While Hollywood Fears an AI Future, China's Film Industry is Embracing It (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0185640862
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/09/14/0115231/while-hollywood-fears-an-ai-future-chinas-film-industry-is-embracing-it
- Source link: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/hollywood-fears-ai-future-china-100000860.html
> Chen Yilong has racked up plenty of film and TV credits in his two decades as an actor, but with work getting scarcer he signed a contract in August to license the image of his face to a Chinese production studio. Chen's role will be to sit in front of a video camera and make facial expressions at the prompt of a director. A neutral stare. An angry glare. A look of surprise. Using artificial intelligence, the studio will use images of Chen's face to generate an avatar, also known as a "digital human," to star in an AI-generated movie. "If you can't beat it, join it," said Chen, 38, who works in Beijing.
>
> The Chinese film and video industry is being transformed by AI-driven storytelling, fueled by rapid advances in video generation software, and at ground zero are the so-called micro dramas that play out on millions of smartphones. Typically just a minute or two in length, the videos are devoured by Chinese audiences... And the cost of producing them has been cut drastically through the use of AI software developed by Chinese technology juggernauts including Kuaishou Technology and TikTok's global owner, ByteDance. The number of Chinese-made micro dramas surged in the first three months of this year to 128,000, according to the China Netcasting Services Assn. More than 95% of them were made with AI, the association said....
>
> Sun Wei founded Feixiang Universe, the Shenzhen-based studio that cast Chen. The fear of accidentally "stealing someone's face" was a big reason she said she decided to license real people's likenesses for an AI production set during China's Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago. Thanks to AI's training data bias, AI-generated performers tend to have similar features and share a homogenous look, Sun said. Many have flawless skin and extremely symmetrical faces, requiring her and other Chinese AI filmmakers to cast a wide net to "buy" new faces and digitize actor's expressions.
Lu Beike, who directed the big-budget Chinese series "Three-Body," felt theAI-generated scenes he'd tried came out sub-standard. "Lu added that if 90% of a film was generated by AI, a real human performance could appear jarring. A real actor's expressions carried more nuance and emotion. The skin textures did not match. Sometimes the only solution was to process the live-action material until the person looked a little less real — until they fit back into the 'AI world,' Lu said."
But at Sun Wei's studio, they're thrilled they can produce a 90-minute AI film for $500,000 where professional productions used to cost millions of dollars. According to the article, Sun's team works with ChatGPT, Kimi or DeepSeek to flesh out entire screenplays from a short paragraph. The screenwriter takes over, but "to produce the finished product, Sun's team uses Chinese video-generation models to input the type of scenes, backgrounds and performers they want, with the AI generating 15 seconds of footage each time."
Still, the article points out that "Similar tools are being tested in the U.S., and the AI trends upending China's entertainment industry may be a harbinger for what's to come in Hollywood, said Michael Berry, a professor specializing in contemporary Chinese culture at UCLA. Already, Chinese companies that sell AI-powered video-generation software are seeking inroads in Hollywood..."
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/hollywood-fears-ai-future-china-100000860.html
It is a cultural difference (Score:2)
And even if your movie is LLM generated, you still need ideas and creativity to make it. On the other hand, soap-operas are an early form of pre-LLM slop.
Re: (Score:1)
I think it's more a quality difference. China's film industry is much smaller so anything that needs special effects of any kind doesn't have the kind of budget to make it to the point where a casual viewer is going to be turned off by AI at the level you can currently get it at.
China does have some big budget films but I suspect those aren't going to use AI much or at all.
Here in America even TV shows have ridiculously high budgets. Some of that is the actors but a lot of it is the cost of doing an
Re: (Score:2)
Hollywood cinema is a testament to the fact that you don't need ideas and creativity to produce movies.
AI isn't going anywhere (Score:1)
SAG can try it's best to boycott or otherwise coerce the studios into not using AI, but it's not going anywhere and it's getting better fast. It's really just another tool that can be used to make movies and human-actors will still have a place. Of course, at the end of the day, this is all just entertainment and that's always been a cut-throat business anyway.
As a consumer I don't want it (Score:3, Insightful)
You ever had that Frozen non-dairy dessert crap?
Every now and then I accidentally buy a tub of it by mistake. I take a few bites and start eating it and it doesn't taste right but I take a few more bites before I really can convince myself something is wrong.
Every time I just assumed that I bought a bad tub of ice cream somehow. So I look at the expiration date and the stuff should be good I didn't buy something that just got stuck in the back for 10 years or something. And inevitably I noticed that
Re: As a consumer I don't want it (Score:2)
A lot of folks eat non-dairy ice cream because of health reasons or ethical reasons. There's enough of a market for it that they make the stuff.
A lot of folks watch these things already for a variety of reasons, but whatever those are there appears that the market for synthetic live action-esque movies has a positive cost benefit ratio for the folks making these things. Hell, most blockbuster movies are 50% CGI already. The jump to 100% isn't all that much.
Yeah but they are settling (Score:1)
It's not that they really enjoy it it's that they have some health or ethical reason that makes them settle for what they don't actually want.
And that market isn't really all that big. If you look up the current state of the impossible burger and beyond meat both companies are struggling...
As for AI yeah there's a market for people who just want slop in endless supply. But it's usually people with nothing going on who just need limitless content to fill a day. Like a lot of old farts I've got a bad
Re: (Score:2)
> You ever had that Frozen non-dairy dessert crap?
You did not just diss Dole Whip? That stuff is the frozen nectar of the Gods when you've been walking around for hours in the hot Florida sun.
Re: (Score:1)
Dole whip is not frozen non-dairy dessert. The term Frozen non-dairy dessert means a very specific and very unpleasant thing when you are out shopping. It's how you spot fake ice cream. Dole whip is pureed Frozen pineapple. Well yeah that's technically Frozen non-dairy dessert the term is not used in marketing Dole whip. It doesn't have to be because you don't make Dole whip with palm oil...
If you see those magic words on a bucket of something pretending to be ice cream turn and walk away. I miss Klondi
Re: (Score:2)
I see the future of movies as being AI-generated, with viewers providing scripts, actors, directors, and whatever else they care about, either their own or rented. You'll choose everything and the AI will generate it real time. You'll be able to adjust parameters on the fly -- funnier, darker, more introspective, more action -- overall or per actor. You'll be able to talk to the characters, provide real and misleading clues to detectives, tell the AI to throw in a car accident or a broken sidewalk just t
AI films are just animated films (Score:1)
AI films are just a new form of animated films. Its all just CGI. Some live action films are already CGI heavy. If too many (?) human characters are AI based then the film falls in the animated category rather than the live action category? Hybrid live action and animated films are not anything new, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "Space Jam", comes to mind, but they go back much farther to the classic disney era.
The effort is the point... (Score:3)
Why we connect to movies, art, music and so on is thinking about what the artists was thinking, trying to convey.
In a movie, we appreciate the craft in bring words to life and it does require a high level of skill. Bad acting kills a story.
But, in the age of hyper-condensed media and attention spans, a whole generation is being trained to enjoy absolute garbage, devoid of any real effort. Even, then, it is actual human beings doing the dances or whatever on Tik-Tok and so on. If AI comes in and replaces the last human part, it will just make some people appreciate reality even more.
Also, we know the outcome here. It leads to people being vaguely unhappy, disconnected and unable to really feel a sense of accomplishing anything.
I am probably wrong, but I hope there is a real rejection of the current social media culture and there is a embracing of making computers into mere tools again.
What if the writer and director are still human? (Score:1)
> In a movie, we appreciate the craft in bring words to life and it does require a high level of skill.
Is this true for animated films too? What about hybrid live action and animated? Animated films that are CGI based rather than hand drawn/painted? Hand drawn that are computer "painted"?
At some point we may have a human writer an a human director, and they prompt an AI. Is that still art? Aren't human words still being brought to life?
While AI will certainly lead to a lot of slop, hollywood is hardly without a lot of slop already.
I also expect that some currently unknown indie writer and director w
The best AI movies look as bad as mid-90s CGI (Score:3)
Have you ever seen a long movie that's actually convincing that is generated by AI? I've seen sloppy ones. Even the "good" ones, like Higgsfield ones are impressive for AI, but not convincing. The shots are claustrophobically close...mostly to keep from rendering hands or the bodies. The physics are just WRONG...which is something you'd think AI would be able to do OK. Like punches are a foot away from making contact and things are just really really off.
There will definitely be a niche for this...but AI movies are kinda like fruit-flavored candy. Grape sales didn't plummet once nerds candy came out in grape flavors.
The AI movie experience is slowly improving, but is still terrible. You can make a very short 5s shot that's QUITE convincing...so long as there's a single subject...really closeup.
There's an interesting parallel in AI porn. A girl in a bikini? AI gets an A+. I am not confident I can spot the AI vs a real image. Most of the time, I can detect mistakes in the background, but they're quite great at the foreground. At first, they'd always make lighting mistakes, but I just looked at some reddit examples and they've gotten quite better.
OK, the woman gets naked? B- Real women don't have perfectly circular symmetrical nipples. It's mistakes like that really mess things up. The shadows and proportions are often just "off"...however, where it fails nearly universally is any sort of liquid. if she's in the shower? (or any other fluids on her)...definitely F.
Video? Well...if there's on subject...it's definitely getting better. I've seen videos where I can't tell if it was generated by AI or was a real video through some sort of AI correction filter....so long as it's a closeup of the subject's face and has minimal movement. If there's a second person? I've seen C- videos here and there, but mostly horrible Fs. There's a LOT of physics mistakes from basic movements to fluids. Objects change size from frame to frame, etc.
Why do I bring up porn? Well...not just because I'm a pervert...TBH, AI porn isn't for me. However, it's because I believe many great consumer technology leaps were driven by porn: photography, home video, the internet, the smart phone, etc. Most of us love sex, don't get enough of it, and are willing to pay to get our thrills.
But also, there's a LOT of porn on the internet that would make for very easy training data. LOTS. Also, the subject matter is limited in scope, making the data more likely to be applicable. Next to sports, I can't imagine much filmed more often than a woman taking her top off...so...it is logical to assume it's the easiest thing for AI to generate. Few things are shared on the internet more than images of breasts. Why can't AI render a topless woman convincingly?
Once AI masters recreating a basic porn, I think Hollywood has reason to fear. However, if AI only works if the subjects is EXTREMELY closeup, doesn't show their hands, there's no fluid, there's little movement...then the movies it can make are really limited. Also, AI movies are EXPENSIVE to make today. I can't imagine people paying top dollar to see AI slop...and today, they cannot make them cheap enough to just give away for free for very long.
So while I can see a few scenes here and there or backgrounds using AI...we're FAR from replacing actors in convincing movies that don't look like shit. Also, AI is just not that popular. People hate AI slop. I don't see that changing until it actually does something cool...custom content?...maybe...but making slop with AI and charging us movie theater prices?....I don't see that working very well.
Re: (Score:2)
> The AI movie experience is slowly improving, but is still terrible. You can make a very short 5s shot that's QUITE convincing...so long as there's a single subject...really closeup.
That's simply not true. I watched a ten-minute AI-generated Star Trek video on Youtube last week which was better than any offficial Star Trek show of the last few years.
And the guy made it at home on an Nvidia GPU in his PC using a Chinese video model.
Re: (Score:1)
> Like punches are a foot away from making contact and things are just really really off.
I wonder how much of that is based on human actor motion capture used for the animations?
Cultural warfare (Score:2)
They want to kill Hollywood more than Hollywood is already destroying itself. Undercut them on cheap, shitty shlock, something something, soft power.
Check out Jia Zhangke's Dance on youtube (Score:3)
FYI Jia Zhangke is one of China's top directors. He won the Golden Lion in Venice, and several other accolades. Typically he makes subtle films.
Out of curiosity he spent a few days with an AI video generation tool, and released a short film in in time for Chinese New Year.
You can see it here on YouTube: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
He made a short meditation about creativity and identity, showing himself and an AI version of himself (though, of course, both instances were AI generated). It features images from a few of his movies, but you can enjoy without having seen those.
I was initially very much against AI films, but this short film shows what a consummate storyteller can do with the tool. Worth 5 minutes of your time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpRUevWgJmc
Bug with moderator drop down. (Score:2)
Undoing another moderation ruined by the moderation drop down choosing a (wrong) moderation the instant i click to open it. I guess this version of Chrome is bugged.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a lot of stuff that's "historical", mostly about their heroes and their various wars.
In the old days the films had two persistent characteristics - they were very linear (you would not have an exterior and interior shot without also being shown the actor going through the door) and everything in them was very much black and white, no nuance. I guess the party didn't want much of a thinking stimulus. Also, they were fantastically over-exaggerated, all heroes jump-flying, laying down thousand and so o
Re: (Score:2)
See, I said "costumes" twice, that's what you actually remember, LOL.
Also, the hair... It was worse than the fake wounds.