On Wednesday, AI video synthesis agency Runway and leisure firm Lionsgate announced a partnership to create a brand new AI mannequin educated on Lionsgate’s huge movie and TV library. The deal will feed Runway legally clear coaching knowledge and also will reportedly present Lionsgate with instruments to reinforce content material creation whereas probably lowering manufacturing prices.
Lionsgate, recognized for franchises like John Wick and The Starvation Video games, sees AI as a technique to enhance effectivity in content material manufacturing. Michael Burns, Lionsgate’s vice chair, stated in a press launch that AI might assist develop “innovative, capital environment friendly content material creation alternatives.” He added that some filmmakers have proven enthusiasm about potential purposes in pre- and post-production processes.
Runway plans to develop a customized AI mannequin utilizing Lionsgate’s proprietary content material portfolio. The mannequin can be unique to Lionsgate Studios, permitting filmmakers, administrators, and artistic workers to reinforce their work. Whereas specifics stay unclear, the partnership marks the primary main collaboration between Runway and a Hollywood studio.
“We’re dedicated to giving artists, creators and studios the perfect and strongest instruments to reinforce their workflows and allow new methods of bringing their tales to life,” mentioned Runway co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela in a press launch. “The historical past of artwork is the historical past of expertise and these new fashions are a part of our steady efforts to construct transformative mediums for creative and artistic expression; the perfect tales are but to be informed.”
The hunt for authorized coaching knowledge
Generative AI fashions are grasp imitators, and video synthesis fashions like Runway’s newest Gen-3 Alpha are not any exception. The businesses that create them should amass an excessive amount of current video (and nonetheless picture) samples to research, permitting the ensuing AI fashions to re-synthesize that info into new video generations, guided by textual content descriptions known as prompts. And wherever that coaching knowledge is missing, it can lead to uncommon generations, as we noticed in our hands-on evaluation of Gen-3 Alpha in July.
Nonetheless, prior to now, AI firms have gotten into authorized bother for scraping huge portions of media with out permission. The truth is, Runway is at present the defendant in a class-action lawsuit that alleges copyright infringement for utilizing video knowledge obtained with out permission to coach its video synthesis fashions. Whereas firms like OpenAI have claimed this scraping course of is “truthful use,” US courts haven’t but definitively dominated on the apply. With different potential authorized challenges forward, it is sensible from Runway’s perspective to achieve out and signal offers for coaching knowledge that’s fully within the clear.
Even when the coaching knowledge turns into absolutely authorized and licensed, totally different components of the leisure trade view generative AI on a spectrum that appears to vary between fascination and horror. The expertise’s potential to quickly create photographs and video based mostly on prompts might appeal to studios seeking to streamline manufacturing. Nonetheless, it raises polarizing considerations among unions about job safety, actors and musicians about likeness misuse and ethics, and studios about authorized implications.
Up to now, information of the deal has not been acquired kindly amongst vocal AI critics discovered on social media. On X, filmmaker and AI critic Joe Russo wrote, “I don’t suppose I’ve ever seen a grosser string of phrases than: ‘to develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content material creation alternatives.'”
Movie idea artist Reid Southen shared the same detrimental tackle X: “I ponder how the administrators and actors of their movies really feel about having their work fed into the AI to make a proprietary mannequin. As an artist on The Starvation Video games? I am pissed. This is step one in attempting to interchange artists and filmmakers.”
It is a worry that we are going to possible hear extra about sooner or later as AI video synthesis expertise grows extra succesful—and probably turns into adopted as a normal filmmaking device. As studios discover AI purposes regardless of authorized uncertainties and labor considerations, partnerships just like the Lionsgate-Runway deal might form the way forward for content material creation in Hollywood.
