Latest news with #HPATechRetreat
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
AI Business, Creativity and Jobs Take Center Stage at HPA Tech Retreat: ‘What We're Trying to Be Is Pixar'
It was fitting that the acquisition of generative AI tech company Metaphysic by DNEG Group's Brahma AI arm was announced on Tuesday, as a large part of the annual HPA Tech Retreat – which was held this week in Palm Springs – was largely dedicated to AI and this deal underscored several of the predicted trends, including convergence. 'Convergence is one of the main things that we will see in 2025,' I2A2 president and CEO Renard Jenkins forecasted, while showing a slide with a lengthy list of just some of the AI startups that are targeting the media and entertainment space. 'That can be good and bad, because if your favorite tool gets purchased by someone who intends to maybe keep it under wraps or they fully don't understand its value, then all of a sudden you've got to learn something new. That changes your workflow, what happens in your development, where things are going to go.' More from Variety 'The Ultimate Goal Is to Make More Movies,' Says CTO of Stability AI, the Tech Company for Which James Cameron Serves as a Board Member AI Is a Potential 'Goldmine' and a 'Ticking Time Bomb,' Says SMPTE Chief at HPA Tech Retreat Metaphysic, The Company That De-Aged Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in 'Here,' Acquired by DNEG's AI Arm Metaphysic has already made an impression in the VFX space — notably its toolset was used to age and deage Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Robert Zemeckis' 'Here' — an application that last week won a Visual Effects Society Award in its emerging technology category. According to DNEG Group, the Metaphysic deal is about creating tools for a range of industries, but VFX is clearly a critical part, particularly as DNEG Group also encompasses VFX giant DNEG, whose work on 'Dune: Part Two' is currently nominated for an Oscar. At HPA, Jenkins reported that in the AI media and entertainment space, 'the most impacted areas right now are visual effects and sound.' During another session, VFX vets Barbara Ford Grant and Daniel Kramer discussed what they learned creating a personal project, titled 'Unhoused,' using various AI tools. Ford Grant described the 'iterative cycle where we layered in different AI tools throughout the entire process. And so we were kind of iterating development, preproduction, production and post.' AI tools ranged from Runway to Midjourney. Kramer, a VFX supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, discussed some lessons learned. 'We really need a lot more control in visual effects,' he said, citing areas such as facial animation, lip syncing and compositing. 'I really am looking for these tools that sort of help enable the artists and help us, you know, work a little bit faster, a little bit better.' Speaking more broadly about filmmaking, director David Slade ('30 Days of Night,' 'The Twilight Saga: Eclipse') said, 'It's not the AI that makes the film. It's the human with the idea and the structure.' He added that all of his prior experience has been useful in his AI-applied work, 'not because I want to make copies of other films in a different way, but just because the form persists. The cinematic language we've had for a hundred or so years persists in this space.' Slade also believes AI will be a factor in launching new channels, and these 'new ways to distribute are going to allow weird or odd movies … that aren't necessarily for everybody, but that have a niche. Niche movies will be possible.' Filmmakers representing some new studios enabled by AI also shared perspectives. Filmmaker Dave Clark, who is co-founder and chief creative officer at Promise, described the development of Promise's Muse proprietary software and workflow layer. 'That's going to be able to move at the speed of AI,' he said, adding, 'We want to build a creative production pipeline that allows us to always, constantly shift and move as the technology evolves. Because I do believe that technology will keep evolving, at least for the rest of my career.' Promise was founded last fall with investment from Peter Chernin at North Road and Andrew Chen at Andreessen Horowitz. Walter Woodman of Shy Kids, the team behind the 'Air Head' short made with OpenAI's Sora, warned, 'I think that when people talk about AI, they talk about faster and cheaper. And I think that's a horrible way to think about things. I think that my job is to make things that were previously impossible. 'What we're trying to be is Pixar. What we're trying to compete with is Disney. And I think what I like most about AI is that it has the promise that we can actually compete with those guys,' he declared, adding 'We're looking for our Steve Jobs.' A range of additional, sometimes opposing, views were also presented during the retreat, including in presentations by Hasso Basse — chief technology officer of AI tech developer Stability AI, whose board members include James Cameron — and Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers president and Deluxe vice president Richard Welsh. Amid these conversations, Hollywood jobs remain a critical concern, driving the 2023 double labor strikes. But Jenkins contends that his research, including that from the World Economic Forum, suggests that business owners (though not specific to filmmaking) 'would rather reskill their existing employees or upskill their existing employees.' He elaborated, 'What that means is that if anybody is telling you that AI is going to replace the worker, AI is going to replace the artist, AI is going to replace, replace, replace – I would theorize that that person is extremely misguided as to how these tools and how these systems should be used, and how they can be most impactful. 'Upskilling is the way forward,' he said, suggesting education and urging, 'for those of you who are concerned about where our industry is going, don't wait.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Ultimate Goal Is to Make More Movies,' Says CTO of Stability AI, the Tech Company for Which James Cameron Serves as a Board Member
Hanno Basse — chief tecnology officer of AI tech developer Stability AI, whose board members include James Cameron — discussed his company's work and the evolution of generative AI in filmmaking during this week's HPA Tech Retreat, saying, 'The ultimate goal is to make more movies.' Pointing to the years it can take to make a Hollywood movie such as Cameron's blockbuster 'Avatar' films, he said, 'We heard this from a number of other filmmakers as well: 'We wanted to make more films in the past, and the time it takes for us, that's the problem.'' During his talk at the annual Palm Springs event, where AI took center stage, Basse weighed in on subjects such as data provenance and budgets, and spoke about progress being made in filmmaking, predicting that in 'probably two years, we're going to have very high performing open source foundation models.' More from Variety AI Is a Potential 'Goldmine' and a 'Ticking Time Bomb,' Says SMPTE Chief at HPA Tech Retreat James Cameron Joins Palestinian-Israeli Doc 'There Is Another Way' as Exec Producer (EXCLUSIVE) Josh Gad Says He Was Denied a Role in 'Avatar' Because He Looked Like a 'Tall Overweight Smurf' As a Na'vi Stability AI develops generative AI models for image, video, 3D, audio and language, including its flagship model, Stable Diffusion. 'Our guiding principles, basically, are that generative AI needs to be part of the production process and not replace it,' Basse said, noting that Stability AI supports an 'artist centric' approach and also a 'task centric' approach, with some of its latest developments being 3D tools and a prototype for aspect ratio conversion. Stability AI also involves some notable leaders from the Hollywood community. In addition to Cameron — who Basse said is 'really actively involved' — Stability AI's board chairman is entrepreneur and Napster co-founder Sean Parker, and the company's CEO is Prem Akkaraju, the former CEO of VFX company Weta. Basse himself served as CTO at Fox (prior to Disney's acquisition of the studio) and at VFX studio Digital Domain. Basse shared his perspectives on several notable AI subjects during his talk. 'I don't know anything that's impossible in the industry today, especially with the advancements of visual effects. So I don't think [AI] is about the impossible,' he said. 'It is really about making things faster and cheaper. If you look at your budgets today, whether it's TV or film, 87-90% of that budget is human labor. And I'm not talking about putting people out of work, but there's a lot of that labor is not as fun to do.' At the retreat, there was also a lot of attention on text to video, which Basse suggested is a 'fad' because filmmakers need the 'highest level' of control. 'When it actually comes to producing a two-hour movie with high production value that a lot of people will want to go and see, I think we're very far from that in terms of generative AI being able to do that,' he asserted. Basse also weighted in on data provenance. 'I actually think that, going forward, the provenance issue is going to be less of a problem than we all think it is now,' he said, noting that production will require 'very specific' data. 'We're not going to get that data from scraping YouTube or whatever. We're going to get that data only from people like [Hollywood professionals], and we're already negotiating training data deals with people. And there's term sheets; there's very clear conditions as to what this data can be used for.' He added, 'We are here to play ball, and to play by the rules of the industry.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
AI is a Potential ‘Goldmine' and a ‘Ticking Time Bomb,' Says SMPTE Chief at HPA Tech Retreat
AI is both a potential 'goldmine' and a 'ticking time bomb,' in the words of Rich Welsh, Deluxe senior VP of innovation, who also serves as president of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Speaking Wednesday at the HPA Tech Retreat, an annual engineering conference taking place this week in Palm Springs, Welsh reviewed some of the recent steps and decisions toward AI legislation, a subject that remains murky. 'Creative work in particular belongs to the person who created it. But can you protect it realistically, if you don't have any recourse to defend the ownership of that work?,' he asked. 'That is my ticking time bomb.' More from Variety Ex-Marvel Executive Victoria Alonso Says She 'Looks Forward To Coming Back' As She Accepts SMPTE Engineering Honor HPA Names Kari Grubin Its First Woman President (EXCLUSIVE) 'Joker: Folie à Deux' Cinematographer Lawrence Sher to Keynote SMPTE Media Technology Summit He then turned the subject to the potential opportunity afforded by the huge archives of content owned by media & entertainment companies. 'We generate so much information when we shoot a TV show, shoot a movie, shoot a commercial,' he said. 'The substantial part of that information is thrown away afterwards, or it's kept somewhere where no one can see it. The 'keeping it somewhere no one can see it' is our advantage.' That edge, he continued, is that it is unavailable on social media or anywhere online. 'Your script notes, concept art, orchestration for soundtrack – these things don't really see the light of day,' he reminded the estimated 500 delegates. But he asserted that this not-publicly-available data does have value. 'AI companies who are training these models cannot go and get that data without coming to you for it,' he said, adding though that there's a rub. 'And I'm going to guess that for most of you, you can't just access it either. You don't have it sitting there at your fingertips.' He urged tagging of this content, including rights information. 'This is going to become more and more important if you want to use your data,' he said. 'And I think even if we think about this without legislation, ethically, this is what we should be doing.' He also stressed that attendees need to 'think beyond the movie' about alternative uses of their archives as he concluded his talk. 'Think about all the other applications downstream,' he asserted. 'You've got retail, you've got the metaverse and virtual. So think about going beyond just the media that you're creating in terms of the AIs that you could train based on the data that you have and value that that brings to your content — and then I have to say, always be ethical.' His talk was one in a schedule packed with speakers who discussed a range of subjects surrounding AI. The HPA confab runs through Thursday. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
