AI gets creative
Image: Ex Machina © Universal City Studios Productions.
From commissioning, through to script writing, budgeting, production and post production, artificial intelligence can play – indeed already is playing – a vital role in the creative industries. makers reports.
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ntelligent machines are rarely portrayed as a force for good in film. From The Matrix to Ex Machina and The Terminator, movies regularly present robots powered by artificial intelligence as the stuff of nightmares. Off-screen, the idea that computers and data could play a role in filmmaking has long been considered an anathema in Hollywood, where personal taste, charisma and talent were viewed as key to success.
However, the film and TV industry is quickly changing its attitude towards artificial intelligence and machine learning. From commissioning, through to script writing, budgeting, production and post production, there’s a recognition that artificial intelligence can play – indeed already is playing – a vital role in the creative industries.
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Scepticism about AI is lessening in part because, over the past decade, it has moved from the lab to daily life in many walks of life. AI has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome. Within the creative industries, firms such as Netflix and Amazon have thrived by using technology to guide decision making. Both use complex and jealously guarded algorithms to recommend specific content for their audiences and analyse audience data to underpin their commissioning and acquisition decisions. AI also is one of the hot topics in the world of postproduction and visual effects (VFX) at the moment. In fact, it almost seems like there is a new ML tool or programme being released every other week, with