“There are things known and there are things unknown and in between are the doors of perception.” — Aldous Huxley

I’m Junior Huxley Westemeier, and welcome to The Sift, a weekly The Rubicon opinions column focused on the impacts and implications of new technologies.

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Everybody’s talking about AI. In the last few weeks, there’s been a stream of AI-related news: AI-powered intelligent assistants coming to Sony earbuds, Google’s AI-generated podcasts, and the yet unknown looming deadline of Apple Intelligence’s release.

Amidst these headlines, there was a massive deal between a multi-billion dollar entertainment company and an AI research company that could possibly shape the entertainment industry forever. On Sept. 18, Lionsgate (the studio behind the Hunger Games, John Wick, and the Knives Out movies) signed a deal with RunwayAI that allows Runway to train a model on Lionsgate’s entire digital library.

The motivations behind the agreement are clear: Runway gets an enormous amount of high-quality training data, and Lionsgate can use the resulting technology to reduce costs by using AI for storyboarding.

The technology that Runway is developing has grown from a laughably fake meme generator into a (slightly) more sophisticated system that can generate realistic-looking stock videos. Just look at this demo from March 2023

compared to the latest Gen 3 model demo from July 2024

the difference is stark.

Now that Runway will have access to the Lionsgate films/TV productions library, a user will have the ability to change everything about a scene: the lighting, environment, and camera movement. None of the released information mentions using AI to generate full movies. Instead, Runway’s final system will be used to draft storyboards and save money by reducing the amount of CGI mockups and expensive editing time, or at least that’s what Lionsgate says.

What’s to stop them from cutting costs further by taking humans out of the equation? 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water had 1,195 visual artists according to IMDB, a substantial number of employees that could be out of work if AI technology gains the capability to replace them. It’s also alarming that Lionsgate would simply sign away their entire library. Thousands of actors who likely did not consent to their work being used in this way are now training models. While Lionsgate owns the films and has some ownership over an actor’s image (depending on the contract), it’s still ethically questionable. Did Jennifer Lawrence, for example, understand that her starring role would be used to train an artificial intelligence model a decade after The Hunger Games ended?

One could argue that such technology will make filmmaking more cost-effective and accessible to budding filmmakers than ever before. A college student could have access to the same AI model as significant producers, bringing more balance and polish to lower-budget productions. Some view it as the next logical step for CGI.

But I ask any reader: why is this a good thing?

I’d argue that films from the early 2000s that relied on practical effects instead of digital- think Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter– hold up more than recent CGI flicks (um, Marvel?). I guarantee that the HBO reboot of Harry Potter next year won’t have the same visual impact as the original films unless it dedicates itself to purely practical effects, a rarity in the post-pandemic budget-cut era.

While AI technology will keep progressing, it also has an astigmatism to it. It might have the same visual result as CGI, but it does so by replacing a human artist and copying existing styles from training data. As Runway builds its arsenal, it will be interesting to track how widespread artificial intelligence is interwoven in future films. Is balance possible between human involvement and artificially digitized elements or will the film industry end up eliminating human artists and their unending creativity and innovation for pure profit?

A John Wick film with an AI-generated Keanu Reeves would be terrifying.

Check back on Oct. 25 for the next installment of The Sift. Our columnist, like our students, will on Fall Break.