Let's be real. It is an exceptionally difficult time in the film industry. A combination of strikes, pandemics, and fires has thrown a wrench into an industry that only a minute ago seemed engaged in a rare streak of throwing money at everything to see what stuck. The residuals that paid the bills of actors and writers for decades are drying up. It seems as if the pendulum has swung backwards, wallets have tightened, and film work seems scarcer than ever. And somewhere, a group of men in a boardroom, men who've never written a film or picked up a camera, have decided that the salvation of their profits and industry lie in the non-existent hands of technology with a cheeky humanoid name. Already major film producers are using AI-generated materials in theatrical releases. Silicon Valley has delivered us to a rather bleak science fiction benchmark earlier than we would've liked: the day where artists are replaced with machines.
Filmmakers are not, or at least shouldn't be, inherently scared of technology. The medium we call home couldn't exist until moving-image-capturing cameras existed. Our medium is defined by its technological inception. Unlike painting, singing, or sculpture, filmmaking has not accompanied us from the Paleolithic era. Preceded by steam engines and coal power, movies are dreams brought to life by way of machine. But let us not misunderstand this relationship. It is predicated on the 'dream' emerging from the collision of synapses in a human brain. Without the idealists operating them, these machines have little value of their own. The Godfather was made not by cameras, but by a collection of people sculpting with light in front of an omniscient lens.
Perhaps nowhere does the phrase "time is money" ring more true than on a multi-million dollar set with hundreds of laborers. AI is frequently praised for its time and money-saving capabilities. On the surface the two seem like a match made in the Cloud. But the film industry is a long game. Most films take years to make. Some take decades to write. Sure, ChatGPT can write 120 pages faster than I can. White Castle can also make a burger faster than I can. On both accounts, I'm willing to bet mine is better, healthier, and worth the wait. But it's going to cost more time and money, and to someone somewhere, that is the most important factor. The 'problem' is that stories cannot be made fast enough or cheaply enough to maximize profits. As robots have yet to unionize and demand fair wages, they're an obvious solution for the fiscally minded. But it's not just about compensation. We face losing what makes art, well... art.
A few months ago I found a quote online (attributed to no one, believe me I tried) "Art is the expression of the illogical and an algorithm is the antithesis of that." It's really stuck with me. We're sold on the idea that these technologies are infallible. Yet these self-driving cars have yet to self-drive, and these disease detection softwares have high rates of misdiagnosis. Before we even truly know if they work, we're banking on these technologies being able to do anything we ask and to accept the result as perfect, free from 'human error'. But human 'error' is where art comes alive.
Every artist has idiosyncrasies that define their oeuvre: Wes Anderson's absurd, dry wit and intricate composition, Quentin Tarantino's bold pastiche-y dialogue, and Charlie Kaufman's unsettling metaphysical ambiguity; distinct visual languages, built on each author's interactions with the world and how they are conceptualized. Creation is defined by its process. The iconic films of the above auteurs were crafted by hundreds of hands all sold on one person's vision. I myself have written my way out of grief, confusion, love, and joy, out of some questions, and into others. In order to "create" a 120-page screenplay, Artificial Intelligence scans the internet, stealing captions, novels, and lyrics to approximate whatever it thinks a movie is. I'll concede, one could argue that writers do the same thing: from a vast collection we pick and prune, and reform into something original. But these references are enriched by the lived experiences and connections we have with them. An AI chatbot might include a song lyric in an essay because a line of code made it think it should. A writer includes it because of the way the song and its own life ties into the larger themes of the work. Thinking about art as a source of knowledge is perhaps the easiest way to illustrate what we lose when we remove humans from the process of creation. There is nothing for us to learn from robots. All they can do is tell us what we, or whoever programmed them, already know. If 'art' is a reflection of our curiosities about the people and society we live with, and our place in it, what becomes of 'art' if the creator in question is defined by the intangibility of their interactions with the world around it?
Since its genesis, film audiences have sought out the silver screen to be freed from mundane routines and interpersonal strife to create and engage with art. Filmmakers put audiences in another's shoes for two hours and convince them that they're on Arrakis or being swarmed by evil birds. Then, while in the dark, surrounded by strangers and the smell of butter, staring at a massive window into someone else's world, two people from the same place will have different reactions. One may shape the way they move about the world for the next 5 years. The other may never think about the film again. But no matter what, these two people have both committed time to experience someone else's worldview. And for some of those people, stumbling back into the light and brushing the kernels from their lap, the world will be a different place; somewhere wider, more vibrant, and easier to understand. But as these stories become less and less frequent, so goes the understanding of others.
Perhaps exacerbated by the above conditions, it seems as if empathy is a dying star, fading away. Empathy is the crux of all art, in fact the very reason human language exists. The screen can introduce us to other countries, identities, and ideas. Studies show that stories involving characters from an 'othered' population can improve empathetic tendencies. This power has allowed our species to become the dominant force we are today. The ability to communicate without words has built empires, won wars, and crossed oceans. AI, on the other hand, has no capacity for empathy. It creates blindly, only expectations in mind, backed by data ravaged from the Internet Archive.
In a day where every news cycle seems more and more unbearable, art is more crucial than ever. Edward Tian, creator of ZeroGPT, a software that seeks to detect AI writing, said in an interview about his invention. "If we live in a world without unique voices, there will be no challenging of societal norms. There will be nobody to capture ideas that go against the status quo." In an era when the status quo threatens to squash us all under its heavy boot, we need as many disruptive and original voices to tell their stories as loud as possible. An algorithm is not the solution to an already confused digital reality. I do not worry that it will rise up into humanoid machines and shoot lasers at us. I am worried that AI will turn us into humanoid machines by dulling our abilities to think and make judgments. That we should impoverish ourselves by willfully denying art that can challenge our views. If critical thinking skills weren't threatened enough, replacing nuance and reflection with watered-down, easily digestible attempts at prose certainly will not help us. Imagine years from now fighting beneath a Mad Max-sized torrent of water for a few drops because some suit a few decades ago wanted all the 'glory' of screenwriting without any of the work.
The journey of an idea from morsel to masterpiece does not follow a pre-set flowchart or algorithm. Millions of minor incidents, a flat tire, a photo seen online, a coworker's meandering story, shape a piece of artwork. There is no possibility for a line of code in a computer screen to experience any of this, so it never makes it in. If you're someone who likes stories with no rough edges, grey areas, or connection, then maybe I'm way off, and these AI movies are perfect for you. I have yet to meet someone who craves such stories. Instead, I am reminded every day of the power contained in the action of a human making up a story to make sense of our world. The intrinsic power of art is to answer questions that cannot be answered on a chalkboard in definitive language. And let's be blunt. If you need a robot to come up with an idea of what to write, perhaps writing isn't for you. But don't worry! There are millions of people doing it every day.
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