Film/video editing isn't exactly known as the industry where everybody loves their job and doesn't want to kill themselves.
I made a twitter thread[1] with weird metal cybertrucks using Midjourney a couple days ago. I personally enjoyed the process and do not have the talent nor the time to do that without generative AI. There are people who do have that talent, but honestly I doubt anyone else would've put in the time.
I think you might have it a little backwards. For most people, the fun part is "making a movie", not "watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage picking between 10 different shots". That's the drudgery, and that's the part generative AI can eliminate.
I've made my living that way and absolutely loved it. What I did not love (and partly why I left the industry) was the difficulty of getting paid decently at the bottom tier; I had the bad timing to come in right as the bottom was beginning to fall out of the indie market and making straight-to-video b-movies 3 or 4 times a year ceased to be a viable business model.
I think you might have it a little backwards. For most people, the fun part is "making a movie", not "watching hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage picking between 10 different shots". That's the drudgery, and that's the part generative AI can eliminate.
No, that's the craft, and solving problems where the continuity doesn't line up, or production had to drop shots, or the story as shot and written sucks in some way, is where the art comes in.
The drudgery is things like ingesting all the material, sorting it into bins, lining up slate cues, dealing with timecode errors, rendering schedules, working your way through long lists of deliverables and so on. You have literally confused the logistics part with the creative act.
I have not confused it, I'm simplifying to make a point. Yes, of course there are many people who love the art of editing, or taking the right shot, or acting, or directing, or special effects, or all of the 100s of things that go into making a movie or TV show or other video.
But many of those things involve a lot of drudgery, and the drudgery is what these "AI" solutions are best at. If you want to go above and beyond and craft the perfect shot, that opportunity would still be available to you. Why would it not?
When we invented machines that make clothes, did that reduce the number of jobs in the clothing industry? When we got better and better at it, did that make fashion worse? No. If you want a machine made suit for $50, you can find one. If you want a handmade suit for $5000, you can find one.
Tech like this expands opportunities, it does not eliminate them. If and when it gets to the point where Sora is better at making videos than a human in every conceivable dimension, then we can have this discussion and bemoan our loss. But we're not even close to that point.
I don't buy this simplification claim; you literally described the core skillset as drudgery. Put another way, what parts of film editing do you not consider drudgery? Could it be that you tried it previously and just didn't really like it?
And with your suit example, you're looking at it from the point of view of consumer choice (which is great) without really looking at the question of of how people in the clothing/textile industry are affected. It's difficult to find longitudinal data at the global level, but we can look at the impact of previous innovations (from outsourcing to manufacturing technology) on the US clothing market; employment there has fallen by nearly 90% over 30 years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/242729/number-of-employe...
The usual response to observations like this is 'well who wants to work in the clothing industry, those people are now free to do other things, great opportunity for people in other parts of the world etc.', but the the constant drive to lower prices by cutting labor costs or quality has big negative externalities. Lots of people that used to make a living thanks to their skill with a sewing machine, at least in the US, are no longer able to monetize that and had to switch to something else; chances they were less skilled at that other thing (or they'd have been doing it instead) and so suffered an economic loss while that transition was forced upon them.
The "someone must have lost out economically" argument falls fairly hollow when you actually look at the stats and see that the vast, vast majority of people end up better economically when we develop technology and increase efficiency.
Luddism is never the answer.
Scratch that; luddism is the answer for people who don't actually care about humanity as a whole (but frequently pretend they do) and just want their hobby or their job or their neighborhood to stay the same and for everyone else to stop ruining things. But for the rest of the world, increasing technological efficiency means more people get more things for less. This is good actually.
This reduces filmmaking to only editing. Filmmakers won't be choosing between 10 different shots but instead between 10 different prompts and dozens of randomized outputs of those prompts, and then splicing them together to make the final output.
Prompts are just the starting point. Take image generation for example and the rise of ComfyUI and ControlNet, with complex node based workflows allowing for even more creative control. https://www.google.com/search?q=comfyui+workflows&tbm=isch
I see these AI models as lowering the barrier to entry, while giving more power to the users that choose to explore that direction.
All that amounts to just more complex ways of nudging the prompt, because that prompt is all an LLM can "comprehend." You still have no actual creative control, the black box is still doing everything. You didn't clear the barrier to entry, you just stole the valor of real artists.
So wrong. There are some great modern artists in the AI space now who are using the advanced AI tools to advance their craft.. look at eclectic method before AI and look at how he evolving artistically with AI
Shadiversity made the same class of attribution error. AI users aren't evolving artistically, the software they are using to simulate art is improving over time. They are not creators, they are consumers.
Photographers have a great deal of creative control. Put the same camera in your hands versus a professional and you will get different results even with the same subject. You taking a snapshot in the woods are not Ansel Adams, nor are you taking a selfie Annie Leibovitz. The skill and artistic intent of the human being using the tool matters.
Meanwhile with AI, given the same model and inputs - including a prompt which may include the names of specific artists "in the style of x" - one can reproduce mathematically equivalent results, regardless of the person using it. If one can perfectly replicate the work by simply replicating the tools, then the human using the tool adds nothing of unique personal value to the end result. Even if one were to concede that AI generated content were art, it still wouldn't be the art of the user, it would be the art of the model.
It takes different skills depending on how deep you want to go. Try setting up your own video creating lab using stable diffusion to generate frames. It can make AI videos, you also need to have a lot of Linux dev op skills and python skills..
I did in fact make the twitter thread. The images I used in said thread were generated using midjourney, which I stated here and in the thread (which I made, by tweeting).
I appreciate you being straight up about it. I wasn’t trying to be harsh, and I apologize for not being clear. I find the terminology used when using ai to create things interesting. “I wrote this using X” versus the never used “I instructed X to write this for me”.
Are you honestly comparing taking a photograph (and "properly", i.e. thinking about lighting and composition and such, versus firing off a snapshot on your phone) with typing "Make me a picture of Trump riding a dragon"?
Are you genuinely equating the profound and labor-intensive process of painting, with its meticulous brushstrokes, profound understanding of lighting, composition, and the tactile relationship between artist and canvas, to the trivial button pressing of photography?
Disclaimer: This post was generated using an llm guided by a human who couldn't be bothered explaining why you're wrong.
This comparison doesn't work because when you talk about photography, you say you need to do it "properly", but you don't apply that same logic to prompt crafting. Typing "Make me a picture of Trump riding a dragon" is not "proper" use of generative AI.
I became a software engineer because I enjoy coding. If you told me software will now be written by simply describing it to a computer, I would quit because that sounds like a fucking terrible way to spend your life. I assume that video editing and post production is the same: a creative problem that is enjoyable to solve in itself. When you remove any difficulty or real work from the equation, you probably get a lot of bad, meaningless content and displaced people without marketable skills
It's not that long ago in human history that basically none of the jobs we do now existed. So it is kind of myopic to think that any current career is a calling. Art can become a craft again, not a career. There is nothing wrong with that.
The issue is that those jobs that got automated to "become a craft again" have mostly vanished, except for high-end stuff. Some examples: shoe making, artisan furniture, tailors, watchmakers. Unless you are the best of the best these are hobbies now not something you make money from.
Nowadays most people make money in bleak half-automated jobs (e.g. construction, factory workers) or in white collar jobs sitting in front of a computer in some cubicle doing some mind numbing task for a megacorp.
I'm usually hyped about technological advancement, but very bleak about AI. I think it will just bring more sublte propaganda for state actors, more subtle advertising for megacorps, the dieing of creative jobs like graphic artists or actors is just a sad sideeffect (these will still exist, but only as high end -- we will always have real AAA actors, but the days of extras on movie sets are counted -- lots of the Hollywood protests were because studios started doing contracts for noname actors that stated that the studio will regain rights of the actor's digital likeness)
When is a time in history when everyone had really great jobs? Before the industrial revolution, you had most people doing subsistence farming. During the industrial revolution, you had 14 hour a day exploited laborers working in factories. Maybe there was a brief period after World War II where you had a large middle class with stable careers and affordable housing. That's not the norm for the millions of years of history of human evolution.
To me, this reflects a perfectionist mindset. Life is better today for billions of people than it has been at any other point in the history of the human species. If you consider it a "bug" that we don't live in some sort of utopia where everyone's dreams are fulfilled, maybe you need to change your expectations and view things in a larger historical perspective.
It is perfectly possible to see that we live in the best time humanity has ever lived in and be concerned that we’re are at risk of regressing. Especially with people claiming that any regression is simply not viewing things in a larger historical perspective.
Nope. People are concerned. There has been a million times when people recklessly and blindly did things without carefully examining the consequences leading to terrible results and human suffering. Some examples: DDT, Iraqi war, fast fashion, early usage of radioactive materials as medicine, asbestos, etc
> Some examples: shoe making, artisan furniture, tailors, watchmakers.
> Nowadays most people make money in bleak half-automated jobs (e.g. construction, factory workers) or in white collar jobs sitting in front of a computer in some cubicle doing some mind numbing task for a megacorp.
And all the while they enjoy abundance of shoes, furniture, clothes and watches with value/price ratio absurdly high by standards of most of human history.
Just wanna point out that making stuff is different from having stuff. Making your shoe is much different from buying a Nike from the store (and I don't make shoes ;) ).
The craft is an activity, kind of an art by itself. Many find it enjoyable.
It's a luxury journey that most people around the world simply can't afford. Modern world is a marvel because it feeds and clothes them. If they had to pay a market rate to the artisanal shoemaker, they would walk barefoot.
There's nothing "bleak" about building stuff with your hands. Many building trades workers like what they do. And they generally appreciate technology improvements because those tend to make the work safer and less physically demanding.
This sounds nice, but having worked with many artists in the past a lot of them do it because they're good at it, it's enjoyable enough, and it pays their bills so they can eat.
Telling them, "You're now free to make the art you really wanted to make!" doesn't bring much comfort when you're taking away their ability to put food on the table.
Exactly, there are lot of arm chair experts in the forum today who have no clue about the reality of the industry, people do it because they are passionate about it and devote thier whole life to get good at it, this is just taking food from thier mouth.
It takes a lot of time to develop that craft, which won't be available to you if you have to do drudgery to keep a roof over your head. You're arguing for art to be at best a hobby, and full-time pursuit of it to be limited to rich kids.
Also I take issue with your argument about 'none of the jobs we do now' existing through most of history. Farming, construction, fighting, bookkeeping, cooking, transport, security are all jobs that have been around as long as people have lived in settlements.
Sure, you could point to the long history of nomadic hunting and gathering prior to that, but that's like expanding your argument back to the origin of cellular life or forward to the heat death of the universe in order to make your interlocutor's arguments look insignificant on a cosmic scale. It's not a helpful contribution to addressing the real challenges of the present.
There’s also loads artists that do web and graphic design, make videos for product demos, ad campaigns, and so on. It’s perhaps not the purest form of art, but it is one way in which artists can apply their craft and still put a roof over their heads. A lot of these AI tools seems squarely aimed at eliminating those positions.
For what it’s worth, I think we’re going to see a slide in quality. Maybe there will be a niche for some. But, I think companies will settle for 70% quality if it means eliminating 100% of a full-time position.
How long of a time are we talking about here? It was a lot easier to make a modest but steady living in the arts 30 or even 15 years ago. It's probably easier to have a breakout hit today on YouTube or Tiktok and maybe make a lot of money fast, but not to making a living consistently without sweatshopping content or being extremely personally attractive or similar.
Also not that long ago electricity and clean drinking water weren't a thing. The fact that people can make a career as an artist now, and couldn't before, is something I'd consider an advancement! "Nothing wrong with that" is a conclusion that simply doesn't follow from the rest of your post.
Yes, much in the same way that hiring someone to cater a dinner party makes me a great chef.
(edit to give some body to my comment above:
Hosting a great dinner party is hard work and requires coordination between food, decor, seasonality, people attending, etc. It is akin to a director coordinating the parts of a film. So I do think hosting a good dinner party can count as artistic expression.
I don't know the parent comment's intended reading, but I was reacting to the idea that typing a Sora prompt makes someone a good artist. If the parent means instead that AI allows people to coordinate multiple media in a broader expression that was not possible otherwise, then I fully agree.
So everyone at your dinner party gets to eat "better" food? Unless the point of the party was for you to cook then it's an improved experience.
GenAI is a tool that lets creators of one medium expand to other mediums without much effort. Like having transcripts auto-generated for a visual podcast, just in the other direction. Low budget (or amateur) poems/songs can turn into short videos; or replace generic album art with better quality generic album art.
The draw will be the primary medium, the rest will just be an extra bonus.
It's the samr discussion we had long ago when digital cameras cane abouut and image editing became easy and commonplace. Yes, there is a lot of badly edited stuff around now. For example, most meme images on social media are made by putting new captions on old content, and maybe changing a few details about the rest of the image. No, photographers didn't become obsolete. They professionalized.
When cameras were harder to use, you had national geographic taking you all over the world to photograph different locations because only you and a handful of people knew how to take a picture properly.
Now you just hire a local person with a camera to go take the picture you want since it’s much easier to use a camera.
You had people doing photography for ads, now stock photography will do for most brands.
You had people buy high school portraits, I am not sure if people buy those anymore, but a picture of what you looked like in high school is worth a lot less when you can take a selfie every other day.
I'd argue that it allowed people that lacked the creative confidence to create original art, to now have the confidence to make generic art. I don't mean this in a deeply negative way. I just think that people's view of "good art" is so narrow.
AI allows mediocre people to make an endless stream of mediocre, dull, aseptic, sterile content. FTFY.
I don't see it as a negative per se, the thing is most people won't have the decency to keep all that shit for themselves and, say, share just the best 1% they produce. They will flood their social networks and the rest of us will have to sweep through the crap for our daily dose of internet memes.
My point is that I am an aspiring artist, who is waiting tables and I invest all my spare cash and time to get better at my craft and hopefully allow my craft to support me financially.
Any hope of financial benefit coming from my craft is quickly taken away by Dall-e. This has nothing to do with how much I enjoy my art.
There will always be things humans can do that AI cannot. And if there ever comes a point when that's not the case, there will be no need to distinguish the two.
What does “better” mean in this context? The camera was a better at capturing realism than any painter who ever lived. While we still have people who paint in that style, there aren’t nearly as many, and art took new shapes and forms.
Most “good” art isn’t just what you see, it’s also the story behind it. Why was it made? What is the story of the artist? What does it make you feel?
AI might allow more people to tell some of those stories they may have lacked the raw skills to tell before. And for those who have the skills, they can make exactly what they envision, without being limited by some of the randomness in the AI. I think there will always be a place for that, and at the top of the market, that’s what people want.
This use case is a direct threat to actors when AI can create realistic footage with human and non human subjects, add to this generated speech, you have totally replaced hiring actors and killed thier employability.
Sorry, that's like claiming that the cinema has killed the theater, or that computer games have killed movies. Or that photorealistic 3D games have killed 2D slider games.
Blockbuster movies depend to a large extent on the pedigree and abilities of their cast. For the big studios, these models are therefore quite useless apart from bringing dead actors alive again. If publishing material created from living actors without isn't illegal already, in a few years it will be.
This might actually save the movie industry and force it to improve the quality of its output. There will be a huge indy scene of movie makers using models that can only compete via the content of the movies they produce. The realism of the characters won't matter because everyone can have those now. The current big studios will be forced to make very good use of human actors to compete with them though, and become innovative again.
Your analogy doesn't quite make sense. The reality of the TV/Film production is that most of what we watch are created by big production houses and not indie creators. These companies will do whatever it takes to reduce thier costs, biggest of that is salary for hundreds of staff that they currently employ.
Now with such AI tools, you can write scripts, create art work, crate footage, record voice overs and dialogues. All of this means less need for labor - creative that will not only cause huge employment in the sector but also lead to protests, it already happened last year in Hollywood, it's going to get louder and louder unless we put regulations to prevent job disruptions.
But those tools can also be used by the very employees that got laid off. They be would become part of the indie scene. The film studios will be left with their trademark portfolio that will be milked for profit. We might see an Avenger movie every month. There will be an absolute glut of such productions, to the point that people might not be interested in it anymore. Can't tell what happens next. We might lose ourselves in the holodeck, or we might again appreciate media produced with more human touch.
I like going to theater or opera. Even for famous pieces, the performance will be slightly different and unique every time. Imperfect, but with changing and nevertheless accomplished actors, singers, musicians, and dancers. Many people feel the same and that's why they watch live performances of singers, bands, and DJs.
Most likely market will be consolidated by existing popular and prescient actors who will add IP protections to their AI likeness and benefit from it. Especially after a certain age
>We are giving the enjoyable parts of life to a computer. And we are left with the drudgery.
Yesterday I asked a local llm to write a python script to have a several multimodal llms rank 50,000 images generated by a stable diffusion model. I then used those images to train a new checkpoint for the model and can now repeat the process ad infinitum.
In the olden days of 2020 I would have had to hire 5000 people each working for a day to do the same.
> We are giving the enjoyable parts of life to a computer
Are we though? People still do plenty of things out of interest or hobby, despite it being fully automatable?
e.g. blacksmithing or making certain homemade things?
While these are non digital things, why can't we apply the same thing here?
Some people still hand write assembly out of the novelety and interest of it. Despite there being better tools or arguably better ways of writing code.
There is no moat. This will all be commonplace for everyone soon, including with a rich open source community.
OpenAI won't let you do nudity or pop culture, but you can bet your uncle that models better than "Sora" will be doing this in just a few months.
> We are giving the enjoyable parts of life to a computer. And we are left with the drudgery.
No. This means that the tens of thousands of people working in entertainment building other people's visions can now be their own writers, actors, and directors.
This is a collapse of the Hollywood studio system and the beginnings of a Cambrian explosion of individual creators.
I’m sure some people would be more ok to work a shitty job with the hope that they might make it as an artist.
Now that it’s becoming more and more obvious they will not be an artist that’s better than AI, what do they have left to hope for ?