Boundary-stretching filmmaker and visual artist Alan Warburton calculates that 99% of his new documentary The Wizard of AI, which was commissioned by the Open Data Institute, was made using generative AI tools. Of course, it’s nowhere near as easy as it might sound.
“People have this idea that you can instantly convert your thoughts into a feature film. In reality, it’s a lot more complicated. You never get what you want. You get pushback from the platform. For example, if I try to get an image of the Chinese president, I can’t because they blocked it. So you have to find all these workarounds to get what you need.”
Alan Warburton
“I’m taking a leaf out of the AI hype playbook there. In truth, there is never going to be a first truly AI-generated documentary because it always will involve labour of some kind. Labour is what makes it watchable.”
Alan Warburton
The film emerged from from over 100GB of AI-generated content plus scraps of archive footage and some original material and took about three weeks to make. It’s estimated that even as little as a year ago it would have taken ten people three months to produce and cost about £50,000.
“There are currently so many different new tools hitting the market and we hear from CEOs and tech evangelists about how revolutionary they are, but we don’t really hear from the people on the other side whose jobs are being impacted, I wanted to try to balance some of that AI hype with a little bit of advocacy for artists.”
Alan Warburton
Read the rest of Jim Jonze‘s interview with Alan Warburton on The Guardian website.
At Mondatum, we’re always interested in getting involved with projects that use the latest machine learning-based creative technologies. For advice, guidance and support, get in touch – contact@mondatum.com.