The Story: Everyone in Hollywood Already Uses AI

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It means I can inject in my space on my time. It's my treatment, my way. Visit vivgartmyway.com that's V-Y-V-G-A-R-T myway.com and talk to your doctor about Vivgard Hytrulo. Brought to you by Argenics. This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. This message is brought to you by Pizza Hut. Because if you're yelling Hut on Sundays, or why not? Yo, Pizza first. So Pizza Hut just put out one of the coolest, like, funniest challenges maybe ever. Pizza Hut. What is it? Basically, if a quarterback says pizza before they say hut, Pizza Hut will give that quarterback city a pizza party. Is this real? Yeah. Isn't that crazy? You think coaches are bringing this up in team meetings? You think a pizza party is worth a false start? Or what if they got the other team to jump off sides with a Pizza Hut? Hey, whatever it takes this time of year. 100% this weekend. Let us know if you hear Pizza Hut. I know, I'll be listening. This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@o d o o.com that's o d o o.com. Kaleidoscope. Welcome to tech stuff. This is the story. I'm Os Veloson here with with Cara Price. Hi, Oz. So I would like to show you something and just get your reaction. And I promise you it relates to today's story. Here we are, planet Earth. It's impossible not to appreciate the sheer grandeur of our world. And yet there remains one forest unexplored by humans. A forest filled with life, with creatures living in the burrows of the ferns, the branches of the trees, by the flowing streams and the mossy bogs. I'm David Attenborough's neighbor, Dennis, and welcome to a forest filled with little critters. So this is a sort of Pixar style animated film with a parody of David Attenborough narration. The publication date is April 10, 2023. So I am a little curious why you want me to watch this film which is titled Critters with a Z. Critters, what you just saw is the beginning of a five minute animated movie that was created using OpenAI's Text to Image software back in 2023. Critters with a Z was created using Dall? E. We're Obviously now in 2025 and OpenAI, in conjunction with a creative agency and film production company, are turning Critters into a feature length film. Not only that, it is set to premiere at Cannes in 2026. So they have a drop dead deadline. The 2023 short is not terribly engaging. In the first 43 seconds, it feels like a product demo, which of course it is. But what can we expect from the 2026 version? Will this be a moment that has Pixar quaking in their boots? Well, you know, if OpenAI and their partners in this can deliver a feature length hit, the very definition of studio could change, you know, especially given their goal, which is to make this movie for less than $30 million, which is nothing really compared to the hundreds of millions it can cost a major studio to make a feature length animated film. And then there's the timeline that we talked about. You know, OpenAI said they will wrap in nine months, while Pixar would probably take two to four years to make something similar. Assuming the film comes out in 2026 and it's well received at Cannes, standing ovation, 15 minutes, and then it drives real box office. I mean, these are a lot of big assumptions. If all of that happens and it happens at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the Time that Pixar would do it in this would represent kind of a seismic moment for the whole of Hollywood. It would represent a seismic moment. I think that it's something that Hollywood definitely should be worried about. But there also are a lot of humans inside this loop. You know, OpenAI products like Dall e and Sora will be used for production, but humans will be the voice actors. And there are some human artists who are even overseeing the project. I think, most importantly, the screenplay is being written by two of the writers from the Paddington franchise. How is the industry responding? I mean, obviously, generative AI was one of the huge issues of the writers strike. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of people outside Hollywood that assume that generative AI is no go in the industry, especially because of how tense the strikes got. But that's what today's episode is about. I actually got to talk to Lila Shapiro, who's a features writer for New York Magazine, and her recent piece was titled Hollywood Already Uses Generative AI in Parens and Is Hiding It. Ooh. And in this piece, she talks about how generative AI is viewed and used in Hollywood. She actually heard from studio execs, VFX artists, writers, actors, directors, and even up and coming generative AI studios hoping to work within the studio system. The victories of the strikes were largely about, like, what people can sort of be forced to do, but people are being sort of pressed to do it off the record, informally, by people lower down the production chain, because everyone is pressed for time. And here are some really efficient ways to do things. So it's like there are these guidelines, but it's limited to how much it's gonna really, like, stave off these greater pressures, needing to be more efficient, productive, and deal with tightening budgets across the industry. I think it's important to remember that AI already plays a role in Hollywood, and it has for over a decade. Lla told me every studio uses some form of AI. The thing being argued over in Hollywood is like, generative art, like purely creative tasks that can take the artistry out of a job or threaten to replace jobs entirely. But there are a million uses for AI that are just replacing grunt work. I mean, the writers strike resulted in a contract that says scripts can't be generated by AI. But if a writer wants to use AI, they can use it. And this is how AI is treated in most parts of the industry. Here's Lila again. Studios aren't advertising what they're doing with it because the public response is so negative. And there aren't, like, Tons of examples that we know about. To give you an example, like you look at what happened with the Brutalist, where the director came under criticism when it developed that they'd used generative AI to adjust the audio on some of the dialogue, you know, and I think it had to do with adjusting the actor's like, Hungarian accent. And so something like that I think is extremely widespread. And it's almost, it's hard to argue with. You're like, well, there's not something like sacred about like adjusting audio, audio levels in a certain way. And now there's this technology that makes it much easier and faster. If you look at like specific little windows, you're going to find everyone is doing it. And why wouldn't they? But here's the thing. The only people motivated to scream about it from the rooftops are AI companies like OpenAI or other creative studios that are dedicated to the use of generative AI. Which means that Lila had to really dig to understand the true role of AI in Hollywood right now, not to mention the industry's collective opinion on it. So what you're saying is we're going to get an expose today. Well, I started my conversation with Lila asking about a swanky Hollywood party she attended. There were a ton of high powered people in attendance, but so many of the people Lila interviewed there refused to be named. And that's because the party was a launch party for a new generative AI studio. I'll let Lila take it from here. So the party was put on by one of these new AI studios. This one is called Asteria, and it had described itself as sort of the Pixar of AI. And part of the reason the studio had some buzz around it was that it was run partly by the actress and showrunner and writer Natasha Lyonne, who sort of this like, indie world darling. And the other component of it is that this studio is sort of positioning themselves as like the ethical AI studio in that they are training their model, they say, on licensed material. So there's this sense that a lot of artists feel rightly so that like their work is being scraped, they're not being compensated, and now they're being replaced by these models that can do what they did much more efficiently. So Asteria is trying to sort of get around that problem by saying that they're licensing all their footage and they're building a model with a group of engineers who kind of come out of the AI scene in Silicon Valley. This party that I went to was the launch party for their model and it's in this big room and there are these like images that are created by their model projected across the walls. Trippy things of like a cloud turning into a man and the man falling into the clouds and turning back into them. Or like undulating fields and galloping horses. Everything is very Dolly esque. Yes. There was no presentation or anything. So you don't really know like how they made it or, or what the process was of producing those moving images. It was very like sceney. They weren't leading with an explanation of sort of what they were and what they were about and how they were doing these things. There was sort of a weird thing that you described in your article that there were a lot of people who didn't want to give their names. What was that about? Right. I think that people still feel that there is a kind of stigma, like associated with using Generative Aid AI. When the article came out, a lot of people were really upset with Natasha because they're like, this is a betrayal. So people would tell me like, I think this is going to like alienate me from my friends and colleagues if they know that I'm here and that I'm interested and I'm looking into it. Even though it's becoming increasingly widespread and it's happening everywhere, people still don't like it. I understand that there's still a stigma around the use of AI and supporting companies that use AI, even though every company now uses AI. Yeah. A lot of what's being done with Generative AI is replacing what CGI was. And it's not like there's something that's sacred about CGI or like rotoscoping where you're like very painstakingly cutting out a person's image and moving them into another background. That's not like a pleasurable activity, it's not a creative activity. It's like a rote task that has to be done over and over and over and over and over again. If you have a way to do that where it happens much faster, saving you like days or weeks of time, and looks the same essentially then like, why wouldn't you want to do that? A lot of the people who are most interested in experimenting with it are like CGI, VFX people, because they're like tech people who are interested in emerging technologies and they're work itself was once in an emerging technology. So it's not like they're like dead set against it. But it does have the effect of no matter what way you sort of slice it, visual effects is now going to be much faster. Which means from, like, a labor perspective, it takes less people to do it, and it takes those people a shorter amount of time. And that even leaves aside the ethical issue of, is this based on stolen work, which Asteria is trying to get around with their system? So one of the studios you spoke to is Runway. Can you tell me a little bit more about them and, like, what do they do? Exactly. So Runway is this company that they've designed a model that generates video, and they also, you know, have the ambitions to become a studio themselves, and they've now produced a pilot, and they run these film festivals that are AI Film festivals. So they're really embedded in Hollywood at this point, and they've gotten a lot farther there than the big tech companies have around. When I started reporting, I think the picture had been big. Tech doesn't know how to operate in Hollywood. Whereas I think Runway came in and started having meetings. And at this point, they're meeting with every studio. They had the first publicly announced partnership with a studio, which was Lionsgate, but they have a model which can do incredible special effects. When I was talking to the Lionsgate executive and other filmmakers who are working with Runway, they talked a lot about how, say you want to have a shot of 10,000 soldiers in the mountains during a snowstorm. To really shoot it, they'd have to go to the Himalayas, and it would take three days and cost many millions of dollars. And then using Runway, they can just create that for $10,000. And it can also do, like, much more insignificant things, like, say you have a shot, but you want an extra foot of image around every part of the scene. We can do that. So we can do a lot of things with varying degrees of excellence, all of which are much faster than alternative ways of doing those things. In your piece, there was one paragraph that really struck me. It's a paraphrase of something a Lionsgate exec told you. With a library as large as Lionsgate's, they could use Runway to repackage and resell what the studio already owned. You know, I already feel like we're in the. We have sequelitis right now in Hollywood. And I think people who love movies like myself are often lamenting the fact that everything seems to be something that already existed. I guess my question for you is, do you feel like we are increasingly just pushing into repackaged, repurposed content territory that is Hollywood, or is that lament a little bit Pollyannish? Like, of course, you hear something like that, and it's like, that's depressing. Now, I'd say the alternate argument to that, which I heard a lot from the people at Asteria, certainly Natasha Lyonne is that sure. That's one possibility. Another possibility is that this technology levels the playing field, right? Fresh voices, new people who would otherwise be unable to get a foothold in Hollywood will be in a position to make films. And so there are certainly people who are arguing that this can lead to a new golden era of independent filmmaking. I don't think that's impossible. But the worst case scenario doesn't seem that improbable either. Which is what? Which is that, like, it'll just be all slop from here on out. The slop will just get more and more and more slop. Like, because we're so focused in, like, churning out content. And if someone can just click a button and star in like, seven seasons of Game of Thrones knockoff, they're going to want to do that. What are the incentives for making quality content? But at the same time, like, I don't think it's an all or nothing. I'm sure it'll just continue to be kind of both. It's a matter of if people who care about movies and the art form of movies will invite these kinds of movies into their lives or worlds. Yeah. One thing I thought was really interesting in response to the piece is at the end of the piece, Natasha talks about how her neighbor was David lynch before he died. And she relayed to me, like, this conversation she had with him about asking him his thoughts. And his response was to, like, pick up a pencil and say, this is it AI. Basically, like, it's a tool. What matters is how you use it. And then all these people online were like, how dare she drag David Lynch's name through the mud like this? He would never have used AI But I thought it was actually very probable that he would have said that because he was a constantly evolving filmmaker who did use many tools that were, at the time that he began using them, controversial and something that others were, were saying would lead to the death of art and the death of filmmaking. So I do think it's true that it's just a tool and that, like, of course people will make interesting things with it. And there are interesting artists right now who are experimenting with it and we haven't seen their work yet. But I think once those projects start to come out, there will be a shift in attitude. I think that Netflix, Ted Sarando said this. Like, he thinks that it's not Just gonna make movies much cheaper to make, but also 10%. And that the reason it would make movies 10% better is because, like, oh, we'll be more freed up to spend more time on the creativity. And to me it's like, well, that's certainly not an inevitable outcome. It could easily be just that. It's faster. And now you're expected to just churn out more and more and more and more, and you're never given that time back to invest in the creativity. After the break. Will AI ever completely replace human filmmakers? Stay with us. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water. Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be tied. This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting. All linked and talking to each other. Check out Odoo at o d o o dot com. That's o d o o dot com. This is Levor Arrington from 2 pros and a Cup of Joe. 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Visit ratiofood.com to find a retailer near you. I want to pivot a little bit here to the thing that people are focused on most in any conversation about AI, which is job loss. It's no secret that creative workers in Hollywood are struggling, whether it be writers, actors. I don't know, it seems like there's a lot on the line right now. What were people saying to you in your piece and in your reporting about the future of the quote, unquote, Hollywood workforce? Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question that there has already been job loss and that there will probably be more job loss. It's very hard, though, to really pin down the reasons why. When I was talking to unions in Hollywood for the piece, no one was sort of able or willing to say, like, our members lost this many jobs because of AI. There's also problems like the box office is down and budgets are tighter. But all of that said, I think there are some specific areas where it's pretty clear that, like, AI can do as good a job as a person, which is not everywhere by any means. But for example, the junior studio executive, a big part of that person's job was to write script analyses. And that's something that generative AI can do a really good job. And it's not really a creative enterprise. Exactly. One studio executive talked to me about that was how she came up writing script summaries for her bosses, and now she doesn't need an assistant to do that for her. But at the same time, she was like, but I am worried about what is the next generation of studio executives, how are they going to learn when this core function of their job is no longer necessary? And so who am I training now? No one. Is it fair to fear that AI will take over filmmaking altogether? I think that's a reasonable thing to be somewhat afraid of. Although I do think that it's a pretty complicated question, actually, because do I think that people will lose the urge to create art? No. But it could be that we reach a time where there's no economic incentive to do it because most people spend their time scrolling TikTok and that there's no more like eyeballs that want to engage in serious art. And I mean, that's kind of true for not just Hollywood, but also publishing, writing, podcasting, everything is There going to be money to keep making original work. But I don't think that we're in a place where AI could produce a good movie without human involvement. And I don't really know that we will ever be in a place where AI could make a good movie without human involvement. And core feature of AI is that it has no taste. I think sometimes when you have these conversations with people who are like thinking about this vision where like AI is replacing everything, it's predicated on the idea that there's going to continue to be like an exponential leap forward in what it can do. And like right now, AI can't write a good script, for instance, and nobody thinks it can. I mean, that's part of why the writer's victory during the strikes wasn't that meaningful. Because right now it really can't create a good script. But it could in the future. Maybe. It seems like a real question mark. Meaningful artwork has to reflect human choice. So you can imagine someone using ChatGPT as part of their writing process, but it would still have to be led by a person. Because I don't think that AI can produce meaningful. It doesn't have any motivation, it doesn't have any desire to express anything. Right. And it's why taste seems to be the final frontier that would need to be entirely disrupted, which is, from where I stand, seemingly impossible. Yeah, it's just like a different order of business entirely. A lot of people that I talk to in AI, like don't think that that is going to happen. They more think that it will, in the realm of Hollywood, say, get better and better and better at doing these specific technical functions, which is so different than give me seven seasons of whatever TV show. Did you get a sense at all in reporting this of like how laypeople feel about more and more AI content coming out of Hollywood? I mean, most people I don't think, feel great about it. There is like, I think a shift since the writers strikes of just more and more acceptance. Partly also because, because ChatGPT is so widely used now and so more and more people are having some form of interaction with it and being like, this can be helpful. Oh, I could do this thing. That would be helpful. So I think a big message right now is like, if you want to be employed, then you have to use AI. And that's true for like every industry right now, not just Hollywood. It's like if you take away the environmental problems, if you take away the theft of the world's artwork and set those aside for a second Those two small factors. Those two small factors, then I do think that, like, it is a tool and there's nothing inherently frightening about it. And I think there are certain areas where it's just here to stay. So it's not that useful to be, like, that's bad, because it's just the nature of the world right now. So I think some of the reactions to it don't make a ton of sense. Like, I don't think that using AI inherently curdles the work because I think there's tons of ways to use it that the viewer will never even be aware of. And I think that there is an increasing number of people lower down in the industry who come to their producers and are like, here's a good solution to this problem we've been dealing with. Should we try it? And I think that is something that I've heard was increasingly common. Well, thank you so much, Lila. This was a great conversation. Thank you so much for having me. This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive. And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out Odoo at O D O o dot com. That's O D O O dot com. This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. This message is brought to you by Pizza Hut. Because if you're yelling Hut on Sundays, why not yo, Pizza first. So Pizza Hut just put out one of the coolest, like, funniest challenges maybe ever. Pizza Hut. What is it? Basically, if a quarterback says pizza before they say Hut, Pizza Hut will give that quarterback city a pizza party. Is this real? Yeah. Isn't that crazy? You think coaches are bringing this up in team meetings? You think a pizza party is worth a false start? Or what if they got the other team to jump off sides with a Pizza Hut? Hey, whatever it takes this time of year. A hundred percent this weekend. Let us know if you hear Pizza Hut. I know. I'll be listening. Looking for a protein snack that works as hard as the person eating it. Well, here it is. Ratio protein yogurt packs 25 grams of protein, which is more than four eggs and has the most protein per cup in the yogurt aisle. Delicious, creamy and with zero grams of added sugar, Ratio does the math so you don't have to. Plus Ratio Yogurt is a complete protein, which means it has all nine essential amino acids, making it ideal after a workout. Think of Ratio Yogurt as the ultimate protein hack. Visit ratiofood.com to find a retailer near you with Venmo Stash. A taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more, pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max 100 cash back per month. See Terms. For Tech Stuff I'm Cara Price. And I'm Oswal Oshin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me, Oswal Oshin and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvell for iheart Podcast Us Jack Inslee mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song. Join us on Friday for the week in Tech. Kara and I will run through the tech headlines you may have missed and please do rate and review the show wherever you listen to your podcasts and reach out to us attech stuff podcastmail.com. Foreign. This is Julian Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jewels. Sunday mornings I've got my game day ritual, coffee, lucky socks and now New Morning Uncrustable Sandwiches. It's all about that 12 gram protein boost with the new Uncrustables Bright Eyed Berry or Up and Apple flavors. Bright Eye Berries got a feisty receiver energy up an apple. Your classic do it all tight end, soft, pillowy, packed with protein and easy enough for Gronk to grab from the freezer. 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Check the math@t mobile.com switch and now T Mobile is in US cellular stores. Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the cost of optional benefits, plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third line free via monthly bill credits. Credit Stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required. This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@O-O-O.com that's o d o o.com this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.