The move is part of what is sure to be a growing trend of content brands, from film studios to individual journalists, building bespoke AI tools they can draw from to utilize particular styles as opposed to the kitchen-sink models as currently designed. Such efforts allow for more customized outputs, though skeptics wonder if they’ll contain sufficient data to be as useful as traditional generation models.
In a social post Belsky sought to argue for this customized approach. “There are better uses of storytelling tech to discover, ones that preserve creative control and support creative risk-taking,” he wrote, seeming to contrast his approach with a more catch-all video-general model. “These workflows are TBD, but excited for our Labs team to work w/ DeepMind team in this research partnership. Shared curiosities, and asking the right questions, lead us to the better way.”
He said the studio was already prototyping a storyboard tool, following on the heels of Martin Scorsese announcing several weeks ago that he was doing the same thing. Storyboarding is becoming an increasingly popular use case for AI, allowing creatives to pitch and iterate while still keeping consumer releases human-led.
Still, the partnership is sure to accelerate the advent of AI into movies and television we watch, while also deepening a debate about how, or if, directors, should use these weighted models as part of their workflow. Some noted auteurs have taken a decided no to that stance, but a growing group of A-listers seem at least willing to entertain it.
The announcement fits A24’s brand as a forward-looking entertainment company while also figuring in interestingly to the biggest theatrical success in its history, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, which came out last month. The film was of course directed by a filmmaker who honed his craft and built an audience on a Google/YouTube platform, while influencers themselves are expected to use more AI tools in the coming year.
Parsons, however, has expressed far more criticism for AI himself, telling The Australian recently that “If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.””