When Ian Watson and
team wrote the screen story for the film ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in the
mid-90s, little did they know that a few decades later, quite ironically, AI
would be replacing them. Well, not completely (at least for now). Greenlight
Essentials, a firm that uses ‘technology to help entertainment professionals
make commercially more successful films’ has combined science and art to
revolutionise how movies are made. The software makes use of artificial
intelligence to analyse audience response data to help writers craft plot
points that connect with audience demand. And if this sounds too futuristic,
know this – a film co-written by AI, titled, ‘Impossible Things’ is already in
production and will hit the theatres in 2019.
Jack Zhang, Founder, CEO, Greenlight Essentials, who was
recently at Film Bazaar to present a session on ‘Artificial Intelligence and
the Art of Content Creation’, says, “We wanted to test our ideas on a concept
stage. We made a film trailer using AI algorithms and analysed audience data from
about 200 million social media profiles to learn about what they like, what
they comment and share on social media and used that to record the plot of the
film.” Using a meagre sum of $30, the team made a concept trailer using
inexperienced high school club students as actors and directors, and put it on
Facebook. The trailer received a mammoth 2.2 mn views (!!!) and around 20,000
shares and comments from people expressing interest in watching the movie,
which didn’t even exist. Now, the film is being made with a $3 mn budget and is
looking at a theatrical release in 2019.
Sounds too scary to be true? Not really, Zhang says. “We
definitely attracted some eyeballs with the project. I think people are
generally scared to new ideas but when you look at it, it is really a logical
next step to take. It’s not the computer that is creating these things out of
thin air. It is giving audience the power to dictate what they want to see and
then we can tailor it to that. We are just offering that middle layer. So yeah,
if you look at it as computers taking over the world, it may sound scary, but
at the end of the day, it is just a tool to help creative people do their job
better. Human creativity is not replaceable.”
While
it may look like the software is coming up with the ideas, it is not writing
the entire screenplay by itself. Maybe, the future will change that. On a
parting note, Zhang says, “A lot of times you cannot really see AI on the
surface – it is in the background, serving you. Google has been doing it for
years – there’s AI in the background, looking at your search results and
suggesting things to you. People don’t notice that. I think AI is going to
change the world without people even knowing it and help people do their job
better – more efficiently and more effectively.”
