On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Corbin Bolies reports from Las Vegas where he is covering the AI4 conference with a slew of top leaders and true believers. The excitement around generative AI is still as hot as the temperature in Sin City, but the polarizing effect of the technology is evident as well, Bolies reports.
Bolies, who joined Variety earlier this year as our first AI beat reporter, made the trek to Las Vegas in part to moderate a session with filmmaker Scott Mann, who heads the AI tech firm Flawless. There is
Mann’s focus is on guiding the creative community to an understanding of “just how people can navigate this conversation in a way that amplifies filmmaking and creativity, while keeping humans at the forefront in this era of AI slop,” Bolies explains. “You have Hollywood studios and creatives afraid of just what AI’s impact on the industry can be, from both the models that are trained and scraping their copyrighted work to generated content that people fear may take the place of traditional films and traditional TV shows.”
Flawless focuses on tools that help filmmakers more easily handle dubbing of content for various markets. Mann emphasizes the benefits of that AI tech can offer in handling certain post-production functions that can otherwise be very costly.
“When people hear the word AI, their first thoughts are the extremes, and Scott’s hoping that Flawless and other filmmakers who are working in the same space as him can break through that noise and show that AI can be additive to Hollywood and helpful while keeping humans and creatives working in partnership with them,” Bolies says.
The AI4 conference, held at the Venetian Las Vegas, casts a wide net on AI’s impact well beyond entertainment and content creation. Bolies says the coming wave of robotic devices will be capable of mind-blowing functions.
“I’ve seen at least three different types of humanoid robots today alone — one that looks straight out of Will Smith’s [2004 thriller] ‘I, Robot,’ ” he says. “They looked a little freaky to me, but it just shows what the mobility of these robotics are. We’ve seen AI on a software level, but on a hardware level, that’s going to be a big impact.”
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