Warner Bros. Will Now Be Using AI to Help Them Decide What Movies to Make
Here we go... Warner Bros. Pictures is embracing AI technology to help them decide what movies they are going to make. As you know, AI has become a pretty controversial subject for the creative arts. One side sees AI as a tool to help enhance the work they do, while other people are seeing it as a threat that can take over jobs.
One of the most recent controversies surrounding AI involved Marvel’s Secret Invasion and how AI was used to create its opening title sequence. This latest report is sure to spark some conversation.
According to THR, Warner Bros. Pictures and Cinelytic had signed a deal to use Cinelytic's AI-driven project management system. Through that, the studio will “leverage the system’s comprehensive data and predictive analytics to guide decision-making at the greenlight stage. The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams.”
Tobias Queisser is the founder of Cinelytic, which was launched four years ago and raised $2.25 million in 2018 from T&B Media Global while signing deals with Ingenious Media and Productivity Media. Queisser said: “The system can calculate in seconds what used to take days to assess by a human when it comes to general film package evaluation or a star's worth.”
He added: "Artificial intelligence sounds scary. But right now, an AI cannot make any creative decisions. What it is good at is crunching numbers and breaking down huge data sets and showing patterns that would not be visible to humans. But for creative decision-making, you still need experience and gut instinct."
Tonis Kiis, Senior Vice President of Distribution, added, "We make tough decisions every day that affect what — and how — we produce and deliver films to theaters around the world, and the more precise our data is, the better we will be able to engage our audiences."
We’ve always known that the people really running Hollywood weren’t the creative people, it was the bean counters. Well, now it looks like those bean counters are quickly going to be obsolete. The human touch is being removed from that equation.
However, regardless of whether it’s humans or AI crunching the numbers, this is still the process of the filmmaking industry that hurts the filmmakers and the projects that they make. So I guess not much will change other than the process of greenlighting or killing projects will happen at a faster rate.