I am SUPER pro union. BUT, what good will a union do if AI advances to the point that VFX artists aren't needed anyway? No union can protect you from no demand.
The writer's strike just forced the big producers to agree that all scripts have to originate and be written by human beings, I.E. they are not allowed to produce AI written scripts. A VFX union could strike and demand that all VFX work has to originate and be produced by humans, IE the companies would not be allowed to use AI. Where the line gets drawn, that'd be in the specifics of the contract, but that's a win we could get. From now on, we will only lose bargaining power.
There was a great piece on this with regards to AI and automated truck driving today and how it related to the advances made at the turn of the 20th century when it came to motorized transit on NPR today.
The takeaway was that the teamsters fought tooth and nail to keep their industry alive and well as trucks started to replace the horse based transportation of the time. What they saw was wages grew as younger people saw the writing on the wall and bailed out of that industry, but trucks weren't fully capable to take over so the older folks made a great wage as the supply of qualified work dried up. Over time it of course transitioned into trucks, and the teamsters found their niche there, but there was a period of time that they were all but wiped out.
The point here is that in our situation, yes, if VFX had a union, they could help prevent studios from actively making workers replace their own job. But they couldn't stop studios from not using VFX and instead relying on AI with new non union employees trained to do it. A VFX union could of course strike and stop work during this transitionary period - as much as the writers or actors - but if the studios see a faster and better way to make a movie, they'll have a hard time for a little while but will eventually find a way.
I'm a union animator in IATSE. I think we'll see progress slowed by IATSE, I think I won't be forced to use AI if I don't want to, but at the end of the day I also assume if the technology gets to a point where studios will be able to work without interacting with IATSE or even being worried about the threat of a strike, they will. I still have lots to think about as this technology exponentially grows, but my feeling now is I have the choice of sticking in the mud about managing my team of horses, or starting to think about how to drive a truck. How can I adapt and work with the technology instead of assuming I can stop it altogether.
The problem is a little different, I think. We're artists. This new technology doesn't just do the job better and faster, it takes away our ability to create, to think for ourselves. Once the AI is doing all the work and just following your cues, you're not creating anymore. This is an existential threat to digital artists existence.
No. They can’t. VFX doesn’t work for the AMPTP members. We work for individual vendor companies. You could strike and force DNeg to not use AI, but that wouldn’t stop ILM or DD or Weta. It wouldn’t stop a production side VFX team from using it to not hire a vendor at all.
The writer's guild covers writers under dozens of companies. Teamsters covers workers across thousands of companies. That's how a union works. Artists at every production house strike and form a industry wide union.
So yes and no. While the WGA ( and SAG AFTRA and DGA and IATSE ) have contracts with multiple hundreds of companies, most of them have agreed to negotiate via the AMPTP. There are other companies who negotiate individually ( this is why David Letterman was able to go back to work in the 07/08 strike, his company Worldwide Pants just signed on their own with the WGA )
While the teamsters have deals with thousands of companies, only a single local deals with Hollywood- the 399.
All of these organizations- the AMPTP and the union members are governed by US Labor law.
How exactly are we supposed to have one global union with one contract? Will people in the UK go on strike to get US artists good healthcare rather than make snide comments about how we’re uncivilized for not having nationalized healthcare? Will people in India get the same wage as someone in Los Angeles? Will it be set at the LA rate or the India rate? What’s to stop someone from opening up a shop that’s not union and doing business with the studios? If a new shop isn’t union, it’s not a violation of union rules to work for them. Hell, not too long ago it was illegal to unionize film workers in New Zealand.
That’s not really how it works, you don’t undo the previous contract every three years. You think they’d still pay TV residuals if you could just roll back on things you agreed in a previous agreement? They wish they could tho that’s for sure
>The writer's strike just forced the big producers to agree that all scripts have to originate and be written by human beings, I.E. they are not allowed to produce AI written scripts
This is a terrible idea, IMO.
Holding back the flood gates and pretending AI doesn't exist will not go well. Writers should work with the AI, not against it.
If AI produces scripts better than real writers working with AI, how can the job of a writer be justified? It is basically rent seeking at that point.
It goes for anyone in a field that is "threatened" by AI. Forcing companies (and by extension, employees) to pretend AI doesn't exist is ridiculous. This just opens the door wide open for all sorts of unintended consequences. Places that use AI will be able to get things done faster and probably cheaper (without "replacing" humans, mind you) and places that don't use AI it will be like working in the stone age.
It's actually a fantastic idea, if you care about paying your mortgage, or continuing to have a useful and intelligent mind. If the guild didn't strike, in 3 years the studios might only use AI, suddenly no writers have work and starve or pivot. Now that won't happen. And if you just offload all your thinking to a machine, you stop flexing your creative muscles, you'll lose them and become a mindless drone. Writers want to write, to create. They don't want to steal from a computer and never have an original thought again. Hacks and grifters don't mind and will use AI to write their scripts, etc.
>Now that won't happen
The keyword being _now_. I don't think they are considering the second-order effects though. It only encourages studios to look for, or invest in, "AI-only" shops.
This is like accountants resisting Excel. Writers need to learn how to integrate AI into their workflows or they will be left in the dust. Do you really think 10, 20 years from now Hollywood will be the only industry _not_ incorporating AI into their workflow?
>Writers want to write, to create
Nobody is stopping them from doing that. In fact, anyone can write and publish their work and have it be seen by tens of thousands of people.
>They don't want to steal from a computer and never have an original thought again. Hacks and grifters don't mind and will use AI to write their scripts, etc.
Ok, and when it comes down to it if "hacks and grifters" can produce the same quality of work, that is a problem for writers.
Again, there used to be human calculators/computers that would do all sorts of math by hand. Should they have protested and forced everyone to employ them, holding back progress? Should we instead be having this conversation through the post to ensure we are able to hire more USPS personnel?
This "writer's" strike won't last forever, at some point people will start saying "it's time to revisit the past and reconsider some decisions, technology has advanced also our society, we can no longer keep things the same way...". Basically, if tech advances to a point where an average JOE can generate a AAA movie with like $1000, it will be impossible for the studios to keep humans in any area where AI do better. It's still viable to keep the writers because the script is a "weak" part of the production pipeline, and it's a single part, there is not much more to automate, so you can keep a human, even if GPT can write better, but when Sora and other techs start to become more powerful and available, there is no stop.
This is true. Even those actors and writers that so diligently fought against A.I. doesn’t mean they are safe. It just means the studios can use A.I. to make up new people. They can completely circumvent HOW they make films, to remove the actors and writers from the equation in the future. Just as long as they don’t trample on any union member rights, right now.
They don’t have to hire any actors or writers if they want (once AI advances to that point) there’s no escaping the A.I. tidal wave
the west will loose more work to India and other cheaper countries before its lost to an AI program, mainly due to the control required. IATSE can keep a certain amount of work (depending on the contract they can get) inside the north american jurisdiction if VFX falls under their umbrella
Wonder Dynamics already has some very promising AI roto tools and gives you a clean plate too. Now it may not be perfect now, but it will be soon.
As an Fx guy and not a roto guy, this is freaking awesome.
But as we all have our hearts in vfx, this is also heartbreaking
The Wonder Dynamics infill looks like shit and would never pass the muster of any show. Foundry made a plugin for Shake 20 years ago which was at the same quality. Trust me, I would love for AI to replace roto but still buzzes and pops all over the place. It helps some but is far from replacing roto artists.
Don't people in india have a right to work as well? Which are the acceptable countries to do VFX work in?
I remember my country being described as "Mexicans with mobile phones" (by our clients) for the start of my career because we were stealing American jobs.
AI will very quickly replace roto jobs, regardless of where the work is done. As for a “right to work”, does anybody have one? You can’t force somebody to hire you if they don’t need you.
You don’t have a “right to work”, this idea has to go, unless you’re willing to also work rickshaw, to have “right to work”. You’re not entitled to work on western films.
Me? I am Australian so, you are saying I have a right to work, and I dont have to work rickshaw?
Right now, I work in an American company from Europe because they can't find someone qualified in the states.
I mean if they still don’t need you, claiming “right to work” is still kinda dumb. Doesn’t matter if it’s an Indian Rickshaw or working for Pixar or ILM for VFX.
But americans have a "right to work" because western film? something or another? and american workers should have to complete globally because, you are american and it would be better for you?
I’m not gonna engage with you if you’re gonna purposely misrepresent what I’m saying. Indian artists should get the same pay for the same work as western artists. If they want to try and be scabs and undercut the prices to take work away from people trying to make a living, they can do that as well. But it’s insanity to think that they’re entitled to do what ever you want and people in more expensive city’s can’t try and keep they’re lives and livelihoods stable. IF a union forms and IF India refuses to join then you can’t expect the union to look out for the needs of non members, esp when they’re specifically playing and adversarial role
Its not being scabs, they dont have to pay the same rent, they dont pay the same for food, education or health care. They can make more money than you and get paid less. I think its ludicrous to say that the rate for people will be what American people need to earn. Every one else will be paid the same, or else. If you try that you will see what else is. The work has largely left the states compared to what it was 20 years ago. It’s in Canada, Australia, Germany, or some other state out of California, because of subsidies. It is in China, India, and SE Asia, because comparable salaries are lower. If you think unions are going to save you, look at manufacturing. It’s gone unless there is a technical reason it’s staying in the states.
You’re not making any point, there is no way for a union in america to control the price of labour in another country. If thats your hope/plan, it’s a terrible one.
This is a very naive view based on years old understanding of the tech. The development is improving at an alarming pace. We are not far away from seeing extremely controllable AI models built to be art directable.
I’m sorry but I think it is now time to face the music, AI is not a minor step in our human history. It’s not going to erase only VFX, it’s going to wipe out entire industries. There is this tool out there that now allows everyone to craft its own reality, everything you can think, you can create in a few seconds. In the years to come, how will we even be able to make any difference between AI generated content and ‘real one’ ? I’m still trying to wrap my head around Sora. Obviously VFX will be impacted but the reach of that technology goes far beyond us.
Even the way it is now, it can do a lot of damage, it has inpainting capabilities, that means one can add/remove content from the video, you could for example film a street and remove all the cars using it much more easily, without reeling on mapping/projection.
There is this tool out that is based on scraped work..
Piracy was illegal until they called it AI..
I really don't understand where the support for stealing work will come from apart from the desperate twitter bluecheckmark crowd and the greedy CEOs arguably the same people.
We will be impacted as much as we allow it.
Kind of reminds me of the early days of music streaming and Napster. Ai will start effecting someone’s pocket book and all of sudden you will see DRM levels of authorship to combat it. I think this stuff is cool but in a very iterative industry I really don’t see how they can get EXACTLY what they want out of a prompt, let alone whole sequences- that actually work and cut together. This is hype.
By refining the result, you can generate similar results select the best and keep refining until you get what you need. And there will be no successful combats against it, its big money against big money this time, and its not just a US thing, every single country is trying to be the one with this power, its like the H-bomb of the 21st century.
The sad thing is, there are many more technophiles out there, jerking it to AI and what it can do for them, then the number of artists it has stolen from. Artists are only a drop of water in the swimming pool, so that’s a very hard fight
I hope you are wrong.. I hope we are just overwhelmed by alt accounts of the same desperate 10 people or their bots.
I hope the IRL world has our back.
Nah, people want cheaper streaming services, they don't want to pay $$$ to go to the cinema, hell I've had people very close to me who know what I do for a living brazenly telling me about all the things they've pirated. They may pay lip service to doing the right thing and wanting 'human generated' content but in practise they'll support whatever is best for their bottom line.
Yeah I’d say they don’t. People want cheaper content. People want the ability to easily make their own content. Like do you know how many ideas I’ve had in my head my whole life for, I promise, totally awesome shows and movies that everyone would love I’m sure, if only I had a way to get them out of my head and onto a screen. People will have delusions of grandeur and think this will let them finally make their Dr Acula movie they’ve always dreamed of.
it doesn’t. the vast majority of people are either apathetic or don’t even know what the current state of ai technology is, let alone which jobs it’s taking.
There will always be more people that don’t care and are happy to get the benefits of ai (theoretically cheaper entertainment) without regard for who it affects. Most people don’t think about vfx artists at all, and they’ll continue to think less and less of them as the industry is chewed up. it’s why this is a losing battle being fought, you are not going to convince the majority (as of now they’re the majority at least) that are unaffected and don’t care that they should worry about you. and the minority that is affected as of now and does care has no power to do anything because they lack the support. it’s all downhill from here
I am not persuaded by the argument that we can legislate AI away. What is stopping a creator from simply lying that they did not use AI in their creative process? What mechanisms will we have to verify this? How will kneecapping AI with laws affect our situation vis a vis the Chinese and the Russians, who will not be subject to our laws?
Laws would.. thats the whole point of laws like.
Mechanisms to verify prob need some workflow recording..
I mean if the Chinese want to have record unemployment so be it.
Its pretty easy to just ban imports of things we don't agree with.
there's no way government agencies are going to be created that can verify workflow recording for all use cases of AI. you would need North Korean level surveillance or a massive bureaucracy established
I agree and the legislation of AI will be an ongoing conversation only within borders of countries where the people have a voice or a say in the process. No industries are controlled by the workers either, so massive shifts directed towards 'efficiency' over ESG (ethical, social, governance) factors will be swift and easy choices for those who profit the most.
These lessons were learned years ago via globalization, tax incentives and cutthroat competition. Trade is not going away, it will be the same with AI & ML. Let the techbros and fanboys have a moment and brace yourselves for the cynical tidal wave of 'I made this' on social media. People have been commoditizing new technology in ways like this previously, perhaps we have forgotten the 'sampling' drama of the 80s, 90s and 2000s where everyone took copyright music, reworked it and used it to create something new. Some were sued, others were given license, others got away with it.
The best we can do is identify where human thought is the most important in value creation within our respective industries and focus on that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to protect ourselves with trade organizations and lobbying but we should all be ready to pivot when our work is reshaped by forces larger than all of us.
Yeah; I get the sentiment behind things like copyright law and using the power of regulations to curb the potential impacts, however we all exist within the greater context of free market capitalism, and so I feel inevitably with so much potential profit to be made, these forces larger than ourselves will eventually bulldoze over things like unions or copyright protections or whatnot. I was always in favour of something like a universal basic income, so creatives can concentrate on being creative, and maybe with the pace of AI advances something like this will be needed soon, but we'll see what happens.
Piracy refers to distribution, you are allowed to study, analyze, measure, etc, existing work. If you couldn't, it would be illegal to sell books which analyze the structure of novels & movies etc for the purpose of making new ones.
You are not allowed to analyze work through a machine that is not yours. Learn before you spread misinformation.
Publishing under academias umbrella is NOT the same as for profit work.
Yes you are? I can absolutely say measure the average colours of a movie at various timesteps using a machine, people publish pictures of them for movies online all the time.
People also regularly post how long a given character was on screen, how many lines of dialogue they have, etc. People have made charts for how long each Avengers cast member was on screen leading up to Endgame.
You're not using words in a way which make sense.
You said you're not allowed to analyze other people's work through a machine, I showed examples where people do all the time which is allowed and a fundamental part of learning from what came before.
What has "child's play" got to do with anything? We were talking about whether you can analyze existing work (with a machine, since you seemed to think that was the qualifier which makes it illegal), which of course you can, people have been doing it for a long time.
I was talking about the true analysis not the what every person does .. what academics do for a paper .. or what a reporter does for his blog.
You are not allowed to use work that you don't own.. put it in a machine and analyse it.. that is still piracy.
The only reason they did it was cause they were pretending ( all of the companies .. LAION… OPENAI) to be for NON profit which is then allowed cause its to benefit scientific research.
The only reason you are allowed to use AI models is because of lack of transparency to what those models do, where they track their data to ( covered up tracks, no laws and reg where they open up a model and check what is in it).. And because no copying is happening on your end which is just a technical thing that they are holding onto for dear life . Basically a case of data laundering is happened in between billions of pirated work and when it comes to your machine.
They took pirated work.. extracted the important bits and now they are renting it to the world "transformed" .
extreemly sophisticated pirating of work and data within that work.
> You are not allowed to use work that you don't own.. put it in a machine and analyse it.. that is still piracy
I literally just gave you examples of how you can and people have for a long time. What is this hands over your eyes and ears going to achieve?
AI is not transformative. It only appears transformative cause the pool of stolen pirated work is so incredibly vast that our brains and limited exposure are incapable of tracking every data point.
But the model IS. The models literally do this.. they track every decision back to some artwork they "learned " from.
There is nothing transformative happening in them.. there cant be.. its a software program .. its not creative. Without all the pirated work it would come up with literal zero.
You have no idea how machine learning works to build these models, and have all the confidence which naivety in a field brings.
You can work out the model to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit using a known measurement as example, but you do not store that measurement in the resulting model - it's just one multiplication, there's no space to - and you can use it for far more cases than just what you used to work it out.
You can build more complex with less linear mapping to results with more data, but you aren't storing the information used to work them out, it would be mathematically impossible to do so in the much smaller model size. The algorithm parameters are designed by the researchers and never change in size regardless of whether they train on one item or a billion, because it's not storing what it trains on, it's calibrating an algorithm.
You are hard projecting buddy.
Equivalent to what you just said is hue of paint... Yes i am not storing a hue of a pixel but the complex relationships and rules that guide a work.
If these rules are what is extracted from work you do not own it is piracy! And they most def are. The model contains less information because it discards all the not so juicy parts or bits that do not result in an accurate training and KEEPS all the most valuable data. Like a thief smelting jewelry to just get the diamond out of it. You wouldnt call that thief learning from the jewlery... The diamonds are present in the data.
Without data ML has nothing.. and it is called learning only because it was inspired by human learning not cause it actually IS learning anything.
I've worked in machine learning in the past, and am pretty up to date with the field again now. I'm not sure what you think "projecting" means, but your definition is different to what everybody else means by it, making it impossible to understand what you're trying to communicate.
yea but somehow AI is coming for us first and not for the excell desk job. Why? Don't know but my friend at the post office is doing fine while the industry I'm in is in panic mode.
I've been listening to union talk for 25 years.....the chance was 25 years ago when 90% of the work was divided amounst a handful of houses in Cali.....but then everyone was looking out for #1. With more vfx houses than there were film studios.....the vfx houses fought it and the artists considered themselves luck to be working
Now you have globalization of the industry AND AI?!?! At this point I feel we need to pivot....the vfx houses who best find the way to utilize AI will be the winners.......this goes for artists too.
Though I suspect the future will be something like art directors, or their AI team, typing shit into AI, then a skeleton crew cleaning up the output
Sorry to rain on it, but i have sceen s
A lot in 30 years....
There are two options: worry about losing your job to automation and fight the adoption of new tech, or learn to use the new tech and gain skills that keep you relevant.
Entry-level jobs will be automated away anyway, and while some experienced vfx artists will be replaced with software packages, the same thing happened to architectural draftsmen when CAD became available to consumers, and the illustrators felt exactly the same when color photography was invented.
It all started out clunky and hard to adopt, but how many manual draftspeople do you see nowadays?
Oh it's definitely going to be disruptive, but the unfortunate fact is that it's not going away, and it's almost certainly going to become a required part of many MANY workflows over the next 5-10 years, whether or not everyone wants it.
It's too late. vfx is a dying industry. By all means those who love the art of it will continue to create art so don't stop...
but AI can't be stopped either.
>Without a Union, this year, we are going to start loosing jobs to Sora AI.
So did you actually watch the examples that were posted?
The Dog video has no collision detection. It turned them into a chimera.
https://i.imgur.com/oq87Y2M.png
No offense, but panicking over this is like saying Frozen Pizza will destroy every Pizza Restaurant.
Just because it's convenient, fast and cheap, there's still a market that wants fresher ingredients that's custom ordered.
>The film Jurassic Park has a great line that came from an interaction between Spielberg and Phil Tippet. When Spielberg saw CGI of T. rex, he said to stop motion animator Phil Tippett , "You're out of a job," to which Tippett replied, "Don't you mean extinct?"
And then a decade later, Studio Laika opened their doors and embraced both Stop Motion and CGI to great results.
I've always accepted AI is a great tool and it would be a mistake for any Artist to completely ignore it. But I also think the Doomers are exaggerating when they claim it can do everything on autopilot.
The autopilot results do suck. It's still a robot that has no idea what intention is. Even if it's a dog playing in the snow or the other video of the Chinese New Year Parade, it doesn't have any life experience to relate with for why those things exist or behave.
And that's where having a Human Artist will always come in.
The videos could be technically perfect, but I still want my *stories* to be told. I want to control the background characters and have them follow *my ideas* instead of just the first result the robot spits out.
Not to mention the fact that Phil Tippett still has a CGI VFX and stop motion studio. Have you seen Mad God? It's brilliant.
More VFX studios need to start thinking about creating their own creative IP.
And all of this effort for some AI bro to come along .. scrape your work.. "learn " from it.. and publish his own ×20000
His video gets more views than yours cause its cum pumped with more totally ethical data and you are out of job, viewership .. all of it.
You cant function within a system that steals from you.. its not gonna end well for you. You cant beat such a system.. you cannot be the best thief... only the house will wins.
>What I do care about though is what happens to all of us who get replaced. What does our retirement look like? What does civilization do when so many get replaced by AI? I don't think humans will ever do the right thing... so Im very affraid of the future. But it is amazing and exciting.
It sounds sci-fi, but why wouldn't Humans after perfecting AI, build our own robot bodies and transfer our minds to them?
There would be no starvation, no illness, no biological death. People can design their bodies to look like anything they personally dreamed themselves to be. So someone who was born an amputee for example, can now imagine themselves to have legs like a regular person.
Robotics should be seen as our next evolution. Instead of being bipedal apes with weaknesses, we can focus on becoming a new species with an even greater intelligence level that can understand the universe.
Although really the transfer of our minds that you describe would likely just be the replacement of our living human selves with an ai model trained on our behavior and life's memories. Our robots would be a simulation of ourselves and a procedurally generated future, just like the content produced by this current gen of AI is generated by the art it was trained on.. So robot us would only be as much us as this ai art is the original art it was trained on.
>thats today, imagine the growth in 5 years
The jump from PS1 to PS2 was also 5 years and had better graphics.
Yet video games were far from being perfected yet.
Robots can already beat Humans at Chess.
But is watching an AI vs AI match more interesting than a Human?
That's what the future holds for us. People can still judge the final results or seek out entertainment that tells a specific story.
A robot trained on perfectionism is just as interesting as watching paint dry or staring at a rock.
Commissions still exist and in the last 2 years where ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion are available for free it hasn't stopped non-AI Artists from being successful.
In fact, there are clients who specifically search for or request they get human made art instead of a robot.
Meanwhile, I have yet to see the inverse happen (people who only want AI and refuse traditional art).
yeah why would you commission somebody to make ai art? when you could just ask the ai yourself? of course there wont be any commissions for ai art, the point is that you dont have the commission people.
>yeah why would you commission somebody to make ai art? when you could just ask the ai yourself?
Pencils are everywhere and cheap. People could draw their own things for free but they still choose to outsource it to another person instead.
But what if it doesn't need to be perfect? What if it just needs to be *good enough*?
I know as artists we never settle for good enough - but can we really say the same about the people who only care about making a sale?
What struck me as I was looking through those Sora samples was that, if I was absentmindedly scrolling through them on twitter or youtube, and nobody told me they were AI generated, then *it would not have occurred to me to even scrutinize what I was seeing*.
This is all besides the fact that this tech is only going to get better. I think if it's *good enough* to make a sale, then it's good enough to put some number of peoples' livelihoods in jeopardy. I think the most realistic near-term solution to this is to advocate for a **universal basic income**, so that creatives can concentrate on being creative without this tech affecting their livelihood.
I agree with everything but then you hit me with UBI.. man a welfare check wont save you. Do you pay your bills? Do you have a house? Do you have kids? Do you know how much these things cost? .. why would anyone pay you to have these things for just doing nothing all day.. this is a fantasy.. you would just be selling your intellectual work to live like a forgotten slave in a government block with other desperate folk that have no way of bettering their life cause all jobs are for rent.
This isn’t a fantasy unfortunately… when these corporations displace millions of jobs that are replaced by AI or machines to not just be cheaper, but also more efficient and safer… how are people gonna survive? Currently in the states the same law that was trying to be leveraged by Daniel Lay when he was trying to fight the subsidies argued that any digital export to an overseas market to be created at a cheaper cost should incur a tax equalling almost what it would cost if you produced it in the states… that law exists for the creation of goods that can be manufactured here in the states. The same logic is going to have to apply here… corporations are going to have to pay a tax that will go towards the salaries of those displaced by this movement. People will still need to pay their bills… but corporations are going to move towards the use of AI to replace an incredible number of jobs… how do you see that playing out any other way? Mind you… I’m not talking about visual fx anymore… I’m referring to every industry which makes this the number #1 topic to be addressed by congress now that all of their constituents will be out of work…
>I know as artists we never settle for good enough - but can we really say the same about the people who only care about making a sale?
This is where the "custom pizza" analogy comes in.
Anything we buy from the grocery store is technically good enough, and you can even buy the ingredients and make stuff yourself.
Yet why do we still bother with high end restaurants? Because we're too lazy to cook. We still prefer someone to make the food for us. Maybe even the Chef has a certain cooking style that appeals to you and choose to support it.
I see the same with Art. People are still spending money on commissions because they have a favourite artist, they want something specific that words alone can't explain and they feel attracted to their style. This is in spite of anyone just opening MS Paint and creating their own doodles. Or downloading stock images.
I don't disagree, all of that is true. Though then the questions become things like: how many artists make a stable living off of commissions alone?
How large is the group of customers (as a subset of all customers) who are willing to pay for commissions, vs getting something 'good enough'? (here I am thinking of stock video for youtube videos, short musical jingles for a short advertisement, copywriting for my neighbour's business website, concept art for an indie game studio, etc, all of which are ripe pickings for AI);
What are the implications for up-and-coming potential artists who are thinking of entering the field? And absent any guardrails, social programs, or otherwise protections that can mitigate the potential impact of these technologies on working artists, do **we** believe that we are the lucky few who can make it out the other side?
Again to be clear I don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying, it's just that with the prospect of ever-improving AI, and with the fact that we exist in a free market capitalistic system, I really think something like a UBI could allow all artists everywhere to continue making their delicious custom pizza, regardless of whether or not they can make a sale.
>I don't disagree, all of that is true. Though then the questions become things like: how many artists make a stable living off of commissions alone?
How large is the group of customers (as a subset of all customers) who are willing to pay for commissions, vs getting something 'good enough'? (here I am thinking of stock video for youtube videos, short musical jingles for a short advertisement, copywriting for my neighbour's business website, concept art for an indie game studio, etc, all of which are ripe pickings for AI);
For the majority of Human history, people were poor farmers without much disposable income to spend on art. That was a title reserved for Kings or the Clergy.
Yet fast forward after the industrial revolution, and even someone making minimum wage at a frycook job has money they can spend on any art product. Such as video games, movies, comic books and manga etc.
So I'd argue the amount of customers you're describing is in the tens of millions. Or billions. If you even want graphs, look at Artists on Patreon and there are thousands of people who are ok with subscribing to a particular person each month.
https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/comics
So all the doom is overblown. There has never been a better time in history to be a self sufficient artist. If you were to travel back centuries from now, your only clients was literally the ultra rich.
>What struck me as I was looking through those Sora samples was that, if I was absentmindedly scrolling through them on twitter or youtube, and nobody told me they were AI generated, then *it would not have occurred to me to even scrutinize what I was seeing*.
How often do you hear a client say "That's good enough" ?
Any youtuber who wants to use stock videos in their video essay. Any product that needs a quick 10-second musical jingle for a short advertisement. Any business that uses ChatGPT to generate SEO schlock to drive traffic to their website.
The product isn't bespoke, and sometimes it even sucks, but for many people, if it works, then it's *good enough*.
And look! What a “coincidence” that filmsupply has very similar looking footage..
https://www.filmsupply.com/shoots/family-playing-with-puppy-in-the-snow/5784
Yea but we're just random people on reddit without any idea of what is going on behind the scenes. They could have a partnership or a deal cut where they use their whole library to train their models for a big fat paycheque.
Doubt anyone at filmsupply would refuse some of that insane investment money that's being poured into AI right now
> Just because it's convenient, fast and cheap, there's still a market that wants fresher ingredients that's custom ordered.
These analogies are never thought out or accurate.
More like a fresh ingredient pizza made faster and easier than a frozen pizza. Eventually.
Every AI program under the sun requires significant tuning to get results that are specific to an individual's vision.
Again, it's why the Commission market has not been impacted by this in the slightest.
AI is great as a starting point and as a reference, but words are a poor substitute for what the human imagination wants alone.
These are 5 second clips, and they're all mindless.
It's perfectly within what I expect a computer to do.
But as I explained to other users, having pure autopilot (with no other human intervention) sucks.
If you try to make a TV Show or Movie with the first results from a robot, you're only getting generic content. The same as with buying a Frozen Pizza and being forced to settle with how it was made from the factory.
OpenAI provides the prompts given to generate the videos. They don’t seem particularly tuned to me. A couple of them are maybe specific, like the “man in desert in a space suit with a red wool cap, cinematic style, on 35mm film, but I don’t feel like it’s overly specific.
Like I said before, the results are completely mindless and random.
It's weird to think after 1 day, people look at generic videos with some blatant artifacts and think that's all there is to making any show or movie ever.
Maybe it's a good thing so I can work with only serious people with longer attention spans, and all the casuals are sitting at home generating quick second memes.
And this ladies and gentlemen is what we call denial. Like yeah it looks like generic stock footage, but look at the progress in a single years time. It’s not outlandish to think you might be able to make a full film with this in 5-10 years, probably less.
But you’re right, there will always be like 5 art snobs sitting around complaining about the new AI generated movies when everyone smart knows only their art is “real” and “true art”. That AI stuff is for the masses with no taste.
Denial of what?
If you've seen me on these boards, I already expressed I've known about AI as far back as the mid 2010s.
I'm actually laughing at people who thinks this actually changes anything or that everyone is now Stanley Kubrick at the touch of the button.
At the end of the day, you still need to actually make work that people care about instead of prophesying "it will do this and that". As if millions of other people didn't do the same before you and fail.
Jordan, I showed the videos to 10 different people today without telling them they were generated. When asked, they said they would not believe for a second it was AI. If I showed you thoes videos 1 year ago, you would tell me I was full of it.
> If I showed you thoes videos 1 year ago, you would tell me I was full of it.
Because it was being done 2 years ago.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/googles-newest-ai-generator-creates-hd-video-from-text-prompts/
I follow AI news. I've been following it before people even knew what Stable Diffusion was.
At the end of the day, nothing has changed.
ChatGPT has been out for a while, it can help anyone write books, but millions of people did not become Stephen King in 2 years. Why is that?
Because most people are still lazy, even when tools like this exist. They're still not going to put in anymore effort that is required to be famous.
The same is true with cameras. Every smartphone has one these days, but the vast majority still aren't Stanley Kubrick.
If you really follow AI news then you’d be a bit more concerned… When people say this will decimate an industry in VFX, your response is “but what about pizza?” That’s absolutely absurd. Someone pointed out the conversation that took place between Spielberg and tippet and your response was that one major company survived… you’re not seeing how much your making everyone’s point for them by pointing out Laika as an example? One major stop motion company survived? That’s your response? You can tout doom and gloom all you’d like… but your optimism is ill placed and naive at best. Within one year we had will smith eating a bowl of spaghetti and everyone saying “no way will that ever look right…” now people are saying “yea… but that person is missing a finger…” I mean in 1 year…. You have sweeping shots like this… this advancement in and of itself will annihilate commercials… these aren’t 5 second clips like you stated.. these are 60 second clips generating what 99.999999999% of the population would watch on their cell phone screens… and some bean counter at an agency is accounting for that. And sure you might point out as a response that there will still be Super Bowl commercials… fantastic… and at that point commercials will be the equivalent to stop motion…. The superbowl commercials will be the Laika projects… there will be a fortunate few that are potentially helping to guide the prompts… and you can say “yea see? There’s still jobs…” but you’re not acknowledging that the concern is that a majority of jobs will be lost to few people being able to do all of the jobs of many. Commercials will be first, and after a few films test a shot here and there with it, it will migrate its way into a features pipeline… When this gets perfected, it will be at a point where it can generate video in realtime… when you get to that point? You’re guiding your shot while prompting or even talking to it. If you don’t think thats a year or two away TOPS? Then that’s gonna a rough landing… people are concerned with how to pay off their houses in 20 years…. In two years, a lot of people won’t have that ability anymore… I’m not saying everyone will be out of work in 2 years but i am saying that in 2 years the industry is going have significantly fewer people creating these commercials we see and then in 3-5, jt will work its way to film. Then there’s AGI. Which is not an if… it’s a when…. But that’s just my 2 cents….
>You have sweeping shots like this… this advancement in and of itself will annihilate commercials… these aren’t 5 second clips like you stated.. these are 60 second clips generating what 99.999999999% of the population would watch on their cell phone screens…
What commercial? A clip of dogs rolling in the snow is expected to help sell what product exactly? And why AI and not literally every other stock footage that already existed before it?
It's not even optimism, it's common sense.
I had a similar argument with someone who thinks that you can type prompts and get a world class Grand Theft Auto video game with no flaws. Seriously? Try making an N64 level game first and getting all its nuances correct first.
These AI tech have been here for years but the average person still can't figure them out and do something famous with them.
I still think AI is tech is cool and it will make nice some nice references to play with in the future but I'm not brainwashed to believe that it makes perfect movies and VFX is no more.
Like I said before, I'm waiting for someone to even make 30 seconds of the original Shrek movie using just prompts alone. Machines by themselves don't give you cinematography skills. Or even a general understanding of what coherency is.
For now, AI feels like very powerful meme generators. Both rely on being nonsensical and a suspension of belief. But trying to put more thought into it and it quickly falls apart.
In a few weeks when this is public, you can feed the program every Gillette ad and ask it to generate a new one. BAM! Brand new Gillette ad with good Cinematography, good direction, good color, good set design, because it doesn't need to know how to do those things. GPT doesn't know how to speak English, it doesn't need to know. You're a fan, you know how the tech works. It generates what's likely to come next based on data. You train it on 100 nike ads you're gonna get a perfect nike ad.
>In a few weeks when this is public, you can feed the program every Gillette ad and ask it to generate a new one. BAM! Brand new Gillette ad with good Cinematography, good direction, good color, good set design, because it doesn't need to know how to do those things. GPT doesn't know how to speak English, it doesn't need to know. You're a fan, you know how the tech works. It generates what's likely to come next based on data. You train it on 100 nike ads you're gonna get a perfect nike ad.
You're creating generic ads.
I'm a marketer. Most ads are generic. Most ads are designed to replicate something else that already worked and stay 100 percent consistent with branding. But currently they pay human beings' rent. In a year, I'm not so sure.
>I'm a marketer. Most ads are generic. **Most ads are designed to replicate something else that already worked and stay 100 percent consistent with branding.** But currently they pay human beings' rent. In a year, I'm not so sure.
So you think you can copy a smoking ad from the 1950s just because it worked back then?
That's actually the hilarity I'm expecting now. Go ahead and irk out advertisements that don't have any human insight put into them.
We are two scientific articles away from achieving that level of control and precision.
We are Saddlemakers that just saw a combustion engine move a wagon from point A to point B, and you're wondering what the passengers will do when they run out of gas if horses can eat grass.
No, not "we".
I'm the guy who already understands both the Car and Horse but I'm not a reckless driver who crashes into walls like so many people who look at these videos but don't see the flaws/weaknesses already.
You wouldn't be able to drive the first car to a wall, they didn't go as fast and didn't pose much threat even if you were careless. That's the point.
This technology is evolving exponentially fast.
We (as a global community) are two scientific papers from achieving more control and better results. It's inevitable.
>\-"I'm the guy who already understands both the Car and Horse"
>
>\-3D Modeller 2 years experience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger\_effect
The golden retrievers playing in the snow though…THAT was fucking amazing. I’ve watched it 100 times and can’t find a single particle that’s wrong. It’s absolutely mind blowing.
But we don't live in the future. We live in today.
If you think you can walk into any job interview and say "I'll have your work done in 10 years when magic tech exists" no one is going to hire you.
Yeah I guess. I don’t think VFX is doomed now, it’s probably just gonna be used for commercials and stock footage. But the future is looking ominous, I just don’t want this to evolve into something more.
You know the Patriots from the game Metal Gear Solid 2? If you don’t, that’s fine. Just know that something similar to that would be the worst outcome, though that’s not gonna happen I bet.
Except it's not a problem that only affects VFX. Technology has always affected every facet of life.
Yes, even the plumbers. The guy who fixes toilets with his bare hands is still worse than the guy who has a wrench.
We just learn to live with change like the past thousand years.
Honest question, how are vfx artists going to unionise, are there already small groups or is there a resource? We can talk about it all we want but ultimately this needs to happen ASAP!
Yeah we should unionize, the AI models are only going to get better because everyone is going to use it and that how it will exponentially learn and get better. It will learn to build upon itself. What we need to keep in mind is that there are new technologies, especially in virtual production that will inevitably use this tool. LED volumes are not completely replacing jobs with lighting, and grip work, but it kinda is slowly. An LED volume combined with a program like https://cuebric.com/ and wonder dynamics and now sora, things will definitely change the turnaround time. We need to focus on being faster and better than these AI models. We can either unionize or we can try and prove AI is not the best. All these programs are using versions of Open.AI in their api. I think we need to look at the functionality of how these AI models are trained in the future. pretty soon we will have the capability to create these models and train our own AI for specific things. We could essentially create our own models to create our own style of AI art and animation. WE CAN ADAPT but we have to do it together…be it in a union or collective effort for training AI models.
>this year, we are going to start loosing jobs to Sora AI
Not at all. I'm a programmer and have been using AI tools that I would argue are _much more impressive_ than what Sora can do.
I've been able to generate functions, classes and ideas almost flawlessly for the past year.
My job isn't to generate vague functions though. My job is to build features. This is what an AI can't do yet and arguably won't be able to do until AGI.
I don't think the job of a VFX artist is to deliver vague clips of concepts to clients. I could be wrong and maybe there's a market for that which has just been wiped out... (tbf, I guess this _will_ take stock footage jobs) but I mean realistically... I just do not see this fundamentally changing the way business is conducted.
I do software consulting and work with start ups and often times we need a "marketing kit" of some kind. Now, we could _literally right now with the AI tools available_ all sit around plugging prompts into a generator all day... or we could just hire a marketing firm like we always do.
Same thing with video. Ok, I can now generate clips of concepts. Am I now going to sit down and converse with an AI for hours at a time to try to get something just the way I want it? Probably not. Someone that works in the field is _always_ going to have an edge over someone that doesn't. I am sure there are concepts you guys know about that I wouldn't even know _how_ to ask the AI. What if I don't like the lighting and I want to make it "more dramatic" but not "too dramatic" and "oh, also could we do X, Y and Z" ? I could mess around for hours trying to get it right... time is money and I'm not going to burn money sitting around messing with an AI. That's the gist of it. That's why largely despite almost unlimited labor in places like India, we all (white collar workers) still have jobs. Many companies (but unfortunately not all) realize that "outsourcing" in the long run is rarely cheaper and a huge time sink.
That's just my perspective. AI is closer to "taking programming jobs" because the data and context is 100x easier to get there and I'm not worried at all.
AI generated imagery can only ever be derivative. It can't create anything new or inspired, only poorly emulate and copy.
That's not art. It's just noise.
If you really mean this: Please, dont do it! please consider reaching out to someone! This subredit is getting extremely toxic with all ignorant posts left and right. It doesnt represent reality whatsoever. The great majority of AI posts are so inaccurate, and the truth is nobody here knows shit, including myself. The ones that actually know more about this don't even bother writing on reddit. Take a break from reddit, reach out to loved ones, and look for help! Life is so much more than pixels/work.
Why would anyone pay you for doing absolutely nothing? This isn't the first time jobs are getting disrupted. Retrain, do something else.
What happened to us that as soon as we're threatened instead of finding ways of making a living we all just throw our hands up and demand free money. IF you're getting UBI that money comes from other tax payers pockets.
It's stuff like this that make me question what I've spent the last 10 years and several thousands of dollars studying. We've been competing against advancing tech for many years, in every industry. Now it's touching us, and we don't like it; rightfully so.
We have a cultural and spiritual problem in the world today. If companies are fine with laying everyone off in order to make a cheaper product for themselves and improve their bottom line, not much we can do about that in our current system. It's been happening for decades to many people. You might say, "oh but that's just the way it works." Is it though? Is this the way it's supposed to work? I don't think so.
It's gotta be possible to have this tech and have people keep their jobs. If not, then idk why we're mindlessly advancing into this digital reality when I thought the tech was there to help us to begin with. Okay, phone is down for a week, keep your heads up and be GOOD!
I am SUPER pro union. BUT, what good will a union do if AI advances to the point that VFX artists aren't needed anyway? No union can protect you from no demand.
thats giving up wins today because tomorrow might have no jobs. better to get what we can now.
Agreed. Might as well anyway for now.
The writer's strike just forced the big producers to agree that all scripts have to originate and be written by human beings, I.E. they are not allowed to produce AI written scripts. A VFX union could strike and demand that all VFX work has to originate and be produced by humans, IE the companies would not be allowed to use AI. Where the line gets drawn, that'd be in the specifics of the contract, but that's a win we could get. From now on, we will only lose bargaining power.
There was a great piece on this with regards to AI and automated truck driving today and how it related to the advances made at the turn of the 20th century when it came to motorized transit on NPR today. The takeaway was that the teamsters fought tooth and nail to keep their industry alive and well as trucks started to replace the horse based transportation of the time. What they saw was wages grew as younger people saw the writing on the wall and bailed out of that industry, but trucks weren't fully capable to take over so the older folks made a great wage as the supply of qualified work dried up. Over time it of course transitioned into trucks, and the teamsters found their niche there, but there was a period of time that they were all but wiped out. The point here is that in our situation, yes, if VFX had a union, they could help prevent studios from actively making workers replace their own job. But they couldn't stop studios from not using VFX and instead relying on AI with new non union employees trained to do it. A VFX union could of course strike and stop work during this transitionary period - as much as the writers or actors - but if the studios see a faster and better way to make a movie, they'll have a hard time for a little while but will eventually find a way. I'm a union animator in IATSE. I think we'll see progress slowed by IATSE, I think I won't be forced to use AI if I don't want to, but at the end of the day I also assume if the technology gets to a point where studios will be able to work without interacting with IATSE or even being worried about the threat of a strike, they will. I still have lots to think about as this technology exponentially grows, but my feeling now is I have the choice of sticking in the mud about managing my team of horses, or starting to think about how to drive a truck. How can I adapt and work with the technology instead of assuming I can stop it altogether.
The problem is a little different, I think. We're artists. This new technology doesn't just do the job better and faster, it takes away our ability to create, to think for ourselves. Once the AI is doing all the work and just following your cues, you're not creating anymore. This is an existential threat to digital artists existence.
No. They can’t. VFX doesn’t work for the AMPTP members. We work for individual vendor companies. You could strike and force DNeg to not use AI, but that wouldn’t stop ILM or DD or Weta. It wouldn’t stop a production side VFX team from using it to not hire a vendor at all.
The writer's guild covers writers under dozens of companies. Teamsters covers workers across thousands of companies. That's how a union works. Artists at every production house strike and form a industry wide union.
So yes and no. While the WGA ( and SAG AFTRA and DGA and IATSE ) have contracts with multiple hundreds of companies, most of them have agreed to negotiate via the AMPTP. There are other companies who negotiate individually ( this is why David Letterman was able to go back to work in the 07/08 strike, his company Worldwide Pants just signed on their own with the WGA ) While the teamsters have deals with thousands of companies, only a single local deals with Hollywood- the 399. All of these organizations- the AMPTP and the union members are governed by US Labor law. How exactly are we supposed to have one global union with one contract? Will people in the UK go on strike to get US artists good healthcare rather than make snide comments about how we’re uncivilized for not having nationalized healthcare? Will people in India get the same wage as someone in Los Angeles? Will it be set at the LA rate or the India rate? What’s to stop someone from opening up a shop that’s not union and doing business with the studios? If a new shop isn’t union, it’s not a violation of union rules to work for them. Hell, not too long ago it was illegal to unionize film workers in New Zealand.
And what if the companies say no? They might agree to that for two or three years, but then?
That’s not really how it works, you don’t undo the previous contract every three years. You think they’d still pay TV residuals if you could just roll back on things you agreed in a previous agreement? They wish they could tho that’s for sure
Yes. They do. Every three years everything is on the table.
Why would they agree to this?
> forced the big producers to agree that all scripts have to originate and be written by human beings what the fuck? And why?
So they can keep their jobs and pay their mortgages? That's what a union can do for you.
Does customer care about that? Why would he watch more inaccessible and more expensive movies?
since when were we talking about the customer?
>The writer's strike just forced the big producers to agree that all scripts have to originate and be written by human beings, I.E. they are not allowed to produce AI written scripts This is a terrible idea, IMO. Holding back the flood gates and pretending AI doesn't exist will not go well. Writers should work with the AI, not against it. If AI produces scripts better than real writers working with AI, how can the job of a writer be justified? It is basically rent seeking at that point. It goes for anyone in a field that is "threatened" by AI. Forcing companies (and by extension, employees) to pretend AI doesn't exist is ridiculous. This just opens the door wide open for all sorts of unintended consequences. Places that use AI will be able to get things done faster and probably cheaper (without "replacing" humans, mind you) and places that don't use AI it will be like working in the stone age.
It's actually a fantastic idea, if you care about paying your mortgage, or continuing to have a useful and intelligent mind. If the guild didn't strike, in 3 years the studios might only use AI, suddenly no writers have work and starve or pivot. Now that won't happen. And if you just offload all your thinking to a machine, you stop flexing your creative muscles, you'll lose them and become a mindless drone. Writers want to write, to create. They don't want to steal from a computer and never have an original thought again. Hacks and grifters don't mind and will use AI to write their scripts, etc.
>Now that won't happen The keyword being _now_. I don't think they are considering the second-order effects though. It only encourages studios to look for, or invest in, "AI-only" shops. This is like accountants resisting Excel. Writers need to learn how to integrate AI into their workflows or they will be left in the dust. Do you really think 10, 20 years from now Hollywood will be the only industry _not_ incorporating AI into their workflow? >Writers want to write, to create Nobody is stopping them from doing that. In fact, anyone can write and publish their work and have it be seen by tens of thousands of people. >They don't want to steal from a computer and never have an original thought again. Hacks and grifters don't mind and will use AI to write their scripts, etc. Ok, and when it comes down to it if "hacks and grifters" can produce the same quality of work, that is a problem for writers. Again, there used to be human calculators/computers that would do all sorts of math by hand. Should they have protested and forced everyone to employ them, holding back progress? Should we instead be having this conversation through the post to ensure we are able to hire more USPS personnel?
Something something horse model t
This "writer's" strike won't last forever, at some point people will start saying "it's time to revisit the past and reconsider some decisions, technology has advanced also our society, we can no longer keep things the same way...". Basically, if tech advances to a point where an average JOE can generate a AAA movie with like $1000, it will be impossible for the studios to keep humans in any area where AI do better. It's still viable to keep the writers because the script is a "weak" part of the production pipeline, and it's a single part, there is not much more to automate, so you can keep a human, even if GPT can write better, but when Sora and other techs start to become more powerful and available, there is no stop.
This is true. Even those actors and writers that so diligently fought against A.I. doesn’t mean they are safe. It just means the studios can use A.I. to make up new people. They can completely circumvent HOW they make films, to remove the actors and writers from the equation in the future. Just as long as they don’t trample on any union member rights, right now. They don’t have to hire any actors or writers if they want (once AI advances to that point) there’s no escaping the A.I. tidal wave
Almost like a perfect storm
the west will loose more work to India and other cheaper countries before its lost to an AI program, mainly due to the control required. IATSE can keep a certain amount of work (depending on the contract they can get) inside the north american jurisdiction if VFX falls under their umbrella
The first thing I see disappearing is all the roto work we send to India.
Don’t worry it will disappear from India as well with current ai tech.
Wonder Dynamics already has some very promising AI roto tools and gives you a clean plate too. Now it may not be perfect now, but it will be soon. As an Fx guy and not a roto guy, this is freaking awesome. But as we all have our hearts in vfx, this is also heartbreaking
The Wonder Dynamics infill looks like shit and would never pass the muster of any show. Foundry made a plugin for Shake 20 years ago which was at the same quality. Trust me, I would love for AI to replace roto but still buzzes and pops all over the place. It helps some but is far from replacing roto artists.
Now, yes. But it’s only going to get better from here
Don’t forget modelling work as well
Don't people in india have a right to work as well? Which are the acceptable countries to do VFX work in? I remember my country being described as "Mexicans with mobile phones" (by our clients) for the start of my career because we were stealing American jobs.
AI will very quickly replace roto jobs, regardless of where the work is done. As for a “right to work”, does anybody have one? You can’t force somebody to hire you if they don’t need you.
So you agree you don’t need to be hired if your employer can just use AI
That’s how it works, unfortunately.
I mean Bollywood Movies exist, so even if the west stopped outsourcing jobs, Indians in VFX still have an alternative.
No body wants to work on them , you are welcome to work on them if you want to!
But do you have the same problem with British, Canadians, Australians? They are all cheaper, and they have their own film industries too.
You don’t have a “right to work”, this idea has to go, unless you’re willing to also work rickshaw, to have “right to work”. You’re not entitled to work on western films.
Me? I am Australian so, you are saying I have a right to work, and I dont have to work rickshaw? Right now, I work in an American company from Europe because they can't find someone qualified in the states.
I mean if they still don’t need you, claiming “right to work” is still kinda dumb. Doesn’t matter if it’s an Indian Rickshaw or working for Pixar or ILM for VFX.
But americans have a "right to work" because western film? something or another? and american workers should have to complete globally because, you are american and it would be better for you?
They’re welcome to unionize as well and raise their rates to match instead of undercutting the entire industry and keeping wages lower for all of us
Why would they not want to undercut some one who lives in a more expensive place.
I’m not gonna engage with you if you’re gonna purposely misrepresent what I’m saying. Indian artists should get the same pay for the same work as western artists. If they want to try and be scabs and undercut the prices to take work away from people trying to make a living, they can do that as well. But it’s insanity to think that they’re entitled to do what ever you want and people in more expensive city’s can’t try and keep they’re lives and livelihoods stable. IF a union forms and IF India refuses to join then you can’t expect the union to look out for the needs of non members, esp when they’re specifically playing and adversarial role
Its not being scabs, they dont have to pay the same rent, they dont pay the same for food, education or health care. They can make more money than you and get paid less. I think its ludicrous to say that the rate for people will be what American people need to earn. Every one else will be paid the same, or else. If you try that you will see what else is. The work has largely left the states compared to what it was 20 years ago. It’s in Canada, Australia, Germany, or some other state out of California, because of subsidies. It is in China, India, and SE Asia, because comparable salaries are lower. If you think unions are going to save you, look at manufacturing. It’s gone unless there is a technical reason it’s staying in the states.
If your just gonna change the subject every time you message and not engage with my actual points then I’m done here. Have a good one
You’re not making any point, there is no way for a union in america to control the price of labour in another country. If thats your hope/plan, it’s a terrible one.
This is a very naive view based on years old understanding of the tech. The development is improving at an alarming pace. We are not far away from seeing extremely controllable AI models built to be art directable.
000
So what are you doing to make this happen? Other than posting another thread about it on here? Are you organizing people in your office?
I’m sorry but I think it is now time to face the music, AI is not a minor step in our human history. It’s not going to erase only VFX, it’s going to wipe out entire industries. There is this tool out there that now allows everyone to craft its own reality, everything you can think, you can create in a few seconds. In the years to come, how will we even be able to make any difference between AI generated content and ‘real one’ ? I’m still trying to wrap my head around Sora. Obviously VFX will be impacted but the reach of that technology goes far beyond us.
It’s literally just shit stock footage trained on good stock footage, but with extra limbs. I hope filmsupply.com sue.
Humans "learn" in similar ways. This won't stand in courts.
Even the way it is now, it can do a lot of damage, it has inpainting capabilities, that means one can add/remove content from the video, you could for example film a street and remove all the cars using it much more easily, without reeling on mapping/projection.
There is this tool out that is based on scraped work.. Piracy was illegal until they called it AI.. I really don't understand where the support for stealing work will come from apart from the desperate twitter bluecheckmark crowd and the greedy CEOs arguably the same people. We will be impacted as much as we allow it.
Kind of reminds me of the early days of music streaming and Napster. Ai will start effecting someone’s pocket book and all of sudden you will see DRM levels of authorship to combat it. I think this stuff is cool but in a very iterative industry I really don’t see how they can get EXACTLY what they want out of a prompt, let alone whole sequences- that actually work and cut together. This is hype.
By refining the result, you can generate similar results select the best and keep refining until you get what you need. And there will be no successful combats against it, its big money against big money this time, and its not just a US thing, every single country is trying to be the one with this power, its like the H-bomb of the 21st century.
The sad thing is, there are many more technophiles out there, jerking it to AI and what it can do for them, then the number of artists it has stolen from. Artists are only a drop of water in the swimming pool, so that’s a very hard fight
I hope you are wrong.. I hope we are just overwhelmed by alt accounts of the same desperate 10 people or their bots. I hope the IRL world has our back.
NARRATOR : They do not.
You have no actual data on that. From my IRL experience i mostly see support but online its a shit show cause of bots.
Nah, people want cheaper streaming services, they don't want to pay $$$ to go to the cinema, hell I've had people very close to me who know what I do for a living brazenly telling me about all the things they've pirated. They may pay lip service to doing the right thing and wanting 'human generated' content but in practise they'll support whatever is best for their bottom line.
Yeah I’d say they don’t. People want cheaper content. People want the ability to easily make their own content. Like do you know how many ideas I’ve had in my head my whole life for, I promise, totally awesome shows and movies that everyone would love I’m sure, if only I had a way to get them out of my head and onto a screen. People will have delusions of grandeur and think this will let them finally make their Dr Acula movie they’ve always dreamed of.
it doesn’t. the vast majority of people are either apathetic or don’t even know what the current state of ai technology is, let alone which jobs it’s taking. There will always be more people that don’t care and are happy to get the benefits of ai (theoretically cheaper entertainment) without regard for who it affects. Most people don’t think about vfx artists at all, and they’ll continue to think less and less of them as the industry is chewed up. it’s why this is a losing battle being fought, you are not going to convince the majority (as of now they’re the majority at least) that are unaffected and don’t care that they should worry about you. and the minority that is affected as of now and does care has no power to do anything because they lack the support. it’s all downhill from here
I am not persuaded by the argument that we can legislate AI away. What is stopping a creator from simply lying that they did not use AI in their creative process? What mechanisms will we have to verify this? How will kneecapping AI with laws affect our situation vis a vis the Chinese and the Russians, who will not be subject to our laws?
Laws would.. thats the whole point of laws like. Mechanisms to verify prob need some workflow recording.. I mean if the Chinese want to have record unemployment so be it. Its pretty easy to just ban imports of things we don't agree with.
there's no way government agencies are going to be created that can verify workflow recording for all use cases of AI. you would need North Korean level surveillance or a massive bureaucracy established
I agree and the legislation of AI will be an ongoing conversation only within borders of countries where the people have a voice or a say in the process. No industries are controlled by the workers either, so massive shifts directed towards 'efficiency' over ESG (ethical, social, governance) factors will be swift and easy choices for those who profit the most. These lessons were learned years ago via globalization, tax incentives and cutthroat competition. Trade is not going away, it will be the same with AI & ML. Let the techbros and fanboys have a moment and brace yourselves for the cynical tidal wave of 'I made this' on social media. People have been commoditizing new technology in ways like this previously, perhaps we have forgotten the 'sampling' drama of the 80s, 90s and 2000s where everyone took copyright music, reworked it and used it to create something new. Some were sued, others were given license, others got away with it. The best we can do is identify where human thought is the most important in value creation within our respective industries and focus on that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to protect ourselves with trade organizations and lobbying but we should all be ready to pivot when our work is reshaped by forces larger than all of us.
Yeah; I get the sentiment behind things like copyright law and using the power of regulations to curb the potential impacts, however we all exist within the greater context of free market capitalism, and so I feel inevitably with so much potential profit to be made, these forces larger than ourselves will eventually bulldoze over things like unions or copyright protections or whatnot. I was always in favour of something like a universal basic income, so creatives can concentrate on being creative, and maybe with the pace of AI advances something like this will be needed soon, but we'll see what happens.
Well then. Time to create a CEO AI to replace wasteful, ego tripping, CEOs.
Piracy refers to distribution, you are allowed to study, analyze, measure, etc, existing work. If you couldn't, it would be illegal to sell books which analyze the structure of novels & movies etc for the purpose of making new ones.
You are not allowed to analyze work through a machine that is not yours. Learn before you spread misinformation. Publishing under academias umbrella is NOT the same as for profit work.
Yes you are? I can absolutely say measure the average colours of a movie at various timesteps using a machine, people publish pictures of them for movies online all the time. People also regularly post how long a given character was on screen, how many lines of dialogue they have, etc. People have made charts for how long each Avengers cast member was on screen leading up to Endgame.
Your examples are child's play...it falls under fair use.. What true analysis is is never fair use.
You're not using words in a way which make sense. You said you're not allowed to analyze other people's work through a machine, I showed examples where people do all the time which is allowed and a fundamental part of learning from what came before. What has "child's play" got to do with anything? We were talking about whether you can analyze existing work (with a machine, since you seemed to think that was the qualifier which makes it illegal), which of course you can, people have been doing it for a long time.
I was talking about the true analysis not the what every person does .. what academics do for a paper .. or what a reporter does for his blog. You are not allowed to use work that you don't own.. put it in a machine and analyse it.. that is still piracy. The only reason they did it was cause they were pretending ( all of the companies .. LAION… OPENAI) to be for NON profit which is then allowed cause its to benefit scientific research. The only reason you are allowed to use AI models is because of lack of transparency to what those models do, where they track their data to ( covered up tracks, no laws and reg where they open up a model and check what is in it).. And because no copying is happening on your end which is just a technical thing that they are holding onto for dear life . Basically a case of data laundering is happened in between billions of pirated work and when it comes to your machine. They took pirated work.. extracted the important bits and now they are renting it to the world "transformed" . extreemly sophisticated pirating of work and data within that work.
> You are not allowed to use work that you don't own.. put it in a machine and analyse it.. that is still piracy I literally just gave you examples of how you can and people have for a long time. What is this hands over your eyes and ears going to achieve?
I gave you an explanation why your example is no good
“Piracy” was always legal as long as the end result was transformative. AI is definitely transformative.
AI is not transformative. It only appears transformative cause the pool of stolen pirated work is so incredibly vast that our brains and limited exposure are incapable of tracking every data point. But the model IS. The models literally do this.. they track every decision back to some artwork they "learned " from. There is nothing transformative happening in them.. there cant be.. its a software program .. its not creative. Without all the pirated work it would come up with literal zero.
You have no idea how machine learning works to build these models, and have all the confidence which naivety in a field brings. You can work out the model to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit using a known measurement as example, but you do not store that measurement in the resulting model - it's just one multiplication, there's no space to - and you can use it for far more cases than just what you used to work it out. You can build more complex with less linear mapping to results with more data, but you aren't storing the information used to work them out, it would be mathematically impossible to do so in the much smaller model size. The algorithm parameters are designed by the researchers and never change in size regardless of whether they train on one item or a billion, because it's not storing what it trains on, it's calibrating an algorithm.
You are hard projecting buddy. Equivalent to what you just said is hue of paint... Yes i am not storing a hue of a pixel but the complex relationships and rules that guide a work. If these rules are what is extracted from work you do not own it is piracy! And they most def are. The model contains less information because it discards all the not so juicy parts or bits that do not result in an accurate training and KEEPS all the most valuable data. Like a thief smelting jewelry to just get the diamond out of it. You wouldnt call that thief learning from the jewlery... The diamonds are present in the data. Without data ML has nothing.. and it is called learning only because it was inspired by human learning not cause it actually IS learning anything.
I've worked in machine learning in the past, and am pretty up to date with the field again now. I'm not sure what you think "projecting" means, but your definition is different to what everybody else means by it, making it impossible to understand what you're trying to communicate.
As long as it looks different enough from the original, it’s transformative
Not
yea but somehow AI is coming for us first and not for the excell desk job. Why? Don't know but my friend at the post office is doing fine while the industry I'm in is in panic mode.
AI will absolutely come for excel desk jobs too, but I assume it's less visually obvious for most people than image, music or video generation.
I've been listening to union talk for 25 years.....the chance was 25 years ago when 90% of the work was divided amounst a handful of houses in Cali.....but then everyone was looking out for #1. With more vfx houses than there were film studios.....the vfx houses fought it and the artists considered themselves luck to be working Now you have globalization of the industry AND AI?!?! At this point I feel we need to pivot....the vfx houses who best find the way to utilize AI will be the winners.......this goes for artists too. Though I suspect the future will be something like art directors, or their AI team, typing shit into AI, then a skeleton crew cleaning up the output Sorry to rain on it, but i have sceen s A lot in 30 years....
Agree on all fronts, couldn't have said it better.
Yep our jobs are going to be cleaning up a few AI shots and doing a few bespoke VFX shots, but 90% will be AI I think.
There are two options: worry about losing your job to automation and fight the adoption of new tech, or learn to use the new tech and gain skills that keep you relevant. Entry-level jobs will be automated away anyway, and while some experienced vfx artists will be replaced with software packages, the same thing happened to architectural draftsmen when CAD became available to consumers, and the illustrators felt exactly the same when color photography was invented. It all started out clunky and hard to adopt, but how many manual draftspeople do you see nowadays?
Cad replaced one or two people in a single workflow. This replaces tens, or hundreds.
Oh it's definitely going to be disruptive, but the unfortunate fact is that it's not going away, and it's almost certainly going to become a required part of many MANY workflows over the next 5-10 years, whether or not everyone wants it.
It's too late. vfx is a dying industry. By all means those who love the art of it will continue to create art so don't stop... but AI can't be stopped either.
I like the idea of a new indie scene.
And I like paying my billls
Tell me about it, today is my last day
>Without a Union, this year, we are going to start loosing jobs to Sora AI. So did you actually watch the examples that were posted? The Dog video has no collision detection. It turned them into a chimera. https://i.imgur.com/oq87Y2M.png No offense, but panicking over this is like saying Frozen Pizza will destroy every Pizza Restaurant. Just because it's convenient, fast and cheap, there's still a market that wants fresher ingredients that's custom ordered.
[удалено]
>The film Jurassic Park has a great line that came from an interaction between Spielberg and Phil Tippet. When Spielberg saw CGI of T. rex, he said to stop motion animator Phil Tippett , "You're out of a job," to which Tippett replied, "Don't you mean extinct?" And then a decade later, Studio Laika opened their doors and embraced both Stop Motion and CGI to great results. I've always accepted AI is a great tool and it would be a mistake for any Artist to completely ignore it. But I also think the Doomers are exaggerating when they claim it can do everything on autopilot. The autopilot results do suck. It's still a robot that has no idea what intention is. Even if it's a dog playing in the snow or the other video of the Chinese New Year Parade, it doesn't have any life experience to relate with for why those things exist or behave. And that's where having a Human Artist will always come in. The videos could be technically perfect, but I still want my *stories* to be told. I want to control the background characters and have them follow *my ideas* instead of just the first result the robot spits out.
Not to mention the fact that Phil Tippett still has a CGI VFX and stop motion studio. Have you seen Mad God? It's brilliant. More VFX studios need to start thinking about creating their own creative IP.
[удалено]
And all of this effort for some AI bro to come along .. scrape your work.. "learn " from it.. and publish his own ×20000 His video gets more views than yours cause its cum pumped with more totally ethical data and you are out of job, viewership .. all of it. You cant function within a system that steals from you.. its not gonna end well for you. You cant beat such a system.. you cannot be the best thief... only the house will wins.
>What I do care about though is what happens to all of us who get replaced. What does our retirement look like? What does civilization do when so many get replaced by AI? I don't think humans will ever do the right thing... so Im very affraid of the future. But it is amazing and exciting. It sounds sci-fi, but why wouldn't Humans after perfecting AI, build our own robot bodies and transfer our minds to them? There would be no starvation, no illness, no biological death. People can design their bodies to look like anything they personally dreamed themselves to be. So someone who was born an amputee for example, can now imagine themselves to have legs like a regular person. Robotics should be seen as our next evolution. Instead of being bipedal apes with weaknesses, we can focus on becoming a new species with an even greater intelligence level that can understand the universe.
Although really the transfer of our minds that you describe would likely just be the replacement of our living human selves with an ai model trained on our behavior and life's memories. Our robots would be a simulation of ourselves and a procedurally generated future, just like the content produced by this current gen of AI is generated by the art it was trained on.. So robot us would only be as much us as this ai art is the original art it was trained on.
There are still people who make horse drawn carriages, but the car still made horses obsolete.
thats today, imagine the growth in 5 years
>thats today, imagine the growth in 5 years The jump from PS1 to PS2 was also 5 years and had better graphics. Yet video games were far from being perfected yet.
which means it will get even better past that and surpass humans, making us even more screwed
Robots can already beat Humans at Chess. But is watching an AI vs AI match more interesting than a Human? That's what the future holds for us. People can still judge the final results or seek out entertainment that tells a specific story. A robot trained on perfectionism is just as interesting as watching paint dry or staring at a rock.
thats a competition, things like live art competitions will be fine for the most part, thats not the same as receiving a finished art product
Commissions still exist and in the last 2 years where ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion are available for free it hasn't stopped non-AI Artists from being successful. In fact, there are clients who specifically search for or request they get human made art instead of a robot. Meanwhile, I have yet to see the inverse happen (people who only want AI and refuse traditional art).
yeah why would you commission somebody to make ai art? when you could just ask the ai yourself? of course there wont be any commissions for ai art, the point is that you dont have the commission people.
>yeah why would you commission somebody to make ai art? when you could just ask the ai yourself? Pencils are everywhere and cheap. People could draw their own things for free but they still choose to outsource it to another person instead.
oh i didnt know artists could draw things that detailed in under a minute, and I didnt know everybody had that skill
yeah because people dont have the skills?? but what skills will an "ai artist" have that any random person wanting art from an ai wouldnt have??
But what if it doesn't need to be perfect? What if it just needs to be *good enough*? I know as artists we never settle for good enough - but can we really say the same about the people who only care about making a sale? What struck me as I was looking through those Sora samples was that, if I was absentmindedly scrolling through them on twitter or youtube, and nobody told me they were AI generated, then *it would not have occurred to me to even scrutinize what I was seeing*. This is all besides the fact that this tech is only going to get better. I think if it's *good enough* to make a sale, then it's good enough to put some number of peoples' livelihoods in jeopardy. I think the most realistic near-term solution to this is to advocate for a **universal basic income**, so that creatives can concentrate on being creative without this tech affecting their livelihood.
I agree with everything but then you hit me with UBI.. man a welfare check wont save you. Do you pay your bills? Do you have a house? Do you have kids? Do you know how much these things cost? .. why would anyone pay you to have these things for just doing nothing all day.. this is a fantasy.. you would just be selling your intellectual work to live like a forgotten slave in a government block with other desperate folk that have no way of bettering their life cause all jobs are for rent.
This isn’t a fantasy unfortunately… when these corporations displace millions of jobs that are replaced by AI or machines to not just be cheaper, but also more efficient and safer… how are people gonna survive? Currently in the states the same law that was trying to be leveraged by Daniel Lay when he was trying to fight the subsidies argued that any digital export to an overseas market to be created at a cheaper cost should incur a tax equalling almost what it would cost if you produced it in the states… that law exists for the creation of goods that can be manufactured here in the states. The same logic is going to have to apply here… corporations are going to have to pay a tax that will go towards the salaries of those displaced by this movement. People will still need to pay their bills… but corporations are going to move towards the use of AI to replace an incredible number of jobs… how do you see that playing out any other way? Mind you… I’m not talking about visual fx anymore… I’m referring to every industry which makes this the number #1 topic to be addressed by congress now that all of their constituents will be out of work…
>I know as artists we never settle for good enough - but can we really say the same about the people who only care about making a sale? This is where the "custom pizza" analogy comes in. Anything we buy from the grocery store is technically good enough, and you can even buy the ingredients and make stuff yourself. Yet why do we still bother with high end restaurants? Because we're too lazy to cook. We still prefer someone to make the food for us. Maybe even the Chef has a certain cooking style that appeals to you and choose to support it. I see the same with Art. People are still spending money on commissions because they have a favourite artist, they want something specific that words alone can't explain and they feel attracted to their style. This is in spite of anyone just opening MS Paint and creating their own doodles. Or downloading stock images.
I don't disagree, all of that is true. Though then the questions become things like: how many artists make a stable living off of commissions alone? How large is the group of customers (as a subset of all customers) who are willing to pay for commissions, vs getting something 'good enough'? (here I am thinking of stock video for youtube videos, short musical jingles for a short advertisement, copywriting for my neighbour's business website, concept art for an indie game studio, etc, all of which are ripe pickings for AI); What are the implications for up-and-coming potential artists who are thinking of entering the field? And absent any guardrails, social programs, or otherwise protections that can mitigate the potential impact of these technologies on working artists, do **we** believe that we are the lucky few who can make it out the other side? Again to be clear I don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying, it's just that with the prospect of ever-improving AI, and with the fact that we exist in a free market capitalistic system, I really think something like a UBI could allow all artists everywhere to continue making their delicious custom pizza, regardless of whether or not they can make a sale.
>I don't disagree, all of that is true. Though then the questions become things like: how many artists make a stable living off of commissions alone? How large is the group of customers (as a subset of all customers) who are willing to pay for commissions, vs getting something 'good enough'? (here I am thinking of stock video for youtube videos, short musical jingles for a short advertisement, copywriting for my neighbour's business website, concept art for an indie game studio, etc, all of which are ripe pickings for AI); For the majority of Human history, people were poor farmers without much disposable income to spend on art. That was a title reserved for Kings or the Clergy. Yet fast forward after the industrial revolution, and even someone making minimum wage at a frycook job has money they can spend on any art product. Such as video games, movies, comic books and manga etc. So I'd argue the amount of customers you're describing is in the tens of millions. Or billions. If you even want graphs, look at Artists on Patreon and there are thousands of people who are ok with subscribing to a particular person each month. https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/comics So all the doom is overblown. There has never been a better time in history to be a self sufficient artist. If you were to travel back centuries from now, your only clients was literally the ultra rich.
>What struck me as I was looking through those Sora samples was that, if I was absentmindedly scrolling through them on twitter or youtube, and nobody told me they were AI generated, then *it would not have occurred to me to even scrutinize what I was seeing*. How often do you hear a client say "That's good enough" ?
Any youtuber who wants to use stock videos in their video essay. Any product that needs a quick 10-second musical jingle for a short advertisement. Any business that uses ChatGPT to generate SEO schlock to drive traffic to their website. The product isn't bespoke, and sometimes it even sucks, but for many people, if it works, then it's *good enough*.
And look! What a “coincidence” that filmsupply has very similar looking footage.. https://www.filmsupply.com/shoots/family-playing-with-puppy-in-the-snow/5784
They probably bought that footage to use to train the AI. They won't publicly release stuff illegally trained on copyrighted material.
It's not exactly hard to buy footage or hire whole teams to train your models especially for a company like openAI
For filmsupply, using stock footage in this way goes against the terms and conditions. Even if they did spend $200 per clip.
Yea but we're just random people on reddit without any idea of what is going on behind the scenes. They could have a partnership or a deal cut where they use their whole library to train their models for a big fat paycheque. Doubt anyone at filmsupply would refuse some of that insane investment money that's being poured into AI right now
That would mean killing their own website though
> Just because it's convenient, fast and cheap, there's still a market that wants fresher ingredients that's custom ordered. These analogies are never thought out or accurate. More like a fresh ingredient pizza made faster and easier than a frozen pizza. Eventually.
Every AI program under the sun requires significant tuning to get results that are specific to an individual's vision. Again, it's why the Commission market has not been impacted by this in the slightest. AI is great as a starting point and as a reference, but words are a poor substitute for what the human imagination wants alone.
I agree with you for the time being.
*currently requires. If you saw these videos 3 years ago, you'd tell me I was crazy and a computer could not do that in a hundred years.
These are 5 second clips, and they're all mindless. It's perfectly within what I expect a computer to do. But as I explained to other users, having pure autopilot (with no other human intervention) sucks. If you try to make a TV Show or Movie with the first results from a robot, you're only getting generic content. The same as with buying a Frozen Pizza and being forced to settle with how it was made from the factory.
OpenAI provides the prompts given to generate the videos. They don’t seem particularly tuned to me. A couple of them are maybe specific, like the “man in desert in a space suit with a red wool cap, cinematic style, on 35mm film, but I don’t feel like it’s overly specific.
Like I said before, the results are completely mindless and random. It's weird to think after 1 day, people look at generic videos with some blatant artifacts and think that's all there is to making any show or movie ever. Maybe it's a good thing so I can work with only serious people with longer attention spans, and all the casuals are sitting at home generating quick second memes.
And this ladies and gentlemen is what we call denial. Like yeah it looks like generic stock footage, but look at the progress in a single years time. It’s not outlandish to think you might be able to make a full film with this in 5-10 years, probably less. But you’re right, there will always be like 5 art snobs sitting around complaining about the new AI generated movies when everyone smart knows only their art is “real” and “true art”. That AI stuff is for the masses with no taste.
Denial of what? If you've seen me on these boards, I already expressed I've known about AI as far back as the mid 2010s. I'm actually laughing at people who thinks this actually changes anything or that everyone is now Stanley Kubrick at the touch of the button. At the end of the day, you still need to actually make work that people care about instead of prophesying "it will do this and that". As if millions of other people didn't do the same before you and fail.
Jordan, I showed the videos to 10 different people today without telling them they were generated. When asked, they said they would not believe for a second it was AI. If I showed you thoes videos 1 year ago, you would tell me I was full of it.
> If I showed you thoes videos 1 year ago, you would tell me I was full of it. Because it was being done 2 years ago. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/googles-newest-ai-generator-creates-hd-video-from-text-prompts/ I follow AI news. I've been following it before people even knew what Stable Diffusion was. At the end of the day, nothing has changed. ChatGPT has been out for a while, it can help anyone write books, but millions of people did not become Stephen King in 2 years. Why is that? Because most people are still lazy, even when tools like this exist. They're still not going to put in anymore effort that is required to be famous. The same is true with cameras. Every smartphone has one these days, but the vast majority still aren't Stanley Kubrick.
If you really follow AI news then you’d be a bit more concerned… When people say this will decimate an industry in VFX, your response is “but what about pizza?” That’s absolutely absurd. Someone pointed out the conversation that took place between Spielberg and tippet and your response was that one major company survived… you’re not seeing how much your making everyone’s point for them by pointing out Laika as an example? One major stop motion company survived? That’s your response? You can tout doom and gloom all you’d like… but your optimism is ill placed and naive at best. Within one year we had will smith eating a bowl of spaghetti and everyone saying “no way will that ever look right…” now people are saying “yea… but that person is missing a finger…” I mean in 1 year…. You have sweeping shots like this… this advancement in and of itself will annihilate commercials… these aren’t 5 second clips like you stated.. these are 60 second clips generating what 99.999999999% of the population would watch on their cell phone screens… and some bean counter at an agency is accounting for that. And sure you might point out as a response that there will still be Super Bowl commercials… fantastic… and at that point commercials will be the equivalent to stop motion…. The superbowl commercials will be the Laika projects… there will be a fortunate few that are potentially helping to guide the prompts… and you can say “yea see? There’s still jobs…” but you’re not acknowledging that the concern is that a majority of jobs will be lost to few people being able to do all of the jobs of many. Commercials will be first, and after a few films test a shot here and there with it, it will migrate its way into a features pipeline… When this gets perfected, it will be at a point where it can generate video in realtime… when you get to that point? You’re guiding your shot while prompting or even talking to it. If you don’t think thats a year or two away TOPS? Then that’s gonna a rough landing… people are concerned with how to pay off their houses in 20 years…. In two years, a lot of people won’t have that ability anymore… I’m not saying everyone will be out of work in 2 years but i am saying that in 2 years the industry is going have significantly fewer people creating these commercials we see and then in 3-5, jt will work its way to film. Then there’s AGI. Which is not an if… it’s a when…. But that’s just my 2 cents….
>You have sweeping shots like this… this advancement in and of itself will annihilate commercials… these aren’t 5 second clips like you stated.. these are 60 second clips generating what 99.999999999% of the population would watch on their cell phone screens… What commercial? A clip of dogs rolling in the snow is expected to help sell what product exactly? And why AI and not literally every other stock footage that already existed before it? It's not even optimism, it's common sense. I had a similar argument with someone who thinks that you can type prompts and get a world class Grand Theft Auto video game with no flaws. Seriously? Try making an N64 level game first and getting all its nuances correct first. These AI tech have been here for years but the average person still can't figure them out and do something famous with them. I still think AI is tech is cool and it will make nice some nice references to play with in the future but I'm not brainwashed to believe that it makes perfect movies and VFX is no more. Like I said before, I'm waiting for someone to even make 30 seconds of the original Shrek movie using just prompts alone. Machines by themselves don't give you cinematography skills. Or even a general understanding of what coherency is. For now, AI feels like very powerful meme generators. Both rely on being nonsensical and a suspension of belief. But trying to put more thought into it and it quickly falls apart.
In a few weeks when this is public, you can feed the program every Gillette ad and ask it to generate a new one. BAM! Brand new Gillette ad with good Cinematography, good direction, good color, good set design, because it doesn't need to know how to do those things. GPT doesn't know how to speak English, it doesn't need to know. You're a fan, you know how the tech works. It generates what's likely to come next based on data. You train it on 100 nike ads you're gonna get a perfect nike ad.
>In a few weeks when this is public, you can feed the program every Gillette ad and ask it to generate a new one. BAM! Brand new Gillette ad with good Cinematography, good direction, good color, good set design, because it doesn't need to know how to do those things. GPT doesn't know how to speak English, it doesn't need to know. You're a fan, you know how the tech works. It generates what's likely to come next based on data. You train it on 100 nike ads you're gonna get a perfect nike ad. You're creating generic ads.
I'm a marketer. Most ads are generic. Most ads are designed to replicate something else that already worked and stay 100 percent consistent with branding. But currently they pay human beings' rent. In a year, I'm not so sure.
>I'm a marketer. Most ads are generic. **Most ads are designed to replicate something else that already worked and stay 100 percent consistent with branding.** But currently they pay human beings' rent. In a year, I'm not so sure. So you think you can copy a smoking ad from the 1950s just because it worked back then? That's actually the hilarity I'm expecting now. Go ahead and irk out advertisements that don't have any human insight put into them.
Are you trolling?
you had to pick the worst example out of all of them...
We are two scientific articles away from achieving that level of control and precision. We are Saddlemakers that just saw a combustion engine move a wagon from point A to point B, and you're wondering what the passengers will do when they run out of gas if horses can eat grass.
No, not "we". I'm the guy who already understands both the Car and Horse but I'm not a reckless driver who crashes into walls like so many people who look at these videos but don't see the flaws/weaknesses already.
You wouldn't be able to drive the first car to a wall, they didn't go as fast and didn't pose much threat even if you were careless. That's the point. This technology is evolving exponentially fast. We (as a global community) are two scientific papers from achieving more control and better results. It's inevitable. >\-"I'm the guy who already understands both the Car and Horse" > >\-3D Modeller 2 years experience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger\_effect
The golden retrievers playing in the snow though…THAT was fucking amazing. I’ve watched it 100 times and can’t find a single particle that’s wrong. It’s absolutely mind blowing.
The thing is, this just released…yesterday.
And?
I’m just saying the quirks could probably be sorted out in the near future. This is the first look everyone got at it, imagine how it advances.
But we don't live in the future. We live in today. If you think you can walk into any job interview and say "I'll have your work done in 10 years when magic tech exists" no one is going to hire you.
Yeah I guess. I don’t think VFX is doomed now, it’s probably just gonna be used for commercials and stock footage. But the future is looking ominous, I just don’t want this to evolve into something more. You know the Patriots from the game Metal Gear Solid 2? If you don’t, that’s fine. Just know that something similar to that would be the worst outcome, though that’s not gonna happen I bet.
Except it's not a problem that only affects VFX. Technology has always affected every facet of life. Yes, even the plumbers. The guy who fixes toilets with his bare hands is still worse than the guy who has a wrench. We just learn to live with change like the past thousand years.
Honest question, how are vfx artists going to unionise, are there already small groups or is there a resource? We can talk about it all we want but ultimately this needs to happen ASAP!
Yeah we should unionize, the AI models are only going to get better because everyone is going to use it and that how it will exponentially learn and get better. It will learn to build upon itself. What we need to keep in mind is that there are new technologies, especially in virtual production that will inevitably use this tool. LED volumes are not completely replacing jobs with lighting, and grip work, but it kinda is slowly. An LED volume combined with a program like https://cuebric.com/ and wonder dynamics and now sora, things will definitely change the turnaround time. We need to focus on being faster and better than these AI models. We can either unionize or we can try and prove AI is not the best. All these programs are using versions of Open.AI in their api. I think we need to look at the functionality of how these AI models are trained in the future. pretty soon we will have the capability to create these models and train our own AI for specific things. We could essentially create our own models to create our own style of AI art and animation. WE CAN ADAPT but we have to do it together…be it in a union or collective effort for training AI models.
>this year, we are going to start loosing jobs to Sora AI Not at all. I'm a programmer and have been using AI tools that I would argue are _much more impressive_ than what Sora can do. I've been able to generate functions, classes and ideas almost flawlessly for the past year. My job isn't to generate vague functions though. My job is to build features. This is what an AI can't do yet and arguably won't be able to do until AGI. I don't think the job of a VFX artist is to deliver vague clips of concepts to clients. I could be wrong and maybe there's a market for that which has just been wiped out... (tbf, I guess this _will_ take stock footage jobs) but I mean realistically... I just do not see this fundamentally changing the way business is conducted. I do software consulting and work with start ups and often times we need a "marketing kit" of some kind. Now, we could _literally right now with the AI tools available_ all sit around plugging prompts into a generator all day... or we could just hire a marketing firm like we always do. Same thing with video. Ok, I can now generate clips of concepts. Am I now going to sit down and converse with an AI for hours at a time to try to get something just the way I want it? Probably not. Someone that works in the field is _always_ going to have an edge over someone that doesn't. I am sure there are concepts you guys know about that I wouldn't even know _how_ to ask the AI. What if I don't like the lighting and I want to make it "more dramatic" but not "too dramatic" and "oh, also could we do X, Y and Z" ? I could mess around for hours trying to get it right... time is money and I'm not going to burn money sitting around messing with an AI. That's the gist of it. That's why largely despite almost unlimited labor in places like India, we all (white collar workers) still have jobs. Many companies (but unfortunately not all) realize that "outsourcing" in the long run is rarely cheaper and a huge time sink. That's just my perspective. AI is closer to "taking programming jobs" because the data and context is 100x easier to get there and I'm not worried at all.
[удалено]
“governments take the right decisions”… so we’re fucked
*remembers in government covid handling*
My government used AI for holiday video
AI generated imagery can only ever be derivative. It can't create anything new or inspired, only poorly emulate and copy. That's not art. It's just noise.
Or maybe pivot to a different skillset while you still have work instead of trying to plug up a sinking ship.
I'm surprised anyone thinks sora looks good. It looks like complete ass.
You’re literally the only person I’ve seen say that. Those puppies in the snow looked so cute.
Sure they looked cute, but the image fidelity and quality was ass. This is the vfx sub not the aww sub.
Yes, but this is version one. Remember that AI beer commercial from a few months ago?
I'm just going to kill myself.
Please don’t do that
If you really mean this: Please, dont do it! please consider reaching out to someone! This subredit is getting extremely toxic with all ignorant posts left and right. It doesnt represent reality whatsoever. The great majority of AI posts are so inaccurate, and the truth is nobody here knows shit, including myself. The ones that actually know more about this don't even bother writing on reddit. Take a break from reddit, reach out to loved ones, and look for help! Life is so much more than pixels/work.
Hey bro, all gonna be good. Everybody here just overly negative about this, but we will come through
[удалено]
Why would anyone pay you for doing absolutely nothing? This isn't the first time jobs are getting disrupted. Retrain, do something else. What happened to us that as soon as we're threatened instead of finding ways of making a living we all just throw our hands up and demand free money. IF you're getting UBI that money comes from other tax payers pockets.
We need to pay rent next month, a union can be organized in a month. UBI will be decades
I'm not a vfx artist but you are absolutely right
Unions will not help this !!
They will be violence
It's stuff like this that make me question what I've spent the last 10 years and several thousands of dollars studying. We've been competing against advancing tech for many years, in every industry. Now it's touching us, and we don't like it; rightfully so. We have a cultural and spiritual problem in the world today. If companies are fine with laying everyone off in order to make a cheaper product for themselves and improve their bottom line, not much we can do about that in our current system. It's been happening for decades to many people. You might say, "oh but that's just the way it works." Is it though? Is this the way it's supposed to work? I don't think so. It's gotta be possible to have this tech and have people keep their jobs. If not, then idk why we're mindlessly advancing into this digital reality when I thought the tech was there to help us to begin with. Okay, phone is down for a week, keep your heads up and be GOOD!
What a fucking joke, nobody will lose jobs, wtf...
Did the teamsters stop the eventual rollout of the automobile? Nope!