Provided with simple or complex prompts by users, programmes like Midjourney can create surprising and intricate images. The AI model Sora, developed by ChatGPT creator OpenAI and not yet available to the public, goes even further, creating fluid video content in expansive and photo-realistic worlds.
Social media channels are now flooded with AI-generated imagery and video content, and it is continually improving. Naturally, it is a small step from there to AI-powered feature film production.
The first Korean film festival to acknowledge this is the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan), which this summer is staging the country’s first AI film competition during its 28th edition.
Seeing the writing on the wall, BiFan has gone all in on AI this year. In addition to its new AI short-film competition, the festival is screening the AI-generated feature-length Japanese animation Who Said Death is Beautiful? and staging a three-day AI International Conference with experts on artificial intelligence from around the world.
But the festival is not only screening AI content and investigating its dangers and potentials – it is also developing its own.
It held a 48-hour AI Workshop during which participants learned from mentors and had access to premium AI tools to make their own films. One of those, the short film EGG, premiered during the opening ceremony of BiFan+, the festival’s entertainment- industry programme.
In addition, BiFan commissioned an AI-generated “Identity Film”, which serves as the trailer for this year’s festival. Against a backdrop composed of a dizzying collection of AI-generated moving images, the film asks “AI, who are you?”, and gives the response: “I’m just your mirror.”
While many companies and innovators in the content creation industry in Korea and elsewhere welcome BiFan’s seeming embrace of AI, there are those that are more cautious, and many that still reject it outright; the latter cite concerns ranging from job security and copyright infringement to content quality.
It is the idea of AI being a mirror for those who use it that is key to understanding why BiFan has so swiftly hopped aboard the AI train.
Filmmaking will cease to be a battle of cash, it will only be one of creative challenges
Long before the advent of AI, content creation had been shifting from a producer-centric model to a user-centric one. As users we have more control over the digital products we use than ever before, whether that means uploading content on social media channels or publishing books on Amazon.
AI is expected to greatly accelerate this shift, since it is designed to be intuitive. Used correctly, it could be a tool that enables a creator to achieve or expand on their vision with greatly reduced resources.
In his remarks at the BiFan+ opening, festival director Shin Chul was bullish about AI’s potential to enfranchise creators and democratise an industry dominated by those in control of the purse strings.
In his days as a film producer he realised early on that he had two choices going forward: “Do I stand in line to get money, or do people stand in line to get money from me?”
He believes that AI will change this rigid industrial binary “because now there’s a completely new way of making movies”.
“Filmmaking will cease to be a battle of cash, it will only be one of creative challenges,” Shin says.
This is an admirable position to take, one that banks on the creative potential that AI could unleash. However, even if we put aside ethical and legal concerns, it is still not clear to what degree these tools will enable creators to achieve their visions.
Today’s AI-generated content, while undeniably novel and impressive, is still rudimentary, and it is hard to say that it accurately reflects the intentions of the people plugging in the prompts.
AI pushes aggressively in its own direction, borrowing liberally from all the conventionally generated content that has come before it. How pronounced is the human element? Are these AI tools truly a mirror?
One of the keynote speakers at the AI International Conference was Sten-Kristian Saluveer, the founder and chief executive officer of Storytek, a content and media technology incubator, and the head of programming at Cannes Next, an innovation-focused business and networking platform within the Cannes Film Market held in conjunction with the annual Cannes Film Festival in France.
Saluveer sketched out the broad, confusing and rapidly evolving realm of AI-powered content. He went through the pros and cons of generative AI, outlined the challenges facing the content creation industry on the road ahead, and imagined where that road would take us in the years ahead.
In describing how we perceive and approach AI today, Saluveer uses the analogy that it is like ice cream. It is tasty and exciting, but also has a tendency to be uncontrollable, just as ice cream melts in its cone and dribbles down the sides.
Saluveer explains how AI has arrived at a very sensitive time for the content creation industry. In what he calls a “polycrisis”, the industry is still reeling from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the disruptive rise of global streaming platforms, and the aftermath of the largest Hollywood labour disputes seen in over a decade.
These problems have severely impacted the value chain of content creation and robbed many corners of the industry of crucial financial resources. Many large studios don’t have access to the money they once did.
Enter AI, which, though still in its infancy, provides many ways of drastically cutting costs.
Like those who face redundancy because of automation, many people, from technicians to creatives, fear for their livelihoods as the vast potential of AI to lower costs and save time on content creation becomes ever more appealing with each new iteration of AI-powered programs.
On the other hand, as Shin, the festival’s director, asserts, much like cheaper digital video technology, AI has the potential to enfranchise and assist legions of creators who might otherwise not have a way into content creation nor access to meaningful funds.
Perhaps we could stretch Saluveer’s AI-as-ice-cream analogy even further. Eating it too quickly can give you a brain freeze, temporarily shutting down your ability to function normally. We should therefore eat it slowly.
Then again, can ice cream ever be more than a simulacrum of the flavours of real food and a source of empty calories that stimulate our senses without providing us with nourishing sustenance?