Director Joe Russo of Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Endgame,” which grossed over $2 billion worldwide, predicts that it will only be two years until an AI-generated film is excellent enough to cause people to question its legitimacy.
AI generate movies and games
Russo and Epic Games’ CCO Donald Mustard spoke together on a panel at the Sands International Film Festival in St. Andrews, Scotland. Mustard speculated that a film created entirely by AI may hit theaters far sooner than Russo’s two-year time frame.
In an interview with Steve Weintraub of Collider, Russo, who serves on the boards of “a few AI companies,” speculated that AI may be used “to engineer storytelling and change storytelling.” He went on to say that AI could be used to create “a story that’s always changing,” which could be implemented in anything from a video game to a movie to a television show.
The filmmaker illustrated this with the scenario of a viewer dialing up an AI-created romantic comedy starring their own photorealistic avatar and Marilyn Monroe. He praised the plot, saying, “It renders a very competent story with dialogue that mimics your voice,” he said. “And suddenly, now you have a rom-com starring you that’s 90 minutes long.”
AI democratizes storytelling
Mustard added, “we’re just not very far off” being able to render photorealistic scenes in real time. “We jest about being in “Endgame,” but there’ll be that, too,” he said. “You could go back and watch some of your favorite movies or new things, and be like, “No, I want to see myself in the big battle in the background,” he said.
While joking, Russo said, “Make me Doctor Strange, before speculating that he could “take Humphrey Bogart and put him in a movie with George Clooney.”
According to Russo, one of AI’s greatest advantages is that it “democratizes storytelling,” which he defined as “anyone in this room could tell a story, or make a game at scale, with the help of a photoreal engine or an engine and AI tools.”
They imagined a future in which AI populates a game’s world or “curates your experience” by generating unique levels and game kinds on the fly.
“Say you want Fortnite to be more of a horror game,” said Russo. “You could ask the AI to ramp up the horror elements of it.”
Mustard predicted that “eventually, yeah, it’ll get there, but I think it’ll, for a while at least, require strong curation.” But ultimately, he said, AI is “just like any new tool or any new form. Artists and craftspeople, we’ll find ways to create new, awesome things with it. And it’s really just that, it’s another exciting, cool technology.”
Content Source: decrypt.co
