AI use is transforming many industries like healthcare, finance, retail, education, and more. The question is, will the film industry have to worry about AI taking over? Actor Ben Affleck believes we have nothing to worry about, believing artificial intelligence won’t replace movies.
There are many movies that show artificial intelligence as a threat like I, Robot, Ex Machina, The Matrix, and more. Could that world of fiction we find in movies one day become a reality? Ben Affleck spoke at the CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, believing movies are safe from AI use taking over:
“Movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI,” said Affleck. “AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan. It cannot write you Shakespeare.”
There was a growing concern during the WGA Writer’s Strike about AI affecting screenplays and whether screenwriters would be out of a job. But as Ben Affleck said, AI won’t be able to write an original screenplay as it can only copy what humans are already capable of doing. As he and Matt Damon established a name for themselves crafting Good Will Hunting, Affleck seems to understand the high-cost challenges of putting together a movie by aspiring members of the industry:
“What AI is going to do is dis-intermediate the more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier to entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people want to make ‘Good Will Huntings’ to go out and make it.”
Ben Affleck feels that AI will act as a “craftsman” learning from what’s already existing instead of creating something new.
Examples of AI-generated movies
AI has played a controversial role in making recent movies. Social media users gave backlash for AI art used in Late Night With the Devil and when Civil War used AI for its posters.
We haven’t had any full-length features completely AI-generated yet, but filmmakers are already creating movies with AI tools. For instance, the short film The Safe Zone used ChatGPT to write the script and create a director’s shot list.
However, the first fully AI-generated short film came to TCLtv+ during the summer called Next Stop Paris. The AI-generated short follows a woman who meets a man on a train that’s on the way to Paris. While TCLtv+ Studios hired professional voice actors and used an original script, AI tools created the imagery.
Next Stop Paris may be the first AI-generated movie, but I have a feeling it won’t be the last. It’ll be interesting to see if AI-generated films will end up being a whole new genre of the film industry going forward.