not like film studios embracing AI as a means to save on costs and yes, I think it will cost people their jobs
I like good journalism and fact-checking, and am solidly against AI.
Thanks for calling and the problem and helping me understand where you were coming from.
Did it ever occur to them that if AI becomes good enough to generate entire movies, then there would be no reason to buy an AI movie? You'd just generate your own if you were ok with AI movies existing.
Inaccurate.
It'll *cost* them "millions and millions of dollars".
They'll *still* have to bring people in to fix the generated crap anyway to make it remotely usable, & it'll be awful & *vastly* inferior to what trained professionals can do. Direct to VHS quality at BEST.
I wish them failure.
✨️🤘✨️
When that happens they will sue anyways. They'll pick a jurisdiction with a friendly judge, establish a precedent and invite higher courts and/or lawmakers to "fix" it. Seeing as judicial bribery is normalized and more or less legal in the US, it'll likely work out for them.
Humans must be substantially involved in the pipeline to get copyright on the output, they need to change the law to avoid that or else they still can't avoid needing human editors to touch it up
Anyone who's made the mistake of seeing what's on YouTube for kids has already run into the amazingly enormous piles of computer-generated (and I believe storylines too) creepy garbage that comes up scarily high in search results.
I'm certain the newer stuff is all gen AI
My personal conspiracy theory is that the Elsagate stuff from years ago was the product of a sort of proto-AI, or a test run for mass generated media that exists only to exploit algorithms for ad revenue. It just recycled the same assers because full blown video generation didn't exist yet.
This is gonna sound miserable, but social media is a catch-22 in that they have to monetize in some way to keep the service up, but making monetization incentives available to the users guarantees the death of meaningful use of your platform.
1. No one wants to watch AI shit.
2. If they don’t own the AI tools, then they’re just a middleman. By giving up their artistic talent, they lose the only unique part of their value proposition.
3. Ergo, replacing human artists with AI will *lose* millions and millions of dollars.
Movies are already a project-based business, where it is "normal" that production companies incorporate a new company for every new movie. That way, if a movie fails, it will not directly affect other parts of the business.
Also, most of the people on movie VFX are hired for a limited time.
Yeah, different ways to do (somewhat) similar things. 😅 Recently there was news about a Finnish YouTube video producer that had a separate LLC in the USA to reduce amount of direct risk. Largely because if someone sues in a civil court, it would crash whole personal savings because of legal costs.
All those VFX and storyboard people can argue against all this AI for much obvious reasons. Their jobs are at risk, but it seems Lionsgate owners don't care. It's insane...
While I don't like cartoonbrew giving this slop air time it does strike me as a little iffy that the complaint seems to be "cartoonbrew are uncritical about AI" then linking an article where they are, if barely, critical. Especially on a post where they do in fact appear to be being critical.
I'm puzzled when companies claim they can save millions by replacing humans and using AI to create their products. They presumably expect to continue selling their products to people, but will have vastly reduced their potential market, those customers now have no money having been replaced by AI?
If they don't care enough about their movies to make them, why would I care enough to watch them? I can get equally meaningful narratives with photorealistic visuals and surround sound just by looking out my front window - for free!
Suuuuuuuurrrrrreeeeee. Let's replace hard working humans with AI so that the suits in the big fat leather chairs can make more money while they play cash solitaire and bet on sports on their smartphones all day...
In all seriousness, this is probably part of the plan: hire artists back as freelancers who can be paid less because technically they're just cleaning up the AI "art"
More work than just starting from scratch, and between the sunk cost of AI and the number of artists they'll need it will probably cost them more than just making a move would have, but someone can claim they're "innovating" and push for a promotion this way
this is their plan for scripted live action material as well. if ai generates the scripts for a tv show, it eliminates any creator credit and any need for a writers room. all you need is one “showrunner” to “revise” the scripts at an exponentially lower fee.
I'm gonna contract with a different AI company to watch the films for me, thus saving me the time, trouble and experience of consuming this hot garbage.
Comments
AI Enthusiasts are not expecting it to be "good". They are expecting it to be "good enough".
It may be janky and not follow physics correctly but it's much cheaper than human labor and that's all that corporations tend to care about. The numbers.
People are pretty picky, turns out.
Like, say…original films, rather than tie-ins and remakes?
Art shares a lot with coding in that regard. It's much harder to fix crap than to redo it properly.
as much as I dislike generative AI, I dislike manipulative tactics to generate clicks for ad revenue just as much
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/lionsgate-studio-behind-john-wick-signs-deal-with-ai-startup-runway-f2180245
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/tools/openais-sora-creates-minute-long-photorealistic-animation-from-text-prompts-238060.html
I think it's good to call out bad journalism
We can reasonably extrapolate from general corporate behavior around AI, as well as how film studios continuously shit on animators & VFX folks, that they’ll scrap all the workers they can.
all while uncritically featuring AI on their site
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/tools/openais-sora-creates-minute-long-photorealistic-animation-from-text-prompts-238060.html
I do not like both things
Thanks for calling and the problem and helping me understand where you were coming from.
(I leave autocorrect on to help me communicate when I have bad migraines, and end up solidly regretting it when I’m well.)
Not fond of WSJ or their slant, as a whole, but they’re reliable in certain ways.
It'll *cost* them "millions and millions of dollars".
They'll *still* have to bring people in to fix the generated crap anyway to make it remotely usable, & it'll be awful & *vastly* inferior to what trained professionals can do. Direct to VHS quality at BEST.
I wish them failure.
✨️🤘✨️
I'm certain the newer stuff is all gen AI
Maybe when all the frustrated art kids raised on AI slop grow up, they'll rebel so hard we'll have an artistic renaissance.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elsagate/id1441348407?i=1000532123171
Bluesky please add an edit button...
https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2
2. If they don’t own the AI tools, then they’re just a middleman. By giving up their artistic talent, they lose the only unique part of their value proposition.
3. Ergo, replacing human artists with AI will *lose* millions and millions of dollars.
Also, most of the people on movie VFX are hired for a limited time.
Production companies form budgets for each new project; I’ve worked on some films that have failed so badly it tanked the entire company.
Also just because we are contract-based employees, doesn’t mean retention isn’t valued. Studios prefer to roll artists to new projects than rehire.
Seems like a bad business plan, alienating a bunch of people and reducing the quality of your work all in one move.
“Oh yeah, they would do this”
Let me put this in animation terms.
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
At some point this will be extended so that writers and actors will be called "AI touch-up people"....
1. Companies shift to B2B and an uberpremium market targeting other rich people.
2. They're counting on UBI (tho that's only sustainable for maybe 2 gens, tops).
3. Nobody thinking that far. Investors only care about short-term growth and CEOs only care about pleasing investors.
Funny that nobody cares, the future is going to be very sad for those who aren't rich now.
the rest of the world just introduced a UBI when they saw it coming