31 May 2023
Using Generative AI in Production and Post Production
Anyone else feel like the world is heading toward Spike Jonze’s 2013 film, ‘Her’?
Peachy Founder and Senior Colourist Angela Cerasi is feeling slightly apprehensive about the advances of generative Artificial Intelligence/ AI in the world of Post Production – so set herself a task: to find the delight in AI.
Artificial Intelligence has been around for a long time and whether we know it or not, we have been using it daily with Google search, Siri or Netflix recommendations.
What has accelerated recently and created a frenzy in the zeitgeist is AI in regards to generation. The ability of Chatbots to create. AI is creating images, artworks, videos, scripts, essays and lyrics.
For example:
Type in a text prompt and AI will generate an ‘original’ image…
Type in a text prompt and AI will generate ‘original’ writing…
If you’ve had a play with ChatGPT you may well have been stunned, shocked, amused or terrified by the results. The potential is overwhelming.
Four Corners recently released a fascinating investigative documentary on the subject: Chatbots, deepfakes and love: How AI is changing our lives.
AI is definitely stirring up controversy amongst the filmmaking community.
Writers are striking in Hollywood, asking the studios for regulations against being replaced by AI, having their work used to train AI or being hired to punch up AI-generated scripts at a fraction of their former pay rates.
A common complaint from designers and artists is that AI will replace them rather than help them in their work. As suggested in the article, Op-Ed: Beware a world where artists are replaced by robots. It’s starting now:
“AIs can spit out work in the style of any artist they were trained on — eliminating the need for anyone to hire that artist again.”
Popular generative art AI companies, Stability AI, Lensa AI, Midjourney and DALL-E all trained their AI’s using massive amounts of existing data, including content from artist’s portfolio websites. Sometimes images were uploaded without artist’s knowledge or permission. A huge question about ethics, copyright and regulation has ensued.
Closer to home, T&DA’s Tyrone Estephan about the tension between AI and the pursuit of creative quality:
“Is the technology a helpful tool that’s set to make life easier for creatively-minded people, or is it a new way to feed the industry’s worst impulses, eschewing integrity and quality for the sake of convenience?”
Image credit: Her, by Spike Jonze
The way Nick Cave summed up his despise of generative AI (in this poignant interview about deep grief and loss) resonated with me:
The negativity, trepidation and fear is immense.
Finding the delight in generative AI was difficult. Besides from being a new digital art form, with seemingly limitless potential (which in itself is very, very exciting).. the delight in generative AI is that it can be used as a springboard in the creative process. It can easily and efficiently help create mood-boards, storyboards and source reference images. Through deep prompting you can get more specific and relevant results. (Here is a beginner’s guide to creating photorealistic images using AI.)
Perhaps generative AI will inspire us to be better, more authentic, more vulnerable and real. We can take heart in the fact that AI will never have a heart! It will always be inauthentic, soulless and without human connection. It will never be able to feel, bleed or know pain. It will never be able to heal and express what that feels like. Only we can do that.
Historically, people thought printing presses were going to kill original artworks; that the internet was going to kill libraries. I don’t believe AI is going to kill artists. It will exist alongside us and if it can do the menial or repetitive tasks then it can free up our time. If it’s our springboard, inspiration and motivation to create more wild, imperfect, emotional, unexpected and raw artworks, then the future certainly looks delightful.
Check out this Yalumba 30 sec commercial that we recently graded or learn all about LUTs here.
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