Earlier this 12 months, Michael Burns, the vice-chairman of film studio Lionsgate, made a daring declare. In keeping with Vulture, he stated that by way of a partnership with generative AI firm Runway AI, the corporate that’s house to franchises like John Wick and The Starvation Video games might repackage one among its signature sequence as an anime, generated fully by AI in a matter of hours, and resell it as a brand new film.
That notably has not occurred. In keeping with a report from The Wrap, it’s as a result of the partnership, introduced final 12 months as a “first-of-its-kind” deal between a film studio and a generative AI firm, has not gone in keeping with plan. The plan has allegedly hit snags associated to the dimensions of Lionsgate’s catalog, the restrictions of Runway’s mannequin, and copyright and licensing issues.
The deal made between the businesses final 12 months noticed Lionsgate give Runway AI entry to its full library of movies, which Runway would use to create a customized and unique mannequin that Lionsgate might use to create AI-generated movies. However, per The Wrap, Lionsgate’s library isn’t sufficient to create a completely functioning mannequin. Actually, the report claims, Disney’s library wouldn’t be sufficient for such a process. The truth of constructing a generative AI mannequin is that it wants an enormous quantity of information to have the ability to produce a enough and purposeful output. If the studio needed to make use of Runway to create a lighting impact in a movie, for example, it might actually solely be capable to render that impact if it had sufficient reference factors to work with.
That appears to take a look at, if you concentrate on it. Fashions with entry to large quantities of information, like Google’s Veo or OpenAI’s Sora, produce movies that comprise numerous errors, glitches, and uncanny valley-like oddities. The opportunity of making a generative mannequin on a way more restricted set of coaching information goes to supply far more restricted generative capabilities.
After which there are the authorized questions surrounding the potential use of generative AI that comes fully from Lionsgate’s outputs.
Burns’ pitch of an anime-filtered model of a movie? He informed Vulture that he’d need to pay the actors and different rights contributors to promote it. Who would that embody? It’s not fully clear. Do writers have to get a examine? Do administrators? What about gaffers for his or her lighting work? The report signifies that there are a number of unanswered authorized questions that reach past the truth that Lionsgate owns the mental property that sits in the way in which of truly releasing an AI-generated movie.
“We’re more than happy with our partnership with Runway and our different AI initiatives, that are progressing in keeping with plan,” Peter Wilkes, Chief Communications Officer at Lionsgate, informed Gizmodo. “We view AI as an essential software for serving our filmmakers, and we’ve got already efficiently utilized it to a number of movie and tv tasks to reinforce high quality, enhance effectivity and create thrilling new storytelling alternatives. We’re additionally utilizing AI to realize vital price financial savings and better effectivity within the licensing of our movie and tv library. AI stays a centerpiece of our efforts to make use of new applied sciences to arrange our enterprise for the longer term.”
Runway didn’t reply to a request for remark.
There are indicators that Lionsgate is making use of Runway, although presumably not through the deliberate unique mannequin. In that Vulture piece from earlier this 12 months, the corporate was engaged on creating an AI-generated trailer for a movie that hadn’t been shot but, with the hope that execs might promote it based mostly on the fabricated scenes. Whether or not audiences or creatives are served by that course of is a unique query.
