It is already starting. This is something we discussed about 18 months ago and now it is emerging full force.

Here is the first paragraph from an article from Wrap.pro:

Hollywood is in the early stages of an artificial intelligence overhaul that will change the entire moviemaking process. In 2025, that wave could begin to sweep through a sector that is vital to the blockbusters that keep the film industry going: visual effects.

No matter how you break it down this is a jobs killer. As we will see, the time saved is already being realized even though the technology is still lagging a bit.

Experts and AI developers tell TheWrap that generative AI programs could be just months away from advancing to a level that would enable studios to apply them throughout their visual effects production systems. And that could have stark implications for the VFX labor pool, both in Los Angeles and around the world.

Image generated by Ideogram

Movie Jobs Will Be Obliterated In 2025 Due To AI

Many reported that animation is seeing something similar. Visual effects is another major employer in the film industry. As we will see, the money saved is going to be enormous.

At the heart of this is the time saved employing humans versus what the AI can do.

“I had about 80 shots in my last short, ‘Europa,’ and about 12 of them we looked at for AI, and instead of needing a team of two or three people working three or four months I could get it done in a couple hours,” Weaver said.

What is the cost of 2-3 people for a few months? Almost all of that will be diect savings. Then consider the time when the work is completed in a couple hours.

This is going to spread very rapidly throughout the industry.

Take note of the last part:

With the wave of new AI platforms introduced in 2024, Hollywood is bracing for the transformation of a range of production processes that impact the overall economics of film and TV production. While Hollywood studios are still determining how the technology will best fit into their production pipelines, experts tell TheWrap that once it is capable of automating enough tasks, the list of VFX workers — which can sometimes exceed 1,000 in the credits of a major film or TV series like “House of the Dragon” — could be cut by 80% or more.

According to their numbers, 800 jobs will be lost on each major film and television series. We are looking at an employment pool of roughly 20% of what it is normally.

The Technology Will Keep Spreading

One way to view this is with bookkepping. Think about how long it took to generate spreadsheets when all was written by hand and manually calculated. Then compare it to excel or other automated spreadhseets like that.

Generative AI is going to produce the same advantages. We know most bookkeepers were put out of business.

The starting point is post-productin processes. Here is another example:

In its current form, AI’s big selling point to producers is that it can automate repetitive post-production processes, saving projects time and money. One example is rotoscoping, a process in which artists trace an actor or an object from live-action footage using software to use as the base for CGI work later in the process.

Rotoscoping goes back to the earliest days of animation and has changed over the decades with the advancement of technology, but it still requires hours or even days of manual VFX work. With AI, that work can be done in a fraction of the time.

Speaking of Hollywood, there was a line from the blockbuster film Top Gun: I have the need for speed.

This is going to apply to the entire industry. Time is money as they say. We can see from the example above, how much of a cost savings is available.

It is a process that is being enhanced by the studios themselves. One potential area of conflive is with regards to copyrighted material. It is unclear how the courts will rule on this so many companies are avoiding the hassle by not dealing with anything other than clean data.

A way around this is for the studios to build their own models.

While that process is developed, studios are building their potential AI usage around models that scrape exclusively from films, TV shows and other material they own.

Lionsgate fired the first shot in September when it announced a partnership with Runway to create a customized generative AI model based on the studio’s film and TV portfolio that could be used by filmmakers as part of the production process. Since it will pull its data exclusively from Lionsgate-owned material, the system will run on clean data and not run afoul of other studios’ copyrights, the company has said.

Basically the studios, which own the IP, will train their models on the characters they already have. This will provide the ability to generate the characters based upon previouis (human) creations.

In other words, why would Disney has so many animators when an AI program it trained can generate perfect rederings of Mickey Mouse?

The nail in the coffin here is we are not dealing with some forecasts from a technoly site. This is an industry publication that is citing what is happening. When that happens, it is beyond time to wake up.

Unfortunately, the horse already left the barn.

Posted Using INLEO