Filmmakers, educators, and other entertainment industry professionals are reacting in alarm at a new Amazon-backed tool that will allow viewers to create their own TV shows using an artificial intelligence system called Showrunner.
Fable, a company backed by Amazon, is touting Showrunner as the “Netflix of AI,” and allows users to create their own animated series by using text prompts.
Users can guide the generative AI system to create characters, write dialog, create voice work, and even add a musical score, with the AI system handling the works.
The system has made its debut in universities in the United Arab Emirates, and, unsurprisingly, controversy has erupted in the wake of the tool’s introduction.
According to Professor Peter Bentley, a computer scientist and AI creativity expert at University College London, UK, Showrunner is “remarkably quick and easy” to use, The National reported.
However, he notes that so far Showrunner’s results work better when the output is derivative of other, pre-existing films and TV shows. And he feels the tool is less useful for creating new and innovative programs.
Despite that caveat, some in the film and TV industry are worried over the implications of audiences creating their own entertainment.
“These tools are designed to undermine traditional narrative craftsmanship,” said UAE-based director and writer Faisal Hashmi.
“What is film if not the vision of a storyteller using their own experiences to make you feel something? If you remove that process, is it really a film any more?” he added.
Still, while Hashmi feels that audiences will eventually reject AI-produced entertainment because it will always lack that human touch, he adds that AI can be used to augment human efforts to create moving and all-too human entertainment.
But Razan Takash, another UAE professor, is trashing the tool because he thinks AI will eventually replace the teaching of essential ideals in filmmaking with the learning of “film prompting.”
She explained the AI-based process as wanting and said, “You can’t prompt somebody else to lift the weight for you and expect to become a bodybuilder.”
Certainly, there are plenty of others who say that widespread availability of AI tools will democratize entertainment and give audiences more agency of their own in the creative process.
Mohammed Mamdouh, a filmmaker and assistant professor of film and new media design at the American University of Sharjah, says that tools like Showrunner will bring about a transformation of the entertainment industry.
Mamdouh says that creators who have until now been sidelined with be empowered and it is “not the death of cinema” but rather “the rebirth.”
The National added that “The AI market in the film industry is projected to grow from $1.28 billion in 2024 to $1.6 billion in 2025 and reach approximately $14 billion by 2033.”
Mamdouh also had a warning to the film and TV industry. He said that filmmakers should stop fighting against AI, and need to embrace it and become key players involved in guiding the industry, to they will not be run over by the AI train and left in the dust.
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