Here’s an article on how AI is used in movies and TV. For example, when an actor has to say a few phrases in a foreign language, AI can make him sound natural and not ridiculous. Or actors can be given cobalt eyes, like in Dune. Documentaries and historical films can have the voices of the dead people they talk about resurrected. To me it all sounds fantastic. Special effects, including of the computer-generated kind, have always existed. We didn’t expect characters in Buffy actually to turn into vampires with the power of their talent. The transformation that happened five times in each episode was computer-generated. And that was back in 1998.
As for accents, it will be a relief no longer to hear supposedly Mexican characters say “pour favour, ameegow,” so I don’t see a downside.
De-aging is something now done with AI. Again, I think it’s better than actors getting pumped full of fillers and Botox, which they have been massively overdoing. I very rarely watch anything American and prefer European TV series and movies because in them characters look like people and not robots. US movies and TV shows have chosen to make actors pursue the ideal of abnormal perfection that turns them into plastic dolls on a shelf. This was long before AI. I don’t understand this choice and have removed myself from the American visual culture almost entirely.
To me, the problem of American movie-making is that there are no stories. Often, a script starts to fail somewhere in the middle and collapses from here. Endless remakes that we’ve been discussing here on the blog testify to the scarcity of captivating, meaningful stories, as well. You can find good acting, excellent photography, elaborate special effects, and even AI, but scripts have turned into cardboard cutouts, clunky and embarrassing.
Things are still not as dire in TV, although the golden age of American television that we all experienced starting in the late 1990s has come to an end. There are still some fine shows but the era of Seinfeld, Buffy, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, House, Game of Thrones, and other conversation-changing shows is gone. Now it’s all Netflix documentaries and mushrooming Real Wives franchises. Maybe people are so into performative politics because there’s nothing to watch.
This is why I don’t see the problem with injecting AI into already artificial stories with plasticky actors and fake ideas. Every year, there’s at least one extremely embarrassing Holocaust or WWII movie that is so cliche even AI could have been more original. Every year there’s an equally cringe “Black History” movie. And an unavoidable movie about stoic, long-suffering immigrants and evil Americans who abuse them in inventive ways. They are all so identical that, without AI adding cobalt eyes or some other fussy little thing, there’s nothing to see in them at all.
That’s why, I believe, AI is going to be ever more present in movies and TV. This is an industry that is cyclical, and at some point we’ll see great movies and shows again that will be so engaging we won’t care that the actress has a couple of hairs out of place and doesn’t look like a Barbie doll. Until then, it’s all AI, all the time.
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