4 ms·

I think I would buy "yes" shares in a Polymarket event that predicts a motion picture created by a single person grossing more than $100M by 2027.

kevingadd 2y ago
I think the obstacles there are distribution and IP rights. I think we will see content like that find widespread appeal and success but actually turning it into $100m in revenue requires having the copyright (at present, not possible for AI-generated content) and being able to convince a distributor to invest in it. Those both seem like really tough things to solve.
- delichon 2y ago
  Purely AI-generated content -- with no human authorship -- is not eligible for US copyright protection. However if a human contributes meaningfully to the final output (editing, selection, arrangement, etc.) it becomes eligible. See Thaler v. Perlmutter (2023).
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    >is not eligible for US copyright protection Once industry adopts AI generation, which it will, a new law will be quickly signed. In a way, not allowing copyright of AI material really only serves a tiny group of people. "We want to empower everyone to bring their ideas to market, not just those with the ability to draw them" is not a particularly evil or amoral sentiment.
    - gh0stcat 2y ago
      As if the ability is not attainable, people want to be put on top of the mountain without any effort.
      - Workaccount2 2y ago
        When society climbs mountains, they eventually build elevators. Its a core functionality and the reason why we are so advanced. Just take a moment to realize how many peaks you already sit on top of, without even thinking about. Your home is overflowing with cheap wares from mountains ascended ages ago that you now have "no effort" access to.
- r58lf 2y ago
  Yeah, people underestimate how hard it is to get a movie into a theatre AND get people to pay for a ticket. Hollywood can barely get any well made movies past $100 million these days unless it's based on some well known franchise (minecraft, Captain America, Snow White) or it has some well known actor.
NitpickLawyer 2y ago
I think you might need qualifiers on that. Are we talking an unknown / unrelated person living in the proverbial basement, or are we talking a famous movie director? I could see Spielberg or Cameron managing to make something like that happen on their name + AI alone. If we're talking regular people, the best chance would be someone like Andy Weir, blogging their way to a successful book, and working on the side on a video project. I wouldn't be surprised if something along these lines happens sooner or later.
xnx 2y ago
We've got a pretty good datapoint along that trajectory with Flow. Almost entirely one person and has grossed $36 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)
- jsheard 2y ago
  It was a small team for sure but not a one man show, there are 22 credits for the animation work alone, plus 13 more for sound and music, not counting the director.
  - xnx 2y ago
    > Almost entirely one person It is closer to one than number the staff of other animated films. It's a good data point to keep in mind as AI tools enable even smaller teams to do more.
- karolist 2y ago
  Went to the cinema with my kids for the 2nd time to watch this one, was pleasantly surprised to read this movie was done using Blender, highly recommended.
- mattfrommars 2y ago
  One person? What do you mean? It literally says in the wiki more than one. This isn't solo dev game project.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
silksowed 2y ago
very excited to play around. will be attempting to see if i can get character coherence between runs. the issue with the 8s limit is its hard to stitch them together if characters are not consistent. good for short form distribution but not youtube mini series or eventual movies. another comment about IP license is indeed an issue but its why i am looking towards classical works beyond their copyright dates. my goal is to eventually work from short form, to youtube to eventual short films. tools are limited in their current form but the future is promising if i get started now.
jddj 2y ago
I came to the same sort of conclusion when watching Kitsune, which I think was one person and VEO https://vimeo.com/1047370252 https://vimeo.com/1047370252 Granted, 5 minutes isn't 1h30 but it's not a million miles away either.
- xrd 2y ago
  It's fantastic. I just watched Kitsune, thanks for sharing. It reminds me why Flow was so good. Flow was great because I could see the shader artifacts. It was the opposite of a Disney model, it was not polished and perfect. That's why I loved it. Disney would never do a movie with a plot like Flow. They would write and rewrite it and it would be a perfect example of humanity, but totally devoid of the humanity behind it. It is ironic that this new coming wave of AI generated (or AI assisted) films feel like they have more human craftmanship than Disney films, when honestly it is the opposite. Disney has incredible and brilliant animators, but that is all crushed behind the merchandising and gross behemoth of the Disney corporation. I used to love seeing independent films. Those art house theaters really only exist in places like Portland, OR these days. But, I'm excited about the next wave of film because it'll permit small storytelling, and that's going to be great.
- gh0stcat 2y ago
  This actually so amateurish and cliche it's painful. The fact people like this shows that art never had a chance when the masses have no taste. This makes me depressed for artists and the future.
  - jddj 2y ago
    It won't be novel the 100th or 1000th or millionth time, and standards will rise accordingly. But for now it is, or at least 2 months ago it was. Someone created that relatively coherent 5min animated story largely by communicating with a computer in natural language. The masses have had plenty worse
  - switchbak 2y ago
    Well sure, but we're in the early stages here smashing bones together. When a few million bored teenagers bang at this, I bet you'll see perspectives you've never thought of. It'd be like having someone in the 1920's listen to Nirvana - just a completely different experience. Given the dreck coming out of Hollywood, I'm open to that, even if other folks have to wade through a million shitty videos for me to get it.
tracerbulletx 2y ago
Everyone keeps ignoring supply and demand when talking about the impacts of AI. Let's just assume it really gets so good you can do this and it doesn't suck. Yes the costs will get so low that there will be almost no barrier to making content but if there is no barrier to making content, the ROI will be massive, and so everyone will be doing it, you can more or less have the exact movie you want in your head on demand, and even if you want a bespoke movie from an artist with great taste and a point of view there will be 10,000 of them every year.
- GloamingNiblets 2y ago
  A good parallel is writing books. Books can cost little to write and publish, but their success is Pareto distributed, not Normally distributed.
  - mlboss 2y ago
    Writing book is really expensive. You have to think and put words on paper that engages the read. It is really hard.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  Most of us have no idea what movies we want. The most delightful films are a total surprise (other than the drones who watch every Marvel film of course).
- nmilo 2y ago
  It will be like YouTube. Distribution will be hard and most of it will be slop but every now and then you’ll discover something so good and so creative and it couldn’t have possibly existed before that it makes the whole experience worth it. The best creative works are led by one person and I’m excited to see what people can come up with.
- yorwba 2y ago
  And one of those 10,000 will have a multimillion marketing budget and people are talking about it online and remixing it into memes and it will make a lot more money than the second-most popular movie, even though there's no discernable quality difference.
colesantiago 2y ago
My prediction is on track to this and this was made only 4 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368951
- delichon 2y ago
  There may be a solo (not Han) movie good enough to compete in five years, but I doubt that Academy voters will be that welcoming of the tech that can obliterate most of their jobs by then.
  - kridsdale1 2y ago
    Based on the training data being pop culture, we may even get a good Han Solo movie from tools like this. Starring young Ford.
  - switchbak 2y ago
    If AI can fix the terrible ending that was Game of Thrones, then perhaps it won't have been a complete waste after all.
    - anshumankmr 2y ago
      What ending for Game of Thrones? Wasn't it cancelled after Season 6?
SirMaster 2y ago
Well text generation is way ahead of video generation. Have we seen anyone create something like a best selling or high grossing novel with an LLM yet?
- delichon 2y ago
  That's why going from one person to zero persons will be so hard. But one Kubrick/Carmack and a bunch of AI could make a compelling movie now.
bookofjoe 2y ago
Me too. Sam Altman recently predicted that we will see a one-person unicorn company in the near future.
hammock 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film) $36 million dollars and an Academy Award. A l m o s t done by just one person. And entirely with open source software. The guy's previous movie was a true one-man show but didn't really get screenings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_(2019_film)
- farzd 2y ago
  `The movie "Flow" cost approximately $3.7 million to $4 million to produce` - big budget for almost one person.
- machomaster 2y ago
  Not true. Dozens of people participated in creating this movie.
baxtr 2y ago
I can’t exactly say why, but I find this "single person $1B company" meme utterly annoying.
tclancy 2y ago
But will it cost less than $100M to render?

kevingadd 2y ago

I think the obstacles there are distribution and IP rights. I think we will see content like that find widespread appeal and success but actually turning it into $100m in revenue requires having the copyright (at present, not possible for AI-generated content) and being able to convince a distributor to invest in it. Those both seem like really tough things to solve.

delichon 2y ago
Purely AI-generated content -- with no human authorship -- is not eligible for US copyright protection. However if a human contributes meaningfully to the final output (editing, selection, arrangement, etc.) it becomes eligible. See Thaler v. Perlmutter (2023).
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  >is not eligible for US copyright protection Once industry adopts AI generation, which it will, a new law will be quickly signed. In a way, not allowing copyright of AI material really only serves a tiny group of people. "We want to empower everyone to bring their ideas to market, not just those with the ability to draw them" is not a particularly evil or amoral sentiment.
  - gh0stcat 2y ago
    As if the ability is not attainable, people want to be put on top of the mountain without any effort.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      When society climbs mountains, they eventually build elevators. Its a core functionality and the reason why we are so advanced. Just take a moment to realize how many peaks you already sit on top of, without even thinking about. Your home is overflowing with cheap wares from mountains ascended ages ago that you now have "no effort" access to.
r58lf 2y ago
Yeah, people underestimate how hard it is to get a movie into a theatre AND get people to pay for a ticket. Hollywood can barely get any well made movies past $100 million these days unless it's based on some well known franchise (minecraft, Captain America, Snow White) or it has some well known actor.

NitpickLawyer 2y ago

I think you might need qualifiers on that. Are we talking an unknown / unrelated person living in the proverbial basement, or are we talking a famous movie director? I could see Spielberg or Cameron managing to make something like that happen on their name + AI alone. If we're talking regular people, the best chance would be someone like Andy Weir, blogging their way to a successful book, and working on the side on a video project. I wouldn't be surprised if something along these lines happens sooner or later.

xnx 2y ago

We've got a pretty good datapoint along that trajectory with Flow. Almost entirely one person and has grossed $36 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film)

jsheard 2y ago
It was a small team for sure but not a one man show, there are 22 credits for the animation work alone, plus 13 more for sound and music, not counting the director.
- xnx 2y ago
  > Almost entirely one person It is closer to one than number the staff of other animated films. It's a good data point to keep in mind as AI tools enable even smaller teams to do more.
karolist 2y ago
Went to the cinema with my kids for the 2nd time to watch this one, was pleasantly surprised to read this movie was done using Blender, highly recommended.
mattfrommars 2y ago
One person? What do you mean? It literally says in the wiki more than one. This isn't solo dev game project.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

silksowed 2y ago

very excited to play around. will be attempting to see if i can get character coherence between runs. the issue with the 8s limit is its hard to stitch them together if characters are not consistent. good for short form distribution but not youtube mini series or eventual movies. another comment about IP license is indeed an issue but its why i am looking towards classical works beyond their copyright dates. my goal is to eventually work from short form, to youtube to eventual short films. tools are limited in their current form but the future is promising if i get started now.

jddj 2y ago

I came to the same sort of conclusion when watching Kitsune, which I think was one person and VEO https://vimeo.com/1047370252 https://vimeo.com/1047370252 Granted, 5 minutes isn't 1h30 but it's not a million miles away either.

xrd 2y ago
It's fantastic. I just watched Kitsune, thanks for sharing. It reminds me why Flow was so good. Flow was great because I could see the shader artifacts. It was the opposite of a Disney model, it was not polished and perfect. That's why I loved it. Disney would never do a movie with a plot like Flow. They would write and rewrite it and it would be a perfect example of humanity, but totally devoid of the humanity behind it. It is ironic that this new coming wave of AI generated (or AI assisted) films feel like they have more human craftmanship than Disney films, when honestly it is the opposite. Disney has incredible and brilliant animators, but that is all crushed behind the merchandising and gross behemoth of the Disney corporation. I used to love seeing independent films. Those art house theaters really only exist in places like Portland, OR these days. But, I'm excited about the next wave of film because it'll permit small storytelling, and that's going to be great.
gh0stcat 2y ago
This actually so amateurish and cliche it's painful. The fact people like this shows that art never had a chance when the masses have no taste. This makes me depressed for artists and the future.
- jddj 2y ago
  It won't be novel the 100th or 1000th or millionth time, and standards will rise accordingly. But for now it is, or at least 2 months ago it was. Someone created that relatively coherent 5min animated story largely by communicating with a computer in natural language. The masses have had plenty worse
- switchbak 2y ago
  Well sure, but we're in the early stages here smashing bones together. When a few million bored teenagers bang at this, I bet you'll see perspectives you've never thought of. It'd be like having someone in the 1920's listen to Nirvana - just a completely different experience. Given the dreck coming out of Hollywood, I'm open to that, even if other folks have to wade through a million shitty videos for me to get it.

tracerbulletx 2y ago

Everyone keeps ignoring supply and demand when talking about the impacts of AI. Let's just assume it really gets so good you can do this and it doesn't suck. Yes the costs will get so low that there will be almost no barrier to making content but if there is no barrier to making content, the ROI will be massive, and so everyone will be doing it, you can more or less have the exact movie you want in your head on demand, and even if you want a bespoke movie from an artist with great taste and a point of view there will be 10,000 of them every year.

GloamingNiblets 2y ago
A good parallel is writing books. Books can cost little to write and publish, but their success is Pareto distributed, not Normally distributed.
- mlboss 2y ago
  Writing book is really expensive. You have to think and put words on paper that engages the read. It is really hard.
mvdtnz 2y ago
Most of us have no idea what movies we want. The most delightful films are a total surprise (other than the drones who watch every Marvel film of course).
nmilo 2y ago
It will be like YouTube. Distribution will be hard and most of it will be slop but every now and then you’ll discover something so good and so creative and it couldn’t have possibly existed before that it makes the whole experience worth it. The best creative works are led by one person and I’m excited to see what people can come up with.
yorwba 2y ago
And one of those 10,000 will have a multimillion marketing budget and people are talking about it online and remixing it into memes and it will make a lot more money than the second-most popular movie, even though there's no discernable quality difference.

colesantiago 2y ago

My prediction is on track to this and this was made only 4 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368951

delichon 2y ago
There may be a solo (not Han) movie good enough to compete in five years, but I doubt that Academy voters will be that welcoming of the tech that can obliterate most of their jobs by then.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  Based on the training data being pop culture, we may even get a good Han Solo movie from tools like this. Starring young Ford.
- switchbak 2y ago
  If AI can fix the terrible ending that was Game of Thrones, then perhaps it won't have been a complete waste after all.
  - anshumankmr 2y ago
    What ending for Game of Thrones? Wasn't it cancelled after Season 6?

SirMaster 2y ago

Well text generation is way ahead of video generation. Have we seen anyone create something like a best selling or high grossing novel with an LLM yet?

delichon 2y ago
That's why going from one person to zero persons will be so hard. But one Kubrick/Carmack and a bunch of AI could make a compelling movie now.

bookofjoe 2y ago

Me too. Sam Altman recently predicted that we will see a one-person unicorn company in the near future.

hammock 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(2024_film) $36 million dollars and an Academy Award. A l m o s t done by just one person. And entirely with open source software. The guy's previous movie was a true one-man show but didn't really get screenings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_(2019_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_(2019_film)

farzd 2y ago
`The movie "Flow" cost approximately $3.7 million to $4 million to produce` - big budget for almost one person.
machomaster 2y ago
Not true. Dozens of people participated in creating this movie.

baxtr 2y ago

I can’t exactly say why, but I find this "single person $1B company" meme utterly annoying.

tclancy 2y ago

But will it cost less than $100M to render?