Written by Dawn Chmielewski and Greg Bensinger
LOS ANGELES, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Amazon plans to use artificial intelligence to speed up the production process for movies and TV shows, despite Hollywood’s concerns that AI will eliminate jobs and permanently reshape the industry.
At Amazon MGM Studios, veteran entertainment executive Albert Chen is leading the team responsible for developing new AI tools, which he says will reduce costs and streamline the creative process. Amazon plans to launch a closed beta program in March and invite industry partners to test the AI tool. The company expects to announce results by May.
Cheng described AI Studio as a “startup” that operates on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ “two-pizza team” philosophy of keeping groups small enough to feed on two pizzas. The team consists primarily of product engineers and scientists, with a smaller number of creative and business departments.
Amazon is publicly embracing AI in response to rising production budgets that limit the number of shows and movies companies can finance. This technology fast-tracks certain processes to produce more movies and TV shows more efficiently.
“The production cost is so high that it’s really difficult to produce more, and it’s really difficult to take big risks,” Chen said in an interview. “We fundamentally believe that AI can accelerate, but not replace, the innovation and unique aspects that[humans]bring to the creation of work.”
The move to introduce artificial intelligence comes as big-name actors like Emily Blunt have expressed concerns that the rise of AI, particularly AI actress Tilly Norwood, will make their jobs obsolete.
Amazon emphasized that writers, directors, actors, and character designers will be involved in every step of production and will use AI as a tool to enhance creativity.
Like many other technology companies, Amazon is pushing nearly every department to explore uses for AI, citing the technology’s success as one of the reasons it has cut about 30,000 corporate jobs since October, the largest layoff on record. This includes numerous layoffs at Prime Video.
Chen said AI could help Prime Video overcome some of the challenges inherent in large-scale film and television production.
AI Studio is building tools that bridge what Chen describes as the “last mile” (perhaps a cheeky reference to Amazon’s delivery operations) between existing consumer AI services and the fine-grained control that directors need over their film content. This includes improved shot-to-shot character consistency and integration with industry-standard creative tools.
Amazon has turned to its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, for help and plans to work with several large language model providers to give creators a wider range of choices in pre- and post-production filmmaking. Chen said protecting intellectual property and ensuring that AI-created content is not absorbed into other AI models is essential to making AI Studio work.
AI Studios is collaborating with producers Robert Stromberg (“Maleficent”) and his company Secret City, and Kunal Nayyar (“The Big Bang Theory”) and his company Good Karma Productions. and former Pixar and ILM animator Colin Brady explore new tools and how best to implement them.
The studio, which launched last August, points to its hit series “House of David” as an example of how AI will be used in the future.
For the second season of the Biblical epic, director John Irwin created battle scenes using a combination of AI and live-action footage, then seamlessly edited the two to expand the scope of the sequences at a lower cost.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
