When Openai unveiled a technology called SORA last year, when people were able to generate instantly like astronaut movie trailers across barren desert planets, it wasn’t the quality of footage that Hollywood people thought to have been turned off, just as they thought Hollywood people would grow as quickly as they had grown to Pipeline.
Questions were swirling as studio executives chatted about AI’s position in the entertainment industry. What production processes can be streamlined? How much can you reduce costs? What are Legal and Labor Guardrails?
Since then, Openai has been involved in a studio about Sora, slamming applications into his home to solve kinks with independent filmmakers and undergo safety tests. The company is currently pitching Hollywood and is venturing into widespread adoption of its technology.
Rohan Sahai, who leads the SORA product team, tells the Hollywood Reporter in an interview that there was considerable interest from the entertainment industry without specifying the outline of the conversation. He sees the use of tools at most stages of production as tools improve.
“For some of these large production companies, positive people try to see where things are heading and think about ways to change the entire workflow at this point to make it the best,” he says.
Current legal landscapes limit adoption into prerequisite processes such as concepts and storyboards that are not primarily directly related to the final product. The widespread use of AI tools in the Moviemaking process depends heavily on how courts land on new legal issues raised by technology. Still, industry workers are already out of work, with concept artists, voice actors and animators at the forefront of their evacuation. Agbo, a production company run by Avengers directors Joe and Anthony Russo, recently hired AI expert and former Apple executive Dr. Dominic Hughes, who served as Chief Science Officer to streamline the production process.
Among the several considerations that hinder the further deployment of AI is those who wish to have a court ruling that using copyrighted material to train AI systems constitutes infringement. Another factor is that AI-generated work is restricting exploitation as it enters the public domain rather than being copyrighted.
As Openai continues to fight lawsuits from creators, he is optimistic about a future in which its technology is not constrained by law or by the Labour guardrail. His conversation with Hollywood reflects that confidence.
“We’re employing a broader stroke here in terms of what we want to do with these models from a creation and storytelling perspective,” says Sahai. “Instead of polishing a particular part of the (production) pipeline,” he added that he has a general view of selling Hollywood with this technology, as “in the long run, people find themselves far more powerful than simply tapping on VFX.”
“We are deeply involved in the industry as a whole to get feedback, including our studios,” Openai said in a statement.
On March 19, ChatGpt makers screened 11 short films made at SORA by independent filmmakers at Brain Dead Studios, a hip-hollywood in West Hollywood on Fairfax Avenue, to showcase the technology. These films showed limitations of the tool, suggesting the possibility.
None of the titles incorporated extensive dialogue between the characters. The story wasn’t sparse and didn’t exist, so several people commented after the screening, with some of the films closer to commercials than short films. The character appeared to be sitting in the air at some point in the film about the misfortune of the Knight.
The crowd watches surase, an AI-generated film that incorporates Surase.
Openai
Still, it was clear that SORA could streamline the VFX workflow, a production area known for its small margins. The title chosen for screening features a series of shots generated by the tool, indicating why it is captivating Hollywood. A series of views of the ocean kissed by the sun. A silhouette of a man swallowed up by the vortex of a newspaper. Some VFX artists are already leaning towards AI, and by training open source systems with their own works, they avoid certain legal constraints.
AI filmmaker Verena Puhm said he started a short film about dairy farms in a dystopian future, intended to be a criticism of mass production and exploitation for the remaining 15 hours before the application window closes. She said her project was meant to be “a little aware of what we are consuming.”
Openai no longer discloses the source of data used to train the system. The artists, authors and publications sued the Sam Altman-led company for allegations that they illegally stole their work without consent and compensation. Courts against fair use are legal doctrines that allow copyrighted works to be used without a license, and can have a major impact on AI leaders. Last week, hundreds of Hollywood key figures signed letters against Openai and Google’s appeal to the US government, allowing AI models to train copyrighted works.
The screening attended were executives at Universal Pictures and Disney, with personal abilities rather than representatives of the studio. UTA employees from the agency’s entertainment marketing department were also among the crowd.
Altongrass, an American director guild member who participated in the screening, said that “workflows will shift” with the advent of AI. He emphasized, “The chance will come from there.”
Although adoption of AI in Hollywood is slow, it is making steady progress. Last year, Lionsgate announced its first partnership with Runway, where New York-based AI startup training will be used to support behind the scenes production processes to see new generation AI models for studio-owned content. In a no-cash transaction, the runway will be able to access some of the studio’s titles to create models designed specifically for use of Lionsgate, and plug into different parts of the production pipeline, including storyboarding processes, hopefully, according to those familiar with the transaction, to help design VFX work. This was followed by Blumhouse, which partnered with Meta on a series of short films produced with the help of the film Gen, which creates videos and corresponding audio when testing AI Waters, and James Cameron joined the Stability AI board.
“They are looking for case studies,” says Rob Rosenberg, former executive VP and general counsel at Showtime Networks. “They are looking for a proof of concept that they can say, ‘We’ve reduced production costs by x percent.’ ”
SORA was made publicly available in December after undergoing safety tests by experts of misinformation, hateful content and bias. Filmmakers, visual artists and designers are now accessible for feedback on improvements. Since then, creators have launched mixed receptions by presenting AI-generated projects, criticizing the creepy valley and critical aesthetics that honour the almost internal creation of visuals and effects that others respond to the film.
Just as how Openai is involved with independent filmmakers, when deploying Sora, Meeka Bondy, Chair of Entertainment Practices at Perkins Coie, is similar to the former senior vice president of legal affairs at HBO. She thinks, “It emphasizes their visibility, but I think it gives them legitimacy. If James Cameron is doing it, they’re not trying to replace it.”
The story advanced by Openai to encourage the adoption of AI tools revolves around the “democratization” of the entertainment industry. Some say that using tools will help creators realize that they have fewer barriers to filmmaking and bring their ideas to the screen. Earlier this month it was announced that James Lamont and John Foster, the writing team behind Paddington in Peru, are playing for an AI animated film called Cricktailz. The title is a feature adaptation of a short film of the same name from Vertigo Films, featuring native foreign AI creatives from the project. The short story, written and directed by Openai’s creative specialist Chad Nelson, emerged as one of the first AI films to combine visuals generated by Openai’s Dall-E tools with traditional animation techniques, and was later remastered in SORA. The producer said he hopes to combine human-driven creativity and traditional animation techniques with modern AI technology to set new benchmarks for generative storytelling.
However, these topics highlight the opportunities presented to several creatives who have been able to advance their careers with AI tools. Among other positions where VFX concept artists and workers and AI are considered to be on fire, if technology advances at its previous pace, it is moving forward with potential displacements in the future.
A survey commissioned last year by the Concept Art Association and the Animation Guild, which surveys 300 leaders in the entertainment industry, found that three-quarters of respondents showed that AI tools support the elimination, reduction or integration of companies’ employment. It was estimated that nearly 204,000 positions will be negatively affected over the next three years. Research shows that the frontlines of evacuation: sound engineers, voice actors, concept artists, and employees in entry-level positions. Visual effects and other post-production work are particularly vulnerable.
SORA has restrictions (technical and legal) that limit applications in the entertainment industry. Still, there are very real possibilities for the production of subsidized industries, such as advertising and video work commissioned by companies, resulting in less labor constraints on the adoption of technology. A consideration for the impact of technology on Hollywood is the downstream impact for creatives who rely on such work for the primary source of revenue. Technology is likely to result in less production crews, and is expected to have a similar impact on soundstages and equipment rental companies.
