Devin Gordon
Appearances
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
Hi, my name is Devin Gordon, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. So maybe you remember, last year, there was a major strike by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild that completely stopped Hollywood for several months. And one of the issues at the core of the contract negotiations with the movie studios was the subject of A.I.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
One use of AI is to make actors look younger or older than they actually are. For example, in a new movie called Here, AI transformed Tom Hanks' face to make him look anywhere from 18 to 80 years old. This method of facial replacement technology is also being used in stunt work.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
You can take the face of, say, Dwayne Johnson and digitally paste it onto the face of a stunt person leaping off a cliff. Filmmakers have also used AI to bring back dead actors to reprise roles, as was done with Ian Holm for his android character in this summer's Alien Romulus.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
This is the kind of work that would typically take teams of hundreds of artists, drawing every pixel, frame by frame, several months to do, and it can cost tens of millions of dollars. For this week's Sunday read that you'll be hearing next, I wanted to get as many honest takes from people in Hollywood about where AI might ultimately lead.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
And I really wanted to know, and I think many of us as moviegoers do as well, but might be hesitant to ask, could AI actually make movies better? So here's my article, read by Eric Jason Martin. Our producer is Jack D'Isidoro, and our music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
guild members were concerned that AI could replace humans at every stage in the creative process, that studios would soon use AI to write screenplays, direct and edit films, design the special effects, and even read and decide which scripts were greenlit. Actors, meanwhile, were concerned about copyright ownership over their images.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
They wanted to protect their likenesses from exploitation, reproduction, and profit without their benefit. But I also heard another perspective from AI optimists in Hollywood. They told me that the technology was still widely misunderstood. So I decided to find out what AI was actually being used for. Did the anxiety match the reality?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?’
At first, it was difficult to find people in the industry who would go on the record in praise of AI because that can be seen as siding with the machines or undermining union solidarity. But eventually, I was able to speak with artists who have already incorporated AI into their work in films you might have already seen.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
And so I was like, okay, well, what are people actually using it for? What is actually happening with AI? So I started with a visual effects company that works with AI called Metaphysic. The reason why I wanted to start with them is because everything I kept hearing was that When AI descended upon Hollywood, it was going to hit visual effects first and hardest.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
So I wanted to start with a visual effects company. And this particular special effects company, visual effects company Metaphysic, their specialty was sort of taking... the deepfake logic and of digitally creating a photorealistic copy of a famous person's face and applying that to all sorts of aspects of the filmmaking industry from
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
special effects, to dubbing, to reshoots, animation, aging and de-aging, et cetera. And so I went and spent time with them. And one of the first things they did was they sat me down in a chair, pointed a camera at me, and there was a television screen opposite me, and my face was on the screen.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
And then the metaphysic guy clickety clacked a little bit on his keyboard, and suddenly my face had Tom Hanks's face sort of pasted on top of mine.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
I could see my face. It was still me. And if I talked, it was moving. But I was also very recognizably Tom Hanks. You never know what you're going to get. The reason I was Tom Hanks is because the film project that Metaphysic was then working on was a movie called Here that starred Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Hey, Dad. I'd like you to meet Margaret. Nice to meet you, Margaret.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
It was directed by Robert Zemeckis. The team from Forrest Gump reunited again using AI technology to a degree that it had not been deployed in a Hollywood movie before. In fact, it was central to the making of it.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
In this case, they were using it to enable Tom Hanks to play the same character from the age of 18 to the age of 80. And the way they were able to do that was using metaphysics AI technology. And one of the reasons why I wanted to focus on this movie here which is not a particularly good movie. I wouldn't necessarily recommend you Netflix and chill with it. Get the fuck out of my house.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
But I was interested in this movie because this movie is probably the first mainstream Hollywood movie that would not have existed without AI technology. And the reason why is because it's effectively a small domestic company emotional, serious drama. The only reason why this movie could happen is because the visual effects that it required were cheap enough with AI. It's as good as CGI now,
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
And it's a lot cheaper and it's a lot faster and it gives directors a lot more creative control on the set. So that's why in the visual effects space, there's such this expectation that AI is very quickly and already is in a lot of ways transforming that industry. In good ways, but also in ways that's probably going to cost a lot of people their jobs.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
He was surprisingly unconcerned. Wow. He was just sort of like, well, let's just get the paperwork sorted out. Amazing. And I was a little surprised, to be honest, about how cavalier he was. For instance, I mean, isn't it easy to imagine a scenario, maybe not in the Hanks family, I'm sure the Hanks family is going to, I trust Chet-
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
But OK, what about Colin's grandkids? And they're down on their luck. And all of a sudden, 100 years from now, Tom Hanks' legend, his imagery is being sullied because his image is being used to make bucks in porn or whatever. He's not thinking that far in advance. Let's put it that way. I think the takeaway for me, no shots at Tom Hanks, was that it did sort of reflect a class divide.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
You know, one of the things that I kept hearing on the makeup front, with AI, is a director going to have to have a makeup department do a character's makeup every single day? Or can the makeup department do it once, right, at the start of the production? That becomes a file that gets saved and mapped onto the character's face every
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
later, and now instead of having a makeup artist for the entire run of the set, you've only got the makeup artist for one day. You go from makeup artists being paid by the day to some sort of almost license or copyright for how many days that makeup work gets used. The entire economics of the industry has to change. Does it mean that we're not going to need makeup artists? Of course not.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
We're still very much going to need makeup artists. They're going to need them as much as ever. But how they work and how they get compensated is going to radically transform. And you can go through every department in the filmmaking process and... Each of them would have different ways in which AI will disrupt how they work.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
The thing about all these ways is that none of them are as grandiose as the worst of our imagining, right? The people who were the most skeptical about AI's ability to overtake human creativity that I spoke with are the people who... understand AI the most and use it the most. They understand its limitations and also how to best use it. They understand how to use this tool.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
When we're talking generative AI, when we're talking creative orientations or applications of AI, they understand how indispensable the human mind is to that equation. It just doesn't work without it.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
The notion, the theory, who knows if this will come to pass, but the positive theory, the flip side of this, is that AI lowers the barrier of entry to so many more films that even though the size of the crew and production is shrinking because of AI, the amount of productions that can exist grows. because more people can afford to make more movies.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
You can accuse that of being sanguine and overly sunny. I would say, in the defense of the sanguine people, The indie film movement does provide an interesting parallel here, right? When filmmaking went from very, very expensive, limited film in the 90s to small handheld digital filmmaking where anybody could make cinema quality movies. All of a sudden, you did have a lot more movies, right?
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
You had a lot more movies being made for a lot less money. So there is a test case, right? Can AI do that? Well, I feel like in some ways that brings us back to our friend Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal. to her haters out there, I think you're missing the point. I don't think that Joanna Stern is in any way trying to make a film that could go air on ABC or air in the movie theater.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
What she's trying to demonstrate is how easy it is for even someone like her to effectively sit there and make something that looks, at the worst, a bad knockoff, But look at all the things that she can do without having anybody. Exactly. Or experience. Anybody. Or experience. Yeah. Right? Right.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
And now take that capacity out of her hands and put it in the hands of people who actually do this for a living. Right? And the question is, how dangerous does this get? How many people is this going to replace? And... I just don't think we know. I don't think we really know. In some ways, what Joanna's film leaves me with is both fear and relief.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
The premise and starting point was... my sense that if you were listening to the discourse about AI in Hollywood, you would either hear that it was going to be the end of Hollywood and wipe out everyone's jobs and turn the future of cinema over to robots, or it was going to be the greatest creative unlocking opportunity magical wand ever handed to creative filmmakers in the history of humankind.
Today, Explained
AI Video Killed the Video Star
And I had also been hearing and reading these stories in places like the Hollywood Reporter,