I watched the video. It’s all 1-3 second shots of either recolored animals or two animals combined. In other words, exactly the kind of video AI can deliver at a consumer level. Not impressive. The TED audience politely clapped, but aside from one or two folks the audience didn’t seem particularly impressed either.
It’s all C-suite executives pushing this onto executives below them, who push it onto their organizations as mandates. The C-suite execs don’t care about creativity; they only care about cutting costs. At first this means shortening development times. Soon this will mean cutting staff, and not 10 years from now, but way before this technology can actually replace a human.
You know what would’ve been a good showcase? Show Rogue One but with the film shots digitally composited with an AI Tarkin or an AI Leia, and have it be better than what was originally released in 2016. And have it be lip-synced. It shouldn’t be too hard to improve upon those shots; they weren’t very good.
But AI can’t do that.
Good lord. It’s very bad. I like how the presenter clearly knows that it sucks, too, but he’s required to go out and pretend it doesn’t and try to hype it up.
In other words, exactly the kind of video AI can deliver at a consumer level.
It can do much more. This was literally someone that typed “owl slug” into the prompt.
But AI can’t do that.
Character replacement and lip synching can currently be done. Its not perfect but its advancing very fast.
Your points are valid and all but AI can do a lot, and can do more every month. It’s already pretty versatile and this is currently the worse it is going to be.
this is currently the worst it’s going to be
Yes, this is a favorite line from the industry, who assume the trend line continues uninterrupted into the future. But how about this as a counter future: what if AI plateaus?
What if it doesn’t get much better than it already is except around the edges, and the next breakthrough is two decades away? Companies have exhausted training data and exhausted data center capacity in the quest to keep the trend line at the previous vector. Yes, they’re building new capacity, but no one is making any money on this except Nvidia.
LLMs haven’t seen any significant improvement in a couple years. Image generation has improved, but at a much slower pace. Video is no longer Will Smith eating spaghetti, but there’s a long, long valley between where we are today and convincing, photorealistic, extended scenes that can be controlled at a fine level. Hence the challenge I posed.
Every two weeks, theres a new generative AI game changer that pops out. There is nothing pointing towards hitting a plateau.
LLMs haven’t seen any significant improvement in a couple years.
Chat gpt 3.5, which started the whole craze, came out less then 2.5 years ago. There has been a mountain of improvements since then.
Likewise, there has been monumental steps for all generative services. That long valley for video gen is just a stroll away now.
The future is hard to predict but everything points away from a plateau. AGI might be far but not animators making extensive use of AI tools for example.
I wasn’t the one who down voted you, but I do think you’re painting an overly optimistic picture.
I was referencing 4, which was released over two years ago and was a significant improvement over 3.5. I was genuinely impressed with 4, but I haven’t been very impressed with anything since then. Probably the most substantive change was pulling chain of thought into the model itself, but everyone was already doing it anyway.
Maybe we just have different views on what counts as a game changer.
I’m not coming at this from a place of ignorance: I have AI patents to my name as both first inventor and supporting, and I’ve worked with these teams directly (although, crucially, not in video). I’m saying that the rate of improvement in critical (i.e., non-toy) areas is slowing down, and I believe it’s a significant possibility that AI will start to hit the same walls it did many times before. That was before it entered the consciousness of execs and the general public, and because they aren’t as familiar with the long stop-start history of AI, they don’t think that wall exists.
AI companies definitely know that wall exists, and in at least one case they’re getting increasingly nervous about it.
Show Rogue One but with the film shots digitally composited with an AI Tarkin or an AI Leia
Right, deep fakes never caused objections. AI for dead actors is a widely beloved use case! People would totally understand a replacement, versus only being able to tweak what’s already been done the hard way.
No one likes AI in movies, period. I’m just saying this reel sucked and that would actually be impressive. Anyway, SAG negotiated rules around this that require consent from family estates and compensation, so if the estate wanted to block it, they could.
It’s all C-suite executives pushing this onto executives below them, who push it onto their organizations as mandates.
That is currently the core of the issue. It’s tech-bros and executives gassing eachother up, and most are too far gone to realize that they’re heading for a cliff.
Maybe it’s because typing “make something cool plz” and getting a picture back is finally an interface that C-levels can use
As someone who has been the “deal with C-suite issues” IT guy, that is honestly accurate.
Well it was an absolute joke no going to lie though
Although I agree with the author, I feel obligated to admit that I kinda like the squidatee.
Star Wars needs to do two things and two things only going forward, campy shit for kids starring kids and more shit like Andor. That would bring everyone back to the yard and print money for Disney
I don’t need any more shit trying to explain “somehow Palpatine returned.”. I just don’t care.
Ya, I enjoyed the treasure planet reskin also known as Skeleton Crew. I really really wish they would just leave that whole timeline though. I don’t care about anyone Skywalker adjacent, that horse has been atomized. And let’s stop going to tatooine or “totally not tatooine guys trust me.” There are a trillion people and a billion planets, let’s move on.
I would watch all of that.
Right after the demo ended:
It’s so fun to see artist expression
I literally laughed. This is so bland and unimaginative. Who would watch this? Just one center frame shot after another of animals doing… Nothing?
You take that back!
They are animaling!
Ai is going to put the franchise milking into hyperspace.
Faster at pumping out slop with company branding all while not having to pay an artist for their labour! How can companies resist. It’s a capitalists wet dream.
