Writer and actors on STRIKE. Most main stream TV and Movies come to a stand still

[MMC]

Maybe Phase 4-5 of the MCU, the DCEU, and most recent blockbusters and animated movies wouldn’t be complete shit if AI was writing them instead

 

[Beau Knows]

Maybe Phase 4-5 of the MCU, the DCEU, and most recent blockbusters and animated movies wouldn’t be complete shit if AI was writing them instead

Pretty sure those movies would be even more generic and boring than they already are if the studios could use AI to suck all the remaining personality out of their scripts. They already do everything they can to make sure the writers don't get too creative or daring, to the point where we've seen them leave Marvel and Star Wars projects over "creative differences".

 

[Mario_is_BACK!!]

 

[Hasbro]

Saw that CBS is going to put Yellowstone on to fill up some airtime, how the f*** are they going to censor that show for network TV? Gonna be like watching a R rated movie on cable with voice over words instead lol

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Saw that CBS is going to put Yellowstone on to fill up some airtime, how the f*** are they going to censor that show for network TV? Gonna be like watching a R rated movie on cable with voice over words instead lol

 

[Pink Mist]

Maybe Phase 4-5 of the MCU, the DCEU, and most recent blockbusters and animated movies wouldn’t be complete shit if AI was writing them instead

lmfao

I have a bridge to sell you if you think AI would make better writers

 

[Jumptheshark]

this made me laugh

 

[John Price]

this is literally why SAG and the writers are striking. AI is astounding making these covers.

 

[kook10]

It's propaganda because it came from SAG-AFTRA and they obviously want it out there. In fact, it's so short, simplified and easy enough for a lay person to read that it had to have been written with the intent of persuading as many people as possible.

To be clear, propaganda simply means information spread widely to help or harm a cause. It doesn't mean lies, if that's what you're thinking. Propaganda can be 100% true, but it's just hard to trust, obviously, considering the source and intent behind it.

The AMPTP responded to SAG's list. There are some huge increases in there.

AMPTP Disputes SAG-AFTRA’s “Misleading” Claims About Last Contract Offer Before Strike Began; Union Responds – Update

The Hollywood studios are disputing SAG-AFTRA’s “misleading” characterization of its proposals before contract talks broke off pre-strike.

deadline.com

 

[Osprey]

The AMPTP responded to SAG's list. There are some huge increases in there.

AMPTP Disputes SAG-AFTRA’s “Misleading” Claims About Last Contract Offer Before Strike Began; Union Responds – Update

The Hollywood studios are disputing SAG-AFTRA’s “misleading” characterization of its proposals before contract talks broke off pre-strike.

deadline.com

That's a great response. All of what SAG-AFTRA had in their report is still there, unchanged, but AMPTP added notes in different colors to give their perspective. Yes, it's propaganda, as well, but it's good to hear both sides.

 

[BostonBob]

This f*cking strike is killing me !!!!!!! I had 2 acting work days lined up as a Maintenance Man on this film called Velcro. Originally I was scheduled to work in early August but I just got the following e-mail from my agent via the Casting Director:


Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your patience as we weave our way through the current strike situations.

Production has notified us that we will be on a hiatus due to the SAG/AFTRA strike as of end of day today. We do anticipate that this could affect the start date for filming of Velcro.

As we learn of any changes, we will update you. But as it stands now, all dates that we have run by you are up in the air and we will not need anyone for any filming dates that have been discussed.

We will be back in touch hopefully sooner than later!



Anybody in Vancouver got a sofa I can crash on for the next few months ????

 

[RandV]

this is literally why SAG and the writers are striking. AI is astounding making these covers.

Yes something machine learning AI is really good at, and an issue that's a bit more complex than the old fashioned robot replacing a factory line worker. Because while the AI can pretty much perfectly replicate Freddy Mercury's voice here to sing a completely different song, it can't do that if you don't have Freddy Mercury's voice to begin with.

Like say in a near future corporate dystopia, you're a white collar worker and one day you're boss comes up to you and says: 'hey you're fired. We got a copy of your brain scan and fed it to an AI that can now replicate how you work so we no longer need you. Oh and don't bother trying to look for another job because we're selling your AI copy to other companies'.

So back to the labour battle here while AI can replace some things on its own, what we're talking about here with that example requires needing the human as the sample to start with and then never needing that human again. If you make a living through voice acting, why would you ever sign that away? And with how much labour cost could be could how hard is the studio exec going to go after it?

That said, one thing I think the tech could be really great for is the video game industry. No I don't want to see voice actors here replaced either, but a video game can be dynamic with things changing based on what the player does and chooses. With advancement in AI writing you could come up with completely dynamic story as well. But to have it voiced in game, you need to have everything pre-recorded, which means everything needs to be pre-written. So you get games like Skyrim which are really dynamic in gameplay choices but the NPC's just can't keep up and it can get pretty silly.

 

[Osprey]

That said, one thing I think the tech could be really great for is the video game industry. No I don't want to see voice actors here replaced either, but a video game can be dynamic with things changing based on what the player does and chooses. With advancement in AI writing you could come up with completely dynamic story as well. But to have it voiced in game, you need to have everything pre-recorded, which means everything needs to be pre-written. So you get games like Skyrim which are really dynamic in gameplay choices but the NPC's just can't keep up and it can get pretty silly.

Nvidia has already demoed this. It gives an idea of what interacting with NPCs in games might be like in the future. Instead of selecting from set dialogue choices and hearing pre-recorded answers, you speak into your microphone what you want, the AI interprets it and then comes up with the NPC's spoken reply on the fly.

 

[PK Cronin]

Yes something machine learning AI is really good at, and an issue that's a bit more complex than the old fashioned robot replacing a factory line worker. Because while the AI can pretty much perfectly replicate Freddy Mercury's voice here to sing a completely different song, it can't do that if you don't have Freddy Mercury's voice to begin with.

Like say in a near future corporate dystopia, you're a white collar worker and one day you're boss comes up to you and says: 'hey you're fired. We got a copy of your brain scan and fed it to an AI that can now replicate how you work so we no longer need you. Oh and don't bother trying to look for another job because we're selling your AI copy to other companies'.

So back to the labour battle here while AI can replace some things on its own, what we're talking about here with that example requires needing the human as the sample to start with and then never needing that human again. If you make a living through voice acting, why would you ever sign that away? And with how much labour cost could be could how hard is the studio exec going to go after it?

That said, one thing I think the tech could be really great for is the video game industry. No I don't want to see voice actors here replaced either, but a video game can be dynamic with things changing based on what the player does and chooses. With advancement in AI writing you could come up with completely dynamic story as well. But to have it voiced in game, you need to have everything pre-recorded, which means everything needs to be pre-written. So you get games like Skyrim which are really dynamic in gameplay choices but the NPC's just can't keep up and it can get pretty silly.

I suspect the usage rights will be an area of negotiation moving forward for artists still creating music but it'll be interesting to see how they handle all of the deceased musicians (or anyone else where having their voice would be useful) or the rights to catalogs. Are the rights of the catalog linked to the rights of likeness? I imagine AI is probably crossing the likeness boundary, no?

It's really interesting from a fan perspective to see these "covers" or different implementations but it's going to muddy the waters for a bit.

In the newest Indiana Jones movie they used the de-aging CGI for a segment of the movie, I wish they used AI to fix his god damn voice to match the age they were going for.

Nvidia has already demoed this. It gives an idea of what interacting with NPCs in games might be like in the future. Instead of selecting from set dialogue choices and hearing pre-recorded answers, you speak into your microphone what you want, the AI interprets it and then comes up with the NPC's spoken reply on the fly.

This seems like the natural progression towards an OS similar to the one seen in the movie Her as well. If AI can respond on the fly with a specific personality and be integrated with your OS, there's no reason to think you could have computers with personalities (even if they are based off specific people or archetypes).

There's just so much that can be done by combining all of these tools and we're just at the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Shareefruck]

Ehhh... personally, leaning harder into the "immersive/dynamic/simulation-y" side of videogames would probably only make me like the medium less, and I'm not sure I see much value in it, for my tastes. The entire appeal of videogame storytelling to me is an author communicating something they want to express to you that has meaning to them and being empathetic/seeing value in that worldview and appreciating the very deliberately considered delivery of all that, not merely getting lost in a world that feels alive, which is very "who cares?" for me.

If it's just some really realistic and intricate NPC that can adapt to any situation, that kind of sounds like a whole lot of extraneous nothing to me.

But cool technology for technology's sake, I guess?

 

[x Tame Impala]

Ehhh... personally, leaning harder into the "immersive/dynamic/simulation-y" side of videogames would probably only make me like the medium less, and I'm not sure I see much value in it, for my tastes. The entire appeal of videogame storytelling to me is an author communicating something they want to express to you that has meaning to them and being empathetic/seeing value in that worldview and appreciating the very deliberately considered delivery of all that, not merely getting lost in a world that feels alive, which is very "who cares?" for me.

If it's just some really realistic and intricate NPC that can adapt to any situation, that kind of sounds like a whole lot of extraneous nothing to me.

But cool technology for technology's sake, I guess?

Couldn’t agree more. The more detail they add to this the less real it feels to me ironically. It’s like seeing a magic trick that you already know how is pulled off

 

[PK Cronin]

Ehhh... personally, leaning harder into the "immersive/dynamic/simulation-y" side of videogames would probably only make me like the medium less, and I'm not sure I see much value in it, for my tastes. The entire appeal of videogame storytelling to me is an author communicating something they want to express to you that has meaning to them and being empathetic/seeing value in that worldview and appreciating the very deliberately considered delivery of all that, not merely getting lost in a world that feels alive, which is very "who cares?" for me.

If it's just some really realistic and intricate NPC that can adapt to any situation, that kind of sounds like a whole lot of extraneous nothing to me.

But cool technology for technology's sake, I guess?

Couldn’t agree more. The more detail they add to this the less real it feels to me ironically. It’s like seeing a magic trick that you already know how is pulled off

I totally understand where you're both coming from but once the technology exists we can see it scaled back and constrained to suit the vision of the creator. An NPC could be given certain parameters to operate in so they don't derail the story but feel more authentic. Some of the quirkiness of games would be lost but I imagine we'd get a new kind of quirkiness to replace it.

 

[Shareefruck]

I totally understand where you're both coming from but once the technology exists we can see it scaled back and constrained to suit the vision of the creator. An NPC could be given certain parameters to operate in so they don't derail the story but feel more authentic. Some of the quirkiness of games would be lost but I imagine we'd get a new kind of quirkiness to replace it.

By "new kind of quirkiness", do you just mean that kind of "lol, AI-generated dialogue is so random and weird" humor that you often see these days? Can't say I find a lot of charm or personality to that.

I could see it constrained to the point where its only function is to slightly phrase the same things differently so as to not feel like repeating dialogue, and for that to be minor enough to be inoffensive, but still, generally, I feel that less creative control tends to result in things being worse, and the benefit of something like that is a superficial thing that doesn't even matter in the first place. So for cases like that where it might not hurt that much, I'm not convinced it'll help to any proportional degree either.

I don't want to dismiss it outright, though, I'm sure there's some creative way to use it that I haven't considered, but the obvious and demonstrated way (as well as anything else I can envision at the moment) sounds pretty lame to me, is all I'm saying.

It's kind of similar to procedurally generated level designs, I suppose, which I'm generally not a huge fan of either. Maybe if something uses it as a base and then hand-crafts over it somehow, like Into the Breach does? Or maybe with very very specific instances where the randomness or verboseness of a character is the shtick they're going for?

I see a lot more value to this kind of technology with service-related industries than I do with creative things, personally.
---
That said, I do think AI voice acting itself (with hand-crafted writing) can be potentially useful, though, for cases where the creator wants to freely add dialogue that the original voice actor can't endlessly perform or whatever.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Do writers even actually earn that much that replacing them with AI would make a sizeable enough dent in costs to be worth it?

I would think the bigger cost savings would be to have AI replace actors, voice actors, camera crew, audio crew, stunt crew, agents for those actors, etc once AI is good enough to render reality and you just give it a script (made by a human or whatever) and prompt it on what is happening in each scene, what the actors are supposed to look/sound like and say, etc.

 

[RandV]

Ehhh... personally, leaning harder into the "immersive/dynamic/simulation-y" side of videogames would probably only make me like the medium less, and I'm not sure I see much value in it, for my tastes. The entire appeal of videogame storytelling to me is an author communicating something they want to express to you that has meaning to them and being empathetic/seeing value in that worldview and appreciating the very deliberately considered delivery of all that, not merely getting lost in a world that feels alive, which is very "who cares?" for me.

If it's just some really realistic and intricate NPC that can adapt to any situation, that kind of sounds like a whole lot of extraneous nothing to me.

But cool technology for technology's sake, I guess?

As you said "for my tastes", this is really just a matter of gameplay preference. For a linear & scripted narrative like Final Fantasy XVI, obviously what we have now works perfectly fine. For a non-linear open game like say Skyrim on the other hand, pre-scripted recordings is extremely limited and the new AI technology could be a huge boon for it.

Both types of games have always co-existed and being able to apply AI to improve the latter doesn't mean it needs to be applied to the former and/or prevent it from being made.

 

[Shareefruck]

As you said "for my tastes", this is really just a matter of gameplay preference. For a linear & scripted narrative like Final Fantasy XVI, obviously what we have now works perfectly fine. For a non-linear open game like say Skyrim on the other hand, pre-scripted recordings is extremely limited and the new AI technology could be a huge boon for it.

Both types of games have always co-existed and being able to apply AI to improve the latter doesn't mean it needs to be applied to the former and/or prevent it from being made.

I can agree that that's the hope, anyways, and then I can safely ignore that other type of game that I never cared for in the first place. Then again, there's always the danger of this kind of thing emboldening that type of gaming mindset that irks me, enough to start infiltrating all types of games and becoming the standard if it takes off, though.

But that's besides the point, I'm just saying that the promise of this doesn't do anything for me, not that it can't for others, shouldn't exist, or is a sign of the gaming apocalypse or anything.

 

[PK Cronin]

By "new kind of quirkiness", do you just mean that kind of "lol, AI-generated dialogue is so random and weird" humor that you often see these days? Can't say I find a lot of charm or personality to that.

I could see it constrained to the point where its only function is to slightly phrase the same things differently so as to not feel like repeating dialogue, and for that to be minor enough to be inoffensive, but still, generally, I feel that less creative control tends to result in things being worse, and the benefit of something like that is a superficial thing that doesn't even matter in the first place. So for cases like that where it might not hurt that much, I'm not convinced it'll help to any proportional degree either.

I don't want to dismiss it outright, though, I'm sure there's some creative way to use it that I haven't considered, but the obvious and demonstrated way (as well as anything else I can envision at the moment) sounds pretty lame to me, is all I'm saying.

It's kind of similar to procedurally generated level designs, I suppose, which I'm generally not a huge fan of either. Maybe if something uses it as a base and then hand-crafts over it somehow, like Into the Breach does? Or maybe with very very specific instances where the randomness or verboseness of a character is the shtick they're going for?

I see a lot more value to this kind of technology with service-related industries than I do with creative things, personally.
---
That said, I do think AI voice acting itself (with hand-crafted writing) can be potentially useful, though, for cases where the creator wants to freely add dialogue that the original voice actor can't endlessly perform or whatever.

I just think there will be unintended moments that will make people laugh or they'll find them endearing.

 

[Osprey]

I just think there will be unintended moments that will make people laugh or they'll find them endearing.

Imagine how many hours we'll waste saying rude or funny things to NPCs just to hear what the AI says back. We'll be able to hit on or insult any character and get a reaction, regardless of whether the developers ever intended it. It'll be glorious.

 

[Hierso]

The thing about studio transparency is going to be a tough to get the studios to agree with. When Alien came out in 1979 it took a while for the sequel to get greenlit because Fox claimed that the movie actually lost money despite having a modest 11m budget compared to the 184m boxoffice. Cooking the books like this has been very common in Hollywood for decades. The producers had to sue Fox over Alien because it was so obvious there was something wrong, and when Fox "recalculated" the movie it made a profit of 4m.

Fox were willing to wait from 79-86 and getting involved in a lawsuit not to show the proper records.

 

[#37]

Meh... I can't find myself really caring for this. Productions and movie stars aren't what they used to be.