‘Of course it’s disturbing’: will AI change Hollywood forever?

With the rise of AI-led services to write, voice and provide effects, industry experts express concern over the
future
David Smith
@smithinamerica
Thu 23 Mar 2023 The Guardian
5
What will AI (artificial intelligence) do to Hollywood? Who better to answer that question than ChatGPT, a
thrilling but scary chatbot developed by OpenAI. When the Guardian asked it about AI’s potential impact on the
film industry, it made the following points:
1. Scriptwriting: AI can be used to analyze existing screenplays and create new ones, potentially leading to more
10 efficient and cost-effective screenwriting.

2. Pre-production: AI can be used to streamline the pre-production process, including casting, location scouting and
storyboarding.

3. Special effects: AI can be used to create more realistic and immersive special effects, potentially reducing the need
for practical effects and saving time and money in post-production.

154. Audience analysis: AI can be used to analyze audience data and preferences, helping studios make more informed
decisions about which films to greenlight and how to market them.

5. Distribution: AI can be used to personalize movie recommendations for viewers and optimize distribution
strategies, potentially leading to higher ticket sales and revenue.

(...)AI is already here. It can be heard in synthesised voices and seen in visual effects such as deep fakes and de-
20 ageing. It has been used to knock decades off Harrison Ford for a scene in the upcoming Indiana Jones and the
Dial of Destiny.
Not all ageing action stars are happy about the technology, however. Last month Keanu Reeves told Wired
magazine of a clause in his film contracts that bans studios from digitally editing his performances. “If you go into
deepfake land, it has none of your points of view,” he explained. “That’s scary.”
25 Meanwhile ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its facility for writing essays, news reports and poems and
even passing business and law school exams. It may only be a matter of time before it can come up with a decent
script treatment or turn a novel into a blockbuster screenplay.

Ben Mankiewicz, a primetime host of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and grandson of Herman Mankiewicz, who
30 co-wrote the 1941 classic Citizen Kane, has just been experimenting with ChatGPT.(...)“It lacked some detail and
context but it was pretty well written and thoughtful and certainly got the movie’s importance and
mentioned Gregg Toland, the cinematographer. (It did not mention my grandfather – that was, of course, the real
test!) It was very impressive and I thought right away if I had to write something about a movie, I might use that
as a springboard.” (...)
35 “I’m worried but I don’t want to sound reactionary. It’s probably OK. It’s probably mostly useful if it gets a
creative person who finds the blank page daunting to think, ‘Oh, all right, here’s some pages, here’s some ideas.’”
 The Writers Guild of America, which represents TV and film writers, has stopped short of calling for an outright
ban on AI. Instead it is proposing that writers could use chatbots to help write a script without having to share the
credit or divide residuals, according to a report this week in Variety.
40 But some screenwriters are already worried about how far the AI revolution might go. Marc Guggenheim, who
has numerous film and TV credits and is also author of the LegalDispatch newsletter, sees both promise and peril
in the technology.(...)
The tech industry is notoriously male dominated and AI is no different. Guggenheim, 52, comments: “Where is
the AI getting its information to be programmed and is that information only coming from a certain subset of
45 society? If it’s going to tell stories from the perspective of its programmers, essentially, then you have to worry
about the lack of diversity among the programmers.”
Writers are not the only ones facing potential upheaval(…) the National Association of Voice Actors, an advocacy
group, insists that it is not anti-technology or anti-AI but is calling for stronger regulation. It warns that it is
increasingly hard to know when and where synthesised voices are replacing humans in audio books, video games
50 and other media. (...)
Not everything that AI touches will be obvious on screen. It could save huge amounts of time and effort in the
editing process, during post-production and in film preservation or restoration. AI could sift through vast amounts
of footage to locate a certain variable. (...)

But what if AI was able to script a sequel to Casablanca, recreate the same cast – deepfakes of Humphrey Bogart,
55 Ingrid Bergman and co – simulate their voices and turn it into a finished film that looked convincing? Glick is
sceptical. “It creates a strange relationship between the audience and those characters in the film and the story that
they’re involved in. It plunges us into the uncanny valley. (...)

Taken to its logical conclusion, a film industry that depended solely on AI, rendering actors extinct, would wipe
60 out the circus of gossip columns, late night TV interviews, red carpet film premieres and the Oscars. That is not a
Hollywood that Glick wants to live in. (...)

AI could also have far reaching social and economic consequences. Olcun Tan, a German-born visual effects
supervisor based in Los Angeles, says: “In robotics, in the 80s and 90s, the whole car industry got upset and
Detroit was affected very negatively: the whole city turned into a ghost town. This is now happening with the
65 middle class through AI. (...)
“It reduces the prospects for people entering the workforce as an assistant or as somebody doing research to start
their career. If the AI does a better job then how do people start getting into an industry to learn from ground up,
to grow into a position of expertise eventually?”
AI is already earning comparisons to the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution and internet revolution. It is
70 moving fast and gathering speed. The most profound effects for Hollywood and elsewhere have probably not yet
been imagined.
(...)