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That's like saying kids at home will be making enterprise software once code generation tools become smooth enough. ChatGPT won't replace novelists, either, no

That's like saying kids at home will be making enterprise software once code generation tools become smooth enough. ChatGPT won't replace novelists, either, no matter how solid its grammar gets. People who don't mind having output that's an aesthetic amalgam of whatever it has already ingested won't mind using these sorts of tools to generate work. For a movie studio that lives and dies on presenting imagery so precisely and thoughtfully crafted that it leaves a lasting impression for decades, I doubt it will be anything more than a tool in the toolkit to smooth things along for the people who've made careers figuring out how to do that. I think there's two reasons this sort of thinking is so prevelant. A) Since developers are only really exposed to the tools-end of other people's professions, they tend to forget that the most important component is the brain that's dreaming up the imagery and ideas to begin with. Art school or learning to be an artist is a lot more about thinking, ideas, analyzing, interpreting, and honing your eye than about using tools... people without those skills who can use amazing generative tools will make smooth, believable looking garbage in no time flat from the comfort of their own living rooms. Great. B) Most people, especially those from primarily STEM backgrounds, don't really understand what art communicates beyond what it physically represents and maybe some intangible vibe or mood. Someone who really knows what they're talking about would probably take longer to accurately describe an existing artistic image than would be reasonable to feed to a prompt. Once again, that will be fine for a lot of people-- even small game studios, for example, that need to generate assets for their 3rd mobile release this month, but it's got miiiiles to go before it's making a movie scene or key game moment that people will remember for decades.

ttjjtt 4y ago
There are so many well described points in this post. Thank you.
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  Thank you.
satvikpendem 4y ago
> For a movie studio that lives and dies on presenting imagery so precisely and thoughtfully crafted that it leaves a lasting impression for decades I'd hope so, but there are a lot of films churning out the next Michael Bay Transformers-type movie which also get the vast majority of VFX work and make the most revenue that upending the VFX industry might remove a lot of jobs.
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  You again vastly underestimate the amount of work that goes into the intellectual and artistic components of VFX, and vastly underestimate what the artistic components require of someone. Those movies are nearly entirely VFX. 50% of the budget in some cases. That's not because the tools are expensive or the pieces just take a long time to build-- it's repeatedly iterating and putting things in context to figure out what should be there. No matter how fast those iterations get, that's just not something machines will be able to do themselves. Ever. No machine will be able to say "this is the most emotionally impactful texture and drape for that superhero's cape in this scene." They might be able to give you a thousand different versions of it, but someone still has to look at all of that and respond to it. Replicants from Blade Runner couldn't do that and to say we're a ways off from that is a pretty huge understatement.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    > No matter how fast those iterations get, that's just not something machines will be able to do themselves. Ever. Why do people say stuff like this? How do you know what machines will ever be able to do, can you tell the future? And more fundamentally, do you believe humans are more than a biological machine? If you don't (and thus aren't a physicalist) then sure, you can make statements like this because you'd believe that humans have something fundamentally different that no machine can replicate, but if you do think so, you'd believe that anything humans can do, machines will eventually be able to do, even if it takes a long time.
    - CyberDildonics 4y ago

ttjjtt 4y ago

There are so many well described points in this post. Thank you.

DrewADesign 4y ago
Thank you.

satvikpendem 4y ago

> For a movie studio that lives and dies on presenting imagery so precisely and thoughtfully crafted that it leaves a lasting impression for decades I'd hope so, but there are a lot of films churning out the next Michael Bay Transformers-type movie which also get the vast majority of VFX work and make the most revenue that upending the VFX industry might remove a lot of jobs.

DrewADesign 4y ago
You again vastly underestimate the amount of work that goes into the intellectual and artistic components of VFX, and vastly underestimate what the artistic components require of someone. Those movies are nearly entirely VFX. 50% of the budget in some cases. That's not because the tools are expensive or the pieces just take a long time to build-- it's repeatedly iterating and putting things in context to figure out what should be there. No matter how fast those iterations get, that's just not something machines will be able to do themselves. Ever. No machine will be able to say "this is the most emotionally impactful texture and drape for that superhero's cape in this scene." They might be able to give you a thousand different versions of it, but someone still has to look at all of that and respond to it. Replicants from Blade Runner couldn't do that and to say we're a ways off from that is a pretty huge understatement.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  > No matter how fast those iterations get, that's just not something machines will be able to do themselves. Ever. Why do people say stuff like this? How do you know what machines will ever be able to do, can you tell the future? And more fundamentally, do you believe humans are more than a biological machine? If you don't (and thus aren't a physicalist) then sure, you can make statements like this because you'd believe that humans have something fundamentally different that no machine can replicate, but if you do think so, you'd believe that anything humans can do, machines will eventually be able to do, even if it takes a long time.
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago