Auto-Generated Movies, It's What's Next

You heard it here first - movies generated by computers using Artificial Intelligence.  Given some of the movies I've viewed in the last few years this is probably a move forward in film making.

For years filmmakers, writers, musicians, post-houses, etc. have used technology to better their work, making it easier and more efficient and given rise the the myriad of content the industry has become saturated with.  So, it was only a matter of time until AI auto-generated movies would come to be.

Technology has assisted in all of the creative aspects of movie-making and now is the time when the 'assist' becomes the 'do'. To prove the future, IBM sponsored 'Storytellers With Watson', a two-month contest on how media and entertainment pros can use AI in film making.

The winner of the contest, Seth Grossman, developed what he called, 'Rip-o-matic With Watson' which recognizes meaning in images and language for video (film) editing to automatically generate a sizzle-reel preview of a movie or TV show based on the script.  Grossman's idea is to use AI to analyze, index, and splice together rips (known in filmdom as takes) from videos that represent a film maker's vision, by recognizing information in images, as well as, classifying their meaning in sets of written information.  The AI software, Watson, would find and splice together the content that best matches the script, including specific lines, time periods, and locations. What this all means is that the winner is the audience, because as Rip-o-matics gets better and more refined better movies will be made.

Obviously the whole concept of using AI in making movies is still in infancy but the writing is definitely on the wall. The other finalists in the IBM 'Watson' contest proposed using AI for choreography assist, to simplify script review, to improve film marketing, and to enable real-time language translation.

According to IBM's Rob High, "Technology helps all of us find opportunities where we didn't know it existed. We can use cognitive computing to help us to make better decisions." 

An area where Watson is currently being used is for an AI program called 'ScriptAloud'.  which uses Watson's Text to Speech Analyzer to transform written scripts into audio files available for casting directors and producers so they don't have to read film scripts.

CMG firmly believes that AI generated films are not that far off - it's tech trumping media once again.