The Dangers of AI

News of the Russo brothers helping develop AI that could create a full movie circulated the internet recently. The internet of course had many responses, most of which condemned the Russo brothers for being lazy, uncreative and sell outs. As a creative how could you even think that this is a good idea, something to put your weight behind? It's embarrassing. If you can so easily be replaced, how good are you really?

AI art has been a strong point of controversy for a little while now as it operates off of stealing art from real, actual artists. AI works by taking “samples” of whatever it is it’s been asked to create. That means that without authorization it steals artists, styles, color pallets and images. And to make matters worse the “art” that AI produces always looks like poorly funded CGI. It doesn’t come close to what real artists can do.

That said, the thought of using AI to create an entire movie is entirely laughable. We’ve all seen the CGI used to de-age actors or bring them back to life on screen. See young Robert Downey Jr in Civil War, or Tarkin in the later Star Wars movies. Now picture an entire movie where the actors look like the bad rubber suits from Doctor Who…

Not to mention a story written by AI. We’ve all seen the “I fed AI 1000 romantic comedy scripts” kind of posts and what the AI produces is always hilarious because it's chaotic and makes no sense whatsoever. Now obviously if a major studio tries to produce a film like this then the technology will be better then what's available to the general public. But as a writer myself I can confidently say that there is no form of AI or other technology that can do what I can. AI doesn’t have heart, emotion or the power to write something that people can relate to. Only humans can do that.

When it comes to direction AI can’t replace that either. At least not with good directors. If the Russo’s think they can be replaced by AI then let it, they don’t have the talent, skill or soul necessary to be great anyway. Directors are supposed to be the visionaries. They take a story from stagnant words on a page to a living, breathing world that sucks you in. They are charged with getting the best performance possible out of their actors. Though I suppose with AI renditions of actors that won’t be necessary anyway. Directors usher the story into the world.

I would love to see an AI movie actually, then the industry can see just what a terrible idea it is. The story would be chaotic and convoluted. The “acting” would be like watching a parody movie from the 2010s acted out by bad wax figures. And the color pallet and set design would feel like the world it's set in is all melting and blending together. There is no way for this to be good, and the very fact that it's even being thought about is actually terrifying for creatives. There is another writers strike on the horizon, Hollywood is still actively taking advantage of its attractive young actors and actresses. The creatives are getting difficult so they want to try and replace us. You don’t have to pay for AI. But society doesn’t want soulless entertainment. They want stories made by real people. So please pour billions of dollars into this project and watch it lose more money than any bad film you’ve ever sent to theaters.