Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne is to direct and star in Uncanny Valley, a sci-fi film which uses generative AI for its virtual world.
Days before the return of hit murder mystery series Poker Face, its star, Natasha Lyonne, has announced a separate project. The actor and filmmaker plans to make a science fiction film that will – in part – be made using generative AI.
Called Uncanny Valley, it’s said to be about a teenager named Mila, who begins to play an augmented reality game that begins to have some sort of disturbing impact on the real world. The script was co-written by Lyonne and Brit Marling, best known for her work as an actor in such cult items as Another Earth and TV’s The OA, and both will star in their movie in undisclosed roles.
The potentially sensitive bit is the way it’s going to be created: it’ll use a mixture of ‘traditional’ filmmaking techniques (a term quoted by Variety) as well as gen-AI, presumably for its augmented reality sequences. The AI parts will be produced by Asteria, a company which specialises in “clean and ethical AI”, and co-founded by Lyonne and her partner Bryn Mooser.
According to The Verge, Uncanny Valley will use a piece of gen-AI software called Marey, which is differs from other AI models in one key respect: it’s ‘trained’ on licenced material rather than scraped indiscriminately from the web. This, at least, sidesteps the accusation from gen AI’s critics that it’s essentially plagiarising artists’ work without compensation or consent.
The creators of Marey, a tech startup called Moonvalley, says that to build its model, it “we sourced all the training data directly from creators, licensed it, and compensated them.”
Read more: AI | 16 Hollywood films that have used Artificial Intelligence, and how
Of the project, Lyonne put out a rather cryptic statement shared by The Verge.
“Imagine if Dianne Wiest and Diane Keaton, at their loquacious best, decided to take a journey through The Matrix for sport, only to find themselves holding up an architectural blueprint, and you’ll have a sense of the adventure we’ve been on,” Lyonne said. “Coming together as a trio in cahoots with the astounding imagineers at Asteria, to worldbuild this film at scale, has been a synergistic dream come true.”
Uncanny Valley is but one of a string of forthcoming film and TV projects that aim to use AI in some form. There’s also Critterz, an AI-generated comedy from the writers of Paddington In Peru. In March, a company called Staircase Studios announced its plans to make 30 feature films using gen AI over the next three to four years.
At present, the output from these studios can look rather disquieting. Staircase’s five-minute preview of a film called The Woman With Red Hair, a period drama set in World War II, is filled with eerily perfect virtual actors with glassy eyes and robotic expressions.
Still, there’s a growing school of filmmakers who predict that gen AI is the solution to the rising cost of VFX and movie-making in general. James Cameron has recently said that AI could halve the cost of a film’s effects cost; to the list of advocates, we can now add Brit Marling.
“Science fiction can be a powerful tool of resistance – imagining what could be instead of what is,” Marling said in a statement published by Variety. “With Asteria’s team, we hope to pioneer ways to use AI that allow filmmakers to tell high-concept stories on budgets that allow for real innovation.”
At present, it’s unclear whether Uncanny Valley is destined for cinemas or some sort of streaming service. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
