The film industry has always helped to enliven the human imagination. Today it is one of the most popular types of entertainment, giving people the opportunity to escape from a sometimes heavy reality.
However, it is not only about art, but also about business space with its own tasks and goals. Today, as technology drives almost all existing industries, filmmakers try to leverage new tools and means to take their product to the next level, attract more consumers, and, of course, earn money.
In this article, we will focus one of the most life-changing technologies for filmmaking - artificial intelligence (AI). What are the benefits and pitfalls of it for the industry? And how to leverage AI without risks?
In commerce, logistics, medicine, and facial recognition systems, artificial intelligence (AI) has already shown potential in transforming social and economic life. In creative industries, the role of AI is less prominent.
Making a film is a complex multistage process, so the film industry has remained resistant to machine intervention at some stages of pre-production: script selection, budgeting, casting. Attempts to implement AI are usually found in post-production: when creating graphics, animation, special effects, and color correction.
The production of modern blockbusters is not cheap, and whether the film will earn money or not is still a question. Artificial intelligence technologies help reduce risk and make financing decisions for projects in the film industry.
The film industry around the world has gradually invested and experimented with new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) over the past decade.
Algorithms based on artificial intelligence and machine learning have helped accomplish film-related tasks quickly and at scale in real-time. These latest technologies, when used effectively, provide some of the best editing, high-definition graphics, and visual effects available today.
Despite the fact that AI greatly helps filmmakers save costs and resources on creating and promoting their products, it raises controversial moments pertaining to whether the new technology can replace human talent in the world of art.
A lot of ‘old school’ filmmakers don’t want to use AI for their work. James Cameron, for example, believes that the development of artificial intelligence poses a real danger - perhaps not quite the one that his films tell about, but nevertheless.
In many ways, he admits that he wants to return to The Terminator at one point because at the moment we are much closer to the future described in the film series than at the time of the release of the first part.
He says that a lot of AI experts love the idea of leveraging it in the film industry. They think that they will create a database, which will include all the films made, and then make it accessible to AI so that they can analyze why viewers like these films. And then artificial intelligence will be able to make a movie itself. But Cameron believes that these films will be extremely bad.
The thing is that artificial intelligence doesn't have a human experience. It will be a filmmaker who knows other films but does not understand what it means to be human. James Cameron says that every filmmaker has to live a little and only then pick up the camera and shoot a film about what they learned and what they experienced.
This one is the ethical issue of leveraging AI for the film industry. The point includes not only replacing and enhancing human resources but also changing human appearance, voice, and so on with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
Another point that makes some filmmakers hesitant about AI is security issues.
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning systems require high volumes of complex data. That’s why there may appear a lot of ways in which such systems can be exploited. System manipulation, data corruption & poisoning, transfer learning attacks, all can lead to losing crucial data without the ability to further restore it.
AI systems can’t be considered by external stakeholders as “trustworthy” or “unreliable”. This is the organization that creates the technology that can be considered trustworthy or not, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems inherit the organization's reputation.
In today's challenging regulatory environment, the complexity of AI systems is forcing organizations to seek new ways to support their AI developments.
The most advanced tech companies state the principles of fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency (FEAT) at the core of AI development.
These are several critical points that any organization that creates AI software for the film industry should pay attention to prevent misuse of the technology:
To build trust in AI, an organization has to align people, processes, and tools and create secure and trustworthy technologies. Without these specific steps, using Artificial Intelligence in the filmmaking industry can cause something that James Cameron predicted.
Empowering an ethical and transparent process in which peers and managers mutually contribute to developing powerful solutions - is what can make more and more filmmakers turn to artificial intelligence tools to enhance their processes and products.
With all said before, the filmmaking industry can greatly benefit from AI. Writing scripts, casting actors, composing music, editing, and promoting movies, all of these can be streamlined with the help of this technology.
The main point to remember is that a bad workman always blames his tools. In the right hands of talented filmmakers, AI technology will develop into a beautiful and amazing product that will find millions of fans all around the world.