Ashton Kutcher looks at OpenAI's video generation tool Sora as the future of filmmaking.
“I'm in beta and it's pretty awesome,” Kutcher said of the platform during a recent conversation with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at Berggruen Salon in Los Angeles.
He added: “You can generate any footage you want. You can make a great 10-, 15-second video that looks very realistic. But mistakes still happen. You don't fully understand the physics. … But if you compare SORA to this generation that existed a year ago, you're seeing a quantum leap forward. In fact, there's footage in this that could easily be used in a big-budget movie or TV show.”
The “That '70s Show” star explained how AI could significantly reduce the costs of filmmaking.
“For a TV show to have an opening shot of a house, you don't have to go out and film it. You can do it for $100. It costs thousands of dollars to go out and film it,” Kutcher said. “And when I do an action scene where I jump off this building, I don't have to hire a stuntman. I can do it myself.” [with AI]. “
Kutcher added that while working with the software, he prompted Sora to create footage of a runner trying to escape a sandstorm in the desert.
“I didn't have to hire a CGI department for that,” Kutcher says, “I rendered out a video in five minutes of ultramarathon runners running through the desert being chased by a sandstorm, and that's exactly what it looked like.”
VIP+ Analysis: Exclusive Study Shows SORA Videos Are Easily Confused with Real Footage
Kutcher pointed to Nvidia's new processor, which he says is 30 times more powerful than existing software, and said video generation platforms like Sora will be exponentially improved.
“You'll be able to render entire movies. You come up with an idea for a movie, a script will be written, you feed that script into a video generator and it will generate a movie for you,” he said. “Instead of watching a movie someone else has made, you'll be watching a movie you've made.”
He continues, “What's going to happen is there's going to be more content out there than there are viewers on the planet to consume it. So it's only a matter of how valuable any piece of content can be to the people consuming it. So the 'water cooler' version of catalyzing something being great has to have a much higher bar. Because why would anyone watch my movie when they can just watch theirs?”
Sora made waves across Hollywood when OpenAI released a sneak peek at it in February, but not everyone is optimistic about the fast-growing software: Tyler Perry, for example, canceled an $800 million studio expansion project in Atlanta because of Sora's potential.
“We need some kind of regulation to protect us,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “Otherwise, I don't know how we're going to survive.”
“I just hope that as people embrace this technology and as companies move to cut costs and secure profits, there will be some consideration and some compassion for humanity and the people who have worked in this industry and built their careers and lives on it,” Perry added.
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