One of the buzziest topics being discussed in our culture right now is artificial intelligence (AI). We’ve seen advances in AI over the past couple of years that have truly astounded us. Chatbots that can instantly write stories, essays, songs, or even recipes. AI art that can create styles and pictures from whatever you can imagine. It’s really showing our society just how powerful technology is and how it might affect our everyday media-consuming lives. Well, the fun is just beginning, according to filmmaker Joe Russo, who thinks we’re going to see AI drastically change film and TV… and only in a couple of years.
Speaking at the Sands International Film Festival (via Collider), Joe Russo shared a panel with Epic Games executive Donald Mustard to talk about the future of AI and how it might affect film, TV, and games. Obviously, it was a lot of speculation and some of it may be a bit hyperbolic, but for the most part, both men agreed that AI is here to stay and we’ve only seen the beginnings of how it will change media.
For Joe Russo, the filmmaker behind “Avengers: Endgame,” he believes that AI is going to create a world where anyone can tell a competent story.
“As I said, we just have to assume we’re gonna be in the future, so that future whether we want it or not,” Russo said. “But the value of it is the democratization of storytelling. That’s incredibly valuable. That means that 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. That, I think, is what excites me about it most.”
As for when we might see AI create a real film on its own, Russo guesses “two years.” But that’s not the real future the filmmaker thinks is on the way. He believes that AI is going to create scenarios that we have only truly read about in science fiction.
“You could walk into your house and save the AI on your streaming platform,” explained Russo. “‘Hey, I want a movie starring my photoreal avatar and Marilyn Monroe’s photoreal avatar. I want it to be a rom-com because I’ve had a rough day,’ and it renders a very competent story with dialogue that mimics your voice. It mimics your voice, and suddenly now you have a rom-com starring you that’s 90 minutes long. So you can curate your story specifically to you.”
Of course, you can’t talk about artificial intelligence without folks getting a little freaked out by the prospect. Not just because storytellers that get paid lots of money to create content might just lose their jobs, but because “Terminator 2” taught us that the robot overlords are going to wipe us off the planet. Russo understands those fears but thinks that people are working to prevent evil AI.
“I’m on the board of a few AI companies, I’m gonna speak from my experience of being on the board of those companies is that, there are AI companies that are developing AI to protect you from AI,” he said. “And unfortunately, we’re in that world, and you will need an AI in your life because whether we want to see it developed or not, people who are not friendly to us may develop it anyways. So, we’re going to be in that future. The question is, then, how we protect ourselves in that future?”
A few years ago, the idea that AI-created films seemed like a pipe dream. Now, it appears we’ll have that in just a couple of years, perhaps. It’s a wild time.
