4 ms·

I’ll be honest, as someone who worked in the film industry for a decade, this thread is depressing. It’s not the technology, it’s all the people in these comme

by dagmx 4y ago

I’ll be honest, as someone who worked in the film industry for a decade, this thread is depressing. It’s not the technology, it’s all the people in these comments who have never worked in the industry clamouring for its demise. One could brush it off as tech heads being over exuberant, but it’s the lack of understanding of how much fine control goes into each and every shot of a film that is depressing. If I, as a creative, made a statement that security or programming is easy while pointing to GitHub Copilot, these same people would get defensive about it because they’d see where the deficiencies are. However because they’re so distanced from the creative process, they don’t see how big a jump it is from where this or stage diffusion is to where even a medium or high tier artist are. You don’t see how much choice goes into each stroke, or wrinkle fold , how much choice goes into subtle movements. More importantly you don’t see the iterations or emotional storytelling choices even in a character drawing or pose. You don’t see the combined decades, even centuries of experience, that go into making the shot and then seeing where you can make it better based on intangibles So yeah this technology is cool, but I think people saying this will disrupt industries with vigour need to immerse themselves first before they comment as outsiders.

colordrops 4y ago
The term "creative" is so pretentious, as if only content generation involves creativity. Your post reminds me of all the photographers that said digital photography would remain niche and never replace film. The current models are toys made by small groups. It's not hard to imagine AI generated film being much more compelling when the entire industry of engineers and "creatives" refine and evolve the ecosystem to take into account subtle strokes, wrinkles, movement, shots etc. And they will, because it will be cheaper, and businesses always go for cheaper.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Why is it any more pretentious than “developer” or “engineer”? Also businesses don’t always go for cheaper. They go for maximum ROI. I’ve worked on tons of marvel films for example, and I quite well know where AI fits and speeds things up. I also know where client studios will pay a pretty penny for more art directed results rather than going for the cheapest vendor.
  - colordrops 4y ago
    "Engineer" usage is quite broad. Developer, less so, but you do see it with housing, device manufacturers, social programs, etc as well, and it's not relegated only to software, despite widespread usage. But you'll never hear anyone call a software engineer or device manufacturer a "creative". Re: cheaper vs ROI, I agree, that was basically the point I was trying to get across. I do understand your point and think it will be a long while before auto-generated content becomes mainstream, but it it's entirely possible and reasonable to expect within our near term lifetimes.
- AndrewUnmuted 4y ago
Etheryte 4y ago
I agree with you, but I wouldn't take it so personally. There have been people claiming machines will make one industry or another obsolete for as long as we've had machines. In a way, sometimes they're right! But this doesn't mean the people are obsolete. Excel never made accountants obsolete, it just made their jobs easier and less tedious. I feel like content generation tools might offer something similar. How nice would it be if you could feed a storyboard into a program and get a low-fi version of the movie out so you can get a live feel for how the draft works. I don't think this takes anything away from the artists, if anything, it's just another tool that might make its way into their toolbox.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Oh I don’t take it personally so much as I find it sad how quickly people in the tech sphere are so quick to extol the virtues of things they have no familiarity with. Every AI art thread is full of people who have clearly never attempted to make professional art commenting as if they’re experts in the domain
  - mclightning 4y ago
    I have been a programmer since I was 13, and now it has been 17 years. I am totally with you on this. I think techies tend to overestimate their experience outside of their immediate area to a degree that I would describe as arrogant. As a person who adopted the tech sphere, as his community, it is extremely sad to start to notice this. Techies tend to be good at tangible, measurable, immediate facts. Not so much when it comes to any social situations, let alone bigger concepts like social evolution of trends and their impacts. Hence you get sorry attempts at apologies from big name tech bros for terrible influences on society.
alok-g 4y ago
In my opinion, this will unfold in multiple ways: * Productivity enhancement tools for those in the film industry like you. * Applications where the AI output is "good enough". I foresee people creating cool illustrations, cartoons, videos for short stories, etc. AI will make for easier/cheaper access to illustrations for people who did not have this earlier. As an example, I am as of now looking for someone who could draw some technical diagrams for my presentation.
hindsightbias 4y ago
We will see a combinatorial explosion of centuries of experience in the hands of any creator. They’ll select the artistic model desired - a Peckinpah-Toland-Dykstra-Woo plug-in will render a good enough masterpiece. Christopher Nolan has already proven we’ll take anything as long as the score is ok - dark screen, mumbling lines, incoherent plotlines…
y04nn 4y ago
What about adding this feature to your creative workflow, for fast prototyping. I've played with DALL-E, I'm not able to paint but I was able to generate good looking paintings and it felt amazing, like getting new power, I felt like Neo when he learn martial art in The Matrix. And I realized that AI may be the new bicycle of the mind, like the personal computers and internet changed our way to work, think and live, AI may now allow us to get new capabilities, extending our limits.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Oh yes definitely they’re great tools in the toolbox. We already use lots of ML powered tooling to speed things up so I have no beef with that. I just don’t agree with the swathes of people saying this replaces artists.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    Ditto, thanks for making a great point. You nailed it just right, because I get the exact same feeling with people from other industries asking me if I am worried yet that copilot-like assistants and visual programming tools will make my job obsolete, and then giving me that "welp, at least you are optimistic" look. If anything, all those copilot-like assistant tools will only make me more efficient, and visual programming, well, it's been discussed plenty of times already. In the near future, for all practical intents and purposes, AI will be just a force multiplier. But a really powerful one.
hackerlight 4y ago
A piece generated by Midjourney beat human artists in a competition judged by human artists. So there's good evidence to think these jobs are going to be replaced to a decent extent. Human artists will still exist, it's just going to be democratized. Sort of like the impact of social media on traditional news journalists.
dogcomplex 4y ago
80-20. As a programmer, Copilot scares and excites me - not because I think it will become better than me at what I do in the short term (though in the long term - probably!) - but because I can already see how a well-structured use of such a tool could do a whole lot (80%?) of what I do. Mostly the easier stuff, mostly the relaxing-yet-tedious-time-filler stuff, but still - most of it. And it also crucially does much of what I did back when I was a junior/intermediate programmer. Once this system is setup right - which capitalism basically guarantees it will - that's gonna suddenly cut quite a lot of my billable hours (80%?) and quite a lot the simpler work typically done by less-experienced programmers (80% of jobs?) Granted, new capabilities like this also will lower the cost of creation, and thus the demands of the market are likely to grow. And it's possible that the few tricky things that AIs aren't so great at might even increase in value, since they will linchpin so much other opportunity. But will many people be replaced? Oh hell yes. And leaping that gap from an amateur relying on AIs to an expert surpassing them is going to be harder and harder, with no market to pay people in the in-between - they'll have to just be relatively-unpaid hobbyists til they develop the drive to jump to expertise. Anyone suggesting AIs will just outright replace the film/photography/programming industry immediately is disingenuous. But even with only the currently known capabilities, it's not hard to imagine that these could eat up a dominant chunk of the work that's currently done, even while it expands the capabilities and thus scope of what will soon be possible. Like digital photography, it's gonna both devour and expand the industry, with a resulting much smaller niche of expert creators and a massive very-accessible dirt-cheap general public access that becomes the majority of the new market. 80-20. Everyone's about to become an artist, director, programmer, and everything else these things can enable, at an effective skill level that we normally consider at least "intermediate". We might still have that expert niche a bit longer... but give it a few more years..? ;)
botencat 4y ago
Best comment I read on HN for a while, and certainly in this thread. Thanks
sswam 4y ago

by dagmx 4y ago

colordrops 4y ago

The term "creative" is so pretentious, as if only content generation involves creativity. Your post reminds me of all the photographers that said digital photography would remain niche and never replace film. The current models are toys made by small groups. It's not hard to imagine AI generated film being much more compelling when the entire industry of engineers and "creatives" refine and evolve the ecosystem to take into account subtle strokes, wrinkles, movement, shots etc. And they will, because it will be cheaper, and businesses always go for cheaper.

dagmx 4y ago
Why is it any more pretentious than “developer” or “engineer”? Also businesses don’t always go for cheaper. They go for maximum ROI. I’ve worked on tons of marvel films for example, and I quite well know where AI fits and speeds things up. I also know where client studios will pay a pretty penny for more art directed results rather than going for the cheapest vendor.
- colordrops 4y ago
  "Engineer" usage is quite broad. Developer, less so, but you do see it with housing, device manufacturers, social programs, etc as well, and it's not relegated only to software, despite widespread usage. But you'll never hear anyone call a software engineer or device manufacturer a "creative". Re: cheaper vs ROI, I agree, that was basically the point I was trying to get across. I do understand your point and think it will be a long while before auto-generated content becomes mainstream, but it it's entirely possible and reasonable to expect within our near term lifetimes.
AndrewUnmuted 4y ago

Etheryte 4y ago

I agree with you, but I wouldn't take it so personally. There have been people claiming machines will make one industry or another obsolete for as long as we've had machines. In a way, sometimes they're right! But this doesn't mean the people are obsolete. Excel never made accountants obsolete, it just made their jobs easier and less tedious. I feel like content generation tools might offer something similar. How nice would it be if you could feed a storyboard into a program and get a low-fi version of the movie out so you can get a live feel for how the draft works. I don't think this takes anything away from the artists, if anything, it's just another tool that might make its way into their toolbox.

dagmx 4y ago
Oh I don’t take it personally so much as I find it sad how quickly people in the tech sphere are so quick to extol the virtues of things they have no familiarity with. Every AI art thread is full of people who have clearly never attempted to make professional art commenting as if they’re experts in the domain
- mclightning 4y ago
  I have been a programmer since I was 13, and now it has been 17 years. I am totally with you on this. I think techies tend to overestimate their experience outside of their immediate area to a degree that I would describe as arrogant. As a person who adopted the tech sphere, as his community, it is extremely sad to start to notice this. Techies tend to be good at tangible, measurable, immediate facts. Not so much when it comes to any social situations, let alone bigger concepts like social evolution of trends and their impacts. Hence you get sorry attempts at apologies from big name tech bros for terrible influences on society.

alok-g 4y ago

In my opinion, this will unfold in multiple ways: * Productivity enhancement tools for those in the film industry like you. * Applications where the AI output is "good enough". I foresee people creating cool illustrations, cartoons, videos for short stories, etc. AI will make for easier/cheaper access to illustrations for people who did not have this earlier. As an example, I am as of now looking for someone who could draw some technical diagrams for my presentation.

hindsightbias 4y ago

We will see a combinatorial explosion of centuries of experience in the hands of any creator. They’ll select the artistic model desired - a Peckinpah-Toland-Dykstra-Woo plug-in will render a good enough masterpiece. Christopher Nolan has already proven we’ll take anything as long as the score is ok - dark screen, mumbling lines, incoherent plotlines…

y04nn 4y ago

What about adding this feature to your creative workflow, for fast prototyping. I've played with DALL-E, I'm not able to paint but I was able to generate good looking paintings and it felt amazing, like getting new power, I felt like Neo when he learn martial art in The Matrix. And I realized that AI may be the new bicycle of the mind, like the personal computers and internet changed our way to work, think and live, AI may now allow us to get new capabilities, extending our limits.

dagmx 4y ago
Oh yes definitely they’re great tools in the toolbox. We already use lots of ML powered tooling to speed things up so I have no beef with that. I just don’t agree with the swathes of people saying this replaces artists.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Ditto, thanks for making a great point. You nailed it just right, because I get the exact same feeling with people from other industries asking me if I am worried yet that copilot-like assistants and visual programming tools will make my job obsolete, and then giving me that "welp, at least you are optimistic" look. If anything, all those copilot-like assistant tools will only make me more efficient, and visual programming, well, it's been discussed plenty of times already. In the near future, for all practical intents and purposes, AI will be just a force multiplier. But a really powerful one.

hackerlight 4y ago

A piece generated by Midjourney beat human artists in a competition judged by human artists. So there's good evidence to think these jobs are going to be replaced to a decent extent. Human artists will still exist, it's just going to be democratized. Sort of like the impact of social media on traditional news journalists.

dogcomplex 4y ago

80-20. As a programmer, Copilot scares and excites me - not because I think it will become better than me at what I do in the short term (though in the long term - probably!) - but because I can already see how a well-structured use of such a tool could do a whole lot (80%?) of what I do. Mostly the easier stuff, mostly the relaxing-yet-tedious-time-filler stuff, but still - most of it. And it also crucially does much of what I did back when I was a junior/intermediate programmer. Once this system is setup right - which capitalism basically guarantees it will - that's gonna suddenly cut quite a lot of my billable hours (80%?) and quite a lot the simpler work typically done by less-experienced programmers (80% of jobs?) Granted, new capabilities like this also will lower the cost of creation, and thus the demands of the market are likely to grow. And it's possible that the few tricky things that AIs aren't so great at might even increase in value, since they will linchpin so much other opportunity. But will many people be replaced? Oh hell yes. And leaping that gap from an amateur relying on AIs to an expert surpassing them is going to be harder and harder, with no market to pay people in the in-between - they'll have to just be relatively-unpaid hobbyists til they develop the drive to jump to expertise. Anyone suggesting AIs will just outright replace the film/photography/programming industry immediately is disingenuous. But even with only the currently known capabilities, it's not hard to imagine that these could eat up a dominant chunk of the work that's currently done, even while it expands the capabilities and thus scope of what will soon be possible. Like digital photography, it's gonna both devour and expand the industry, with a resulting much smaller niche of expert creators and a massive very-accessible dirt-cheap general public access that becomes the majority of the new market. 80-20. Everyone's about to become an artist, director, programmer, and everything else these things can enable, at an effective skill level that we normally consider at least "intermediate". We might still have that expert niche a bit longer... but give it a few more years..? ;)

botencat 4y ago

Best comment I read on HN for a while, and certainly in this thread. Thanks

sswam 4y ago