So here we are, less than 24 months after the arrival of consumer AI, perhaps the most explosive technological disruption we've ever seen, and the hits continue to roll in. It is.
This week, Adobe announced that it is integrating AI technology, including OpenAI's Sora, into the Premiere Pro video editor. You can almost hear the collective gasp of horror coming from the Hollywood Hills.
This is a seemingly innocuous announcement, simply a suite of video editing tools, similar to Photoshop plugins. But behind the mediocre press release is a whole OMG world. The art world is still reeling from the triple assault on the old order.
New direction of creation
First, the field of contemporary art and stock images is probably disappearing before our eyes. Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney virtually changed the rules forever.
If you think I'm kidding, check out the new Stockcake site. This site offers millions of free, AI-generated stock images under public domain licenses. How's it going at Getty Images?
And if you think music isn't moving in the same direction it's always been, check out Udio, where anyone with a pulse can create authentic songs in an infinite variety of genres. It's like sitting next to Prince in a music studio.
AI killed Video Star
The video's last artistic bastion began to crumble with Open AI's preview of Sora. This proved that video could really kill a radio star if you had a powerful enough computer.
It's not as revelatory and surprising as we initially thought, nor is it at all scary and threatening.
Tim Webber, Framestore
But this Adobe Firefly release is truly amazing. Many believed that the enormous amount of computing power required to manipulate video would be a barrier that would take years to overcome. Yes, it is. But that's not the case. Image and music generation have overcome storage and CPU hurdles over the past two years, and video will likely follow the same trajectory.
But this time the stakes are huge. We're not just talking about movies, we're talking about prime time TV, advertising, cable, and productions. If you can edit chunks of video, you can create videos. If you can make videos, you can also make movies and TV episodes. It's a scary sauce for some people. But that won't happen tomorrow or in the next few years.
Tim Weber, an Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor and CEO of visual effects company Framestore, believes AI is still quite primitive. “It's not as revelatory and surprising as we all thought early on, and it's not as scary and threatening. We're sort of passing through the middle,” he said. says.
Webber, whose credits include Gravity and The Dark Knight, believes it will take about five years for generative AI to become a primary tool for high-quality video.
Comparison with the rise of digital
By the way, a crude addition to Moore's Law is that this type of disruption typically takes 10 years. It is now seven years since LLM transformers were first introduced in earnest.
I remember getting into a serious conversation with some film review journalists on the way to the Cannes Film Festival, when the Star Wars series was about to become a big digital hit. I was the only nerd there, and the passionate people who knew what brand of film The Godfather was shot on were adamant that digital filmmaking would never catch on.
I knew that was not the case and patiently explained why, to some ridicule. I've always known that technology is always creeping its way to your door in the guise of something as simple as a gadget or an app. Next thing you know, it bursts in and takes over the entire party.
Digital did not destroy Hollywood as we now know it. In many ways, it has been reborn bigger and better. My case remains. By the way, a crude addition to Moore's Law is that this type of disruption typically takes 10 years. It is now seven years since LLM transformers were first introduced in earnest. Please read it.
The important thing to remember is that new generative AI tools are currently at their most immature stage. But this technology is moving at impossible speeds, like a freight train, and anyone or anything that gets in its way could end up like Wile E. Coyote from The Road Runner Show. is high. But is that a bad thing?
Another cog in the cultural wheel
If you're a purist, like the people I've met who are passionate about 35mm film, then yes, AI will destroy the art of cinema. But for the majority of people, this is likely to be a great tool for exploring bold new experiences.
There is currently a huge debate going on in the Udio Discord forums about whether generated music tracks are real “art” or not. This kind of question is as old as human history. Just ask young Tracey Emin. The answer is… probably. I hope to see more conversations like this in the next five years.
Paul Debeyec, a senior scientist at Google, explained it all succinctly in a 2020 article for The Hollywood Reporter. “Decades from now, AI algorithms will easily make movies from the text of a screenplay, even in the style of a particular director. They might make new movies in Kubrick's style, or they can make old movies in the style of Kubrick. You could even ask an AI algorithm to remake something, like Tarantino or Scorsese, highlighting the correlation between each script and movie.”
Now, that's a geek story. At the end of the day, my long-held belief is that Hollywood, Cannes, and other places where the arts exist will find a way to integrate AI as just part of the eternal human experiment we call culture. is.
