Your new favourite movie star may be, well… you, according to the directors of Avengers: Endgame.
Was that the death knell of authorship we just heard? The directors of Avengers: Endgame, the Russo Brothers have been chatting about to Collider about artificial intelligence in the filmmaking sphere and their predictions make for quite the read. Strap in for this one.
Within two years state the brothers, audiences will have access to AI technology that can generate films that will be impossible to identify as a product of an artificial intelligence. That’s a pretty bold claim, even in ‘The Year of AI’ where bold claims about the technology are among the lowest hanging fruit around.
It’s the ‘impossible to identify’ part that seems highly doubtful, but who knows? The brothers state that they are on the board of a few AI companies so maybe they have access to tech we haven’t seen yet… or maybe they’re just fuelling the latest speculative tech bubble, as you might be wont to do if you were a board member of several companies that would stand to gain from such exposure.
Looking further ahead, Joe Russo theorised what the future of AI filmmaking could like beyond the next couple of years, describing how we all could be starring opposite screen legends like Marilyn Monroe soon. “‘Hey, I want a movie starring my photo-real avatar and Marilyn Monroe’s photo-real avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I’ve had a rough day’ and it renders a very competent story with dialogue that mimics your voice. It mimics your voice, and suddenly now you have a rom-com starring you that’s 90 minutes long. So you can curate your story specifically to you.”
Whilst this may be all some film fans have ever wanted, others will be terrified by the prospect of surrendering the craft of authorship to a machine, not to mention the many dubious ethical quandaries that arise from the scenario described above. We truly are living in strange times but if Russo is correct, they’re about to get stranger.
Would you be interested in user-defined, AI-generated films or do you foresee yourself preferring your movies the old-fashioned way? Let us know in the comments below. But consider this: AI could never have come up with Demolition Man…
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