Name: Brainstorm Tech 2024: AI Goes To Hollywood
Uploaded: 2024-07-16
Duration: 15 min 16 s
Description: Jake Aust, Chief Innovation Officer, AGBO Cristóbal Valenzuela, Co-founder and CEO, Runway Moderator: Sharon Goldman, Fortune

Jake Aust, Chief Innovation Officer, AGBO Cristóbal Valenzuela, Co-founder and CEO, Runway Moderator: Sharon Goldman, Fortune

Brainstorm Tech 2024: AI Goes To Hollywood

Conferences

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much, Chris. It's great to see you again. Jake, it's great to meet you. Well, well, this is amazing. I, well remember seeing the first generation of runway A I and I think, you know, we can all see the progress that's been made. But Jake, I'm going to immediately go to what I consider to be the cinematic elephant in the room and that is will A I kill Hollywood. Hollywood's been around for 100 years. Will A I kind of end this run of Hollywood as we know it or are we not there yet? I think we've been here before and I think it's, it's important to recognize that Hollywood exists because of technology and there have been many, many technological revolutions that have happened across the history of Hollywood. You know, from bringing sound and color to, to the, to the picture, to CG and there has been existential angst in Hollywood and outside of Hollywood as to whether or not this was going to kill Hollywood. I don't see A I as something that's going to kill Hollywood. We are at the end of the day, an artist driven company at Agbo and it still takes the human, the human touch, the human connection. Now that said, will it be revolutionary? I believe it will. I believe it will. But I don't see it as a revolution that kills Hollywood. OK, Chris, I'm going to push back on that a little bit because you know, as Ali was saying, and as we've discussed, you know, many actors, writers, creatives of all stripes have pushed back on this technology. We can see how amazing it is and folks have raised concerns about it just a year ago, started the SAG actor strike. And you know, just last week, there was news that actors had pushing back against digital scans of their likenesses. What are they misunderstanding? We were just talking in the green room about kind of the nuance around this discussion. Can you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. The first thing is, I think I agree with you, Jake with regards to how really art and technology are entwined like cinema and filmmaking, the history of technology in a way. And I think what we're seeing right now are more disdain. These are really exceptional tools for great artists and kind of what we're discussing before to a point of nuance. I think these days it's really hard to get nuanced conversations. I think we get into extremes. This is either destroying everything we know or is the best thing we've ever seen in our lifetime. And I think it's like none of those. It's like somehow in between it's gonna create a lot of change. I think technology creates change. And that's a good thing. And it also is going to allow for many more things that we never thought could be possible to be possible. And I think that the first type of thing that I think is necessary to get a bit more of a nuance is if you're afraid, if you have your opinions around this, if you've never used any of those tools, then the first thing you should do is use them. Like if you've never ever created a video, using a model like gen three, then go ahead and create a video and you'll see by experience in like two minutes where things are, what are the challenges, how it can be used and how filmmakers are using it so far. And so getting to a nuance is somehow difficult, but I think it's needed. Well, I want to come in a few minutes. I want to take some questions for the audience. I'm sure there is some. So just think about that. But Jake, I'm going to turn to you again. I'm not sure how many people realize that for a long time, you were a producer, you know, on some iconic TV, shows that we all love like the office and community. So I feel like you have a unique take on this, moving into this innovation role at ADVO can you talk a little bit about how you use today's A I tools in production, whether that is runway or I think you were talking about kind of even earlier in the R and D process. Sure. Yeah, I did start as a producer and I've been involved in technology through my entire career right now. I think what's important to realize is this technology when it comes to being useful to a company like ours, Agbo is very much in its infancy. We're in a, we're in a very early stage of now. We're all watching it progress at a fairly rapid pace. The question is, does it continue to accelerate or to progress at that same same pace? But what we see opportunity in right now is, is what a lot of people in Hollywood are using generative A I for is bringing vision, visualizing your creative idea prior to when you would even have access to a crew to a team of artists that can visualize that for which might have been the traditional process or you just don't have the money to do it because you're, you know, you're an independent filmmaker with, you know, a much lower budget potential and the generative tools can really help you. It's like sketching, you can, you can get your ideas out and look at it and say is that it's not what you're going to put on the screen at the end of the day. The way we look at it right now anyway. Um it, it is, it is a way to get your ideas out there and to communicate your ideas visually. And that's a, that's a very powerful thing. We've seen it as a, as a powerful thing, especially when you're in the middle of still creating what the story, what the world is. And again, like I said, it's, it's early in the process we call development where you're, you're, you don't have access to things, you're going out to the studios to pitch your ideas, to try and secure financing. And this gives you the ability to, to, to give just a little more than you could before Chris, we've talked about your early days runway started in 2018, you and your two co founders met at NYU at art school. So I've always been super interested in the fact that you are a visual artist historically and you know, that has sort of helped inform run. Can you talk about how that is the case? And now when you kind of get pushback from creative communities, how you kind of bring that back to your own background? Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, we better runway 2018, I've been working on some of the concepts and ideas of runway almost for a decade now. And I think like the unique aspect of what we build over time is really the intersection of art and science in a way that makes sense for tool makers for artists who want to use this and leverage it. My personal passion was really trying to understand what new art forms can emerge out of like new models like this ones. Now, the world was very different in 2018 in terms of what journal models could do, what even computer vision could do at the time. But I felt like there was something there that just felt very differently. And I think over time, we're pushing only the research boundaries with the timeliness of the videos that we just saw, but also with how accessible these tools can become for more people. And that accessibility requires empathy and understanding how artists really work. If you simplify the creative process to pushing a button that missed the whole point, it's a process, you sometimes don't know exactly where you're going. You start with an idea and it's about experimentation. And so building tools with the experimentation mindset at the beginning is something we've encouraged the team to do from the very beginning. And I think we'll continue to do so for, for the time being. Um And then how we've uh I think how we manage that, that to communicate that across and also speak more about the nuances with uh encouraging more people to um view what's possible with A I States in the context of really high kind of like production like environments. Like we have this film festival we host every year, I think you, you went, that uh that's an invitation basically to celebrate artists who are using new technologies, not technology. We're not, we don't discuss models, we don't discuss A I, we, we just discuss like people using models or technologies and that is one of the key things I would say they need to do more of. We, I'm obsessed with technology. I think a lot of people here are, but we should start obsessing with people more than like the technology itself. Well, speaking of the people, I'd love to take a, a question. Does anyone have one? We've got a mic back there. OK. Right here. Just say your name and where you're from. Hi, Chris Willis from Domo. Um I love what you said about uh your creativity is not just pushing a button uh with these new tools, you know, we, we, we hear that it's not gonna replace jobs, it's gonna replace kinds of tasks, but going forward. What kind of people do you think will really thrive with these kind of tools or what do schools like our schools at NYU need to be teaching? Yeah, that's a great question. I think like you can look at the past to get a sense of uh of how to make sense of the future. I would say this is uh the, the, the current like generation of artists were benefited a lot from the f transformation technology that we saw a couple of decades ago. And right now, something similar is happening where a new generation of art of artists are gonna be embracing this as tools for them to take on will be the ones that will like I would say thrive. I think the the mindset that I'm trying to um uh move away from is the stasis mindset, which is thinking that what we have right now, production wise, tool wise, uh technology wise is the forever way we will ever do things. And I think that for me is a mistake that uh puts not like the history of art in like context. There's, there's art is an ever changing like form. And I'm curious and I'm really thoughtful and I'm really excited for the ones that are going to think of these things as a new media type, as a new art form that will require people to experiment, to create new things that we haven't never seen before. And the ones that are doing that are the ones that are not constrained by how things used to work. And those for me are like the ones that are pushing the boundaries these days. And so we incentivize also in schools for students to be more of that mindset. That leads me to my next question for Jake, I feel like video and photography and creative mediums are a good example of where we've already had so many tech developments in that area. You know, we've had Photoshop, we have youtube, we have different apps on tiktok to make videos. How is this different? Do you see it as different even more game changer down the line or do you see it as just another evolution in the history of video and photo and, and visual art? I would say probably somewhere in the middle of that, I think there's a lot of similarities to, let's say the release of Photoshop and the ubiquity of Photoshop. We were grappling at the time with a lot of very similar issues, which is what's real. You used to see a picture, you could see a picture of something, it was that man, it was real. And then all of a sudden Photoshop started questioning and you started Photoshop became a verb very quickly and we grappled with that and we are all fine still, you know, like it's OK, you know, and so I think that there's some of the same wisdom should be applied today to what A I tools are that said, I think it is, I very much agree with Chris. I think there's a, there's potentially a new medium here that is about enabling something that doesn't currently exist um in terms of personalized interactions, in terms of um you know, um uh being able to, to get exactly what you want at the time that you want it um in, in, in, in relation to, to creative works, you know, an IP that might exist or have been created. It's a really, it's a really interesting, I think, possibility and that's where I'd like to keep my eye is not trying to save a nickel doing the stuff that we've always done. But like, what's new? What, what can we create here with this technology? We have, we have one more question here. I'd love to take uh Hi, I'm Kako Shrivastava, uh CEO of Splice. We are creator first, uh A I tech for music and musicians. So I really appreciate your question, Sharon. Um We also believe that it's about the creative process first and you have to focus on the creator. I'm super curious in both of your work. What have you seen artists do differently with this technology? That's not just a productivity gain but a creativity gain and more specific, the better. Um Go ahead. Sure. Um You know, I've been, I've been, we, we've released a new model. Uh I think it's been like 12 days or so. Um I've been obsessed just watching people generate things. So I do like something where I just see people like generate things and, and work with these models and the more I see them, the more I started to understand that um this is becoming more of what I I've been thinking about as um think about it as like a dream for the mind. You're going to exercise your creativity, not for the sake of creating some sort of like mastermind picture like film that's gonna make you an award winning director. But more because you wanna just exercise your own creative like mind and it's a tool that allows you to basically do that. You go in with some ideas you have in your head, something you've ever wanted, always wanted to create, you start creating with it. The model responds back with new things you've never thought of before. You take those things, you adjust them and you spend hours doing it and then suddenly you're like in a flow state where like you spend hours thinking about stuff, creating stuff, the output is not some productivity, like video that you're gonna put for a self pitch or I don't know a film. It's just for your own like like joy and you're happy with it. And I think that for me has been something I've never seen before that you engage with the technology in a way you've never engaged with any other technology before. I think part of it is the model becomes extremely creative as you use it more. And also it's a very fast feedback process. So you, you think about something you see it, you think about it again and you start doing this all the time. That for me has been like one of the most interesting non like productive like use cases I've seen so far. All right, we've got literally just over a minute left. I want so, so watch that. I want final thoughts. Three final thoughts. But what should we be thinking here? I mean, I think, you know, just to relate back to what I just said. I think it's, it's keep, keep our eyes on the future, keep our eyes on what's possible. I think the artists are going to show us what's possible. I think Chris's art background is, is, is uh, is so critical to what you're doing and, and I think it's going to be the artists that show us how these tools are used and it's the happy accidents. It's the, it's the, you know, the hallucinations that happen that are inspirational. I think that is, is what's new about this. What do you say, Chris? I basically think the same, think about and try to go for the things that don't have names that you've never seen before. When photography was first invented, people didn't have the words to describe it and they looked at it as something new. The first photographers ever made were referred to as mirrors with memories because that was the language people have, they had time to describe this new thing. I think pretty much what you were saying. Focus on the artists are going to push the bond just to figure out those new languages. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Chris and Jake. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you.