James Cameron / Instagram
Director James Cameron believes that artificial intelligence can change the rules of the game in film production.
The author of «Terminator», «Avatar», and «Titanic» believes that AI is a chance to make big movies much cheaper. In the podcast Boz to the Future with Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, he pointed out that AI can be integrated into processes to make the team work more efficiently.
«We’ve got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half. Now that’s not about laying off half the staff and at the effects company. That’s about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster», —Cameron says.
The idea is that visual effects artists shouldn’t be stuck on one task for weeks, but should be able to move on quickly — and make even more cool stuff. The director sees AI capabilities not as a replacement for creativity, but only as a tool. But he is confused by the trend of James Cameron’s «» or Ghibli’s «visuals». And this is not exactly when people are inspired by someone’s style.
« aspire to be in the style of Ridley Scott, in the style of Stanley Kubrick. That’s my text prompt that runs in my head as a filmmaker», Cameron says. «I know my influences. Everybody knows their influences».
He also touched upon a topic that is currently a hot topic within the industry: copyright and model training. But instead of calling for not teaching AI from pictures, he suggests a different approach: looking at what the model produces.
«I’m an artist. Anybody that’s an artist, anybody that’s a human being, is a model. You’re a model already, you’ve got a three and a half pound meat computer. We’re models moving through space and time and reacting based on our training data», — he adds.
The director also pointed out that companies like OpenAI or Meta are not focused on movies, and movies are only a part of the industry. According to him, the future of film production lies with small teams of AI developers, often highly specialized.
By the way, Cameron is now is working on «Avatar: Fire and Ashes», which will be released in December. And it’s interesting that there will be a note in the credits: AI was not used in the creation of the movie, which does not contradict everything he said. However, the general trend of mass adoption of artificial intelligence is hard to deny.
Source: Hollywood Reporter