Netflix used generative AI in an original, scripted series that debuted this year, it revealed this week. Producers used the technology to create a scene in which a building collapses, hinting at the growing use of generative AI in entertainment.
During a call with investors yesterday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos revealed that Netflix’s Argentine show The Eternaut, which premiered in April, is "the very first GenAI final footage to appear on screen in a Netflix, Inc. original series or film.” Sarandos further explained, per a transcript of the call, saying:
The creators wanted to show a building collapsing in Buenos Aires. So our iLine team, [which is the production innovation group inside the visual effects house at Netflix effects studio Scanline], partnered with their creative team using AI-powered tools. … And in fact, that VFX sequence was completed 10 times faster than it could have been completed with visual, traditional VFX tools and workflows. And, also, the cost of it would just not have been feasible for a show in that budget.
Sarandos claimed that viewers have been “thrilled with the results”; although that likely has much to do with how the rest of the series, based on a comic, plays out, not just one, AI-crafted scene.
This AI approach will go the same way as computer generated special effects went. The visuals will be “glorious” and the reliance on a true story will suffer. Mass entertainment will continue to become shallower than a toddler wading pool.
This is why I’m back to only reading books for imaginative fantasy. My imagination is the only generative intelligence I need. I refuse to hand over my intellectual sovereignty to the beast.
VFX can be amazing in bringing something to life that words alone can’t convey.
The main issue here is that you need a cohesive story that would work without VFX, with the latter being additive instead of a replacement for plot. Whether it’s CGI or anything else, the storyline still rules.
Let’s go back some 40 years, to the Cliffs of Insanity scene in The Princess Bride (by S. Morganstern) – the effects weren’t great, but no one fucking noticed because the story itself was compelling.
Exactly so. But the “creatives” in mass media are interested in money, not magic.
Made today, Falk would have cut in with “Westley doesn’t fall at this time.”