Chorley Bunce TV & Film Location Catering was intrested in reading the following:
Since the launch of ChatGPT thrust artificial intelligence (AI) squarely into the public consciousness, the anxiety and excitement about it within the film sector has risen to feverish levels.
Many in the industry already feel immensely threatened by AI. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) strikes in Hollywood — ongoing at the time of writing — have been partly caused by the fear of how generative AI tools could potentially cost actors and writers their jobs.
‘Deepfake’ technology is becoming ever more sophisticated, and actors can no longer control their voices or images. AI tools have already cloned the voice of Harry Potter star Emma Watson and used it to read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, while in the animation industry there was consternation this summer when it emerged the credits for Disney+’s Marvel series Secret Invasion had been designed not by humans but by AI.
Independent filmmakers across Europe have expressed concern that the streaming platforms’ AI-driven recommendation algorithms are pushing their movies to the margins. At the same time, others have welcomed the potential time- and labour-saving opportunities, with the British Board of Film Classification confirming it is testing AI for content classification — something the organisation’s president Natasha Kaplinsky described as “an incredibly exciting transition for the BBFC”.
European AI companies such as Switzerland-based Largo.ai and Danish outfit Publikum are both reporting a surge of interest in their tools from European filmmakers and financiers, while longer established companies such as Los Angeles-based Cinelytic, founded in 2015 and which has US studios such as Sony and Warner Bros among its clients, has seen enhanced interest in its predictive analytics and project management tools. (Cinelytic recently boasted its predictive box-office analysis tools, which it claims have been used for greenlighting decisions, have been tracking “at 96.3% accuracy for 2023”.)
Anxiety around AI is prompting policy action. The UK government is formulating plans to regulate it while the European Union is preparing its own AI act, which it bills as “the world’s first comprehensive AI law”. The final form of the law is expected to be agreed by the end of this year. As governments look to bring in regulations, European film funds have also been scrambling to assess both the opportunities and the threats posed by AI. Copyright, IP, unconscious bias and employment protection are among the subjects they are investigating.
