4 ms·

Anyone remember when YC declared they would replace Hollywood?

theappsecguy 2mo ago
they might manage to get a semi passable AI movie... but will people pay to watch it? I certainly would not.
mjr00 2mo ago
> Anyone remember when YC declared they would replace Hollywood? I specifically remember a prolific HN commenter working on an AI video startup claiming that by the end of 2025, children would be able to create Hollywood-quality, feature-length movies using available AI video tools. I believe this person's startup has (wisely) pivoted to building AI-powered tools for the movie industry.
- nubg 2mo ago
  He might be off by a decade, but isn't necessarily wrong.
  - card_zero 2mo ago
    Is that a prediction about where "Hollywood quality" is heading?
  - mrhottakes 2mo ago
    When someone makes a prediction but is off by a decade+, that prediction is, necessarily, wrong.
  - bazoom42 2mo ago
    By that standard, no prediction can be wrong.
- jnwatson 2mo ago
  We're at the point now where we're seeing 30 second commercials that are mostly GenAI. In other words, this is a failure of degree, not of category.
  - ben_w 2mo ago
    Degree is the entire problem. I mean, four years back I was thinking: I don't know how long it will take, but Hollywood is obviously screwed the moment something like Stable Diffusion gets temporal coherency and stops randomly adding limbs, because the energy cost per image on my laptop multiplied by how many frames in a film and $0.1/kWh, is ballpark the same as the cost of a cinema ticket. Right now temporal coherency is still quite limited, and the models still do enough daft things you can't easily take the first version even when cutting every 5 seconds. I still have no idea how far we are from something that would be good enough to render a Hollywood film. Well, a Hollywood that isn't a complete disaster. Writing it is a separate problem, my experiments there show gradual improvement that has now reached the level of "obviously not publishable but also slightly less bad than going on reddit and sorting posts in short story groups by most recent instead of upvoted".
    - bazoom42 2mo ago
      But why is Hollywood screwed then? Same thing was said when cameras became cheap, when editing became cheep, and when internet made it possible for anyone to distribute movies: Now the movie industry is screwed because anyone with talent and an iphone can make and distribute a movie. Turns out there is more to it than that.
      - ben_w 2mo ago
        Like I said, "Writing it is a separate problem". From what I've seen while experimenting with "creative" writing, I think they'd struggle with writing an episode of a kids TV show with a short running time in length (anything over about 9 minutes); and even then I would also doubt it would write correctly for a specific audience based on my experience while experimenting with writing myself educational apps (in my case to help me learn German, I'm extrapolating from that to not overburdening kids with too-complex vocabulary). But do also consider that when cameras became cheap, *painting* is what became somewhat less valuable, and cinema became possible in the first place. And consider that when cinema got sound, live musicians in theatres went away: The time is coming fast when the only living thing around a motion picture house will be the person who sells you your ticket. Everything else will be mechanical. Canned drama, canned music, canned vaudeville. We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing. We are not against scientific development of any kind, but it must not come at the expense of art. We are not opposing industrial progress. We are not even opposing mechanical music except where it is used as a profiteering instrument for artistic debasement. - 2012 reporting on 1927, even the reporting well before AI could do any of this at an interesting level; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-against-evil-robots-92702721/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-ag... If the AI could write… it can, but the degree to which it can is not enough; if the AI could make coherent videos… it can, but the degree to which it can is not enough. "If". It's a matter of degree, but functionally the answer *today* is "no", because today when some humans make a video with AI, they need to put in a lot of effort to throw out the rubbish attempts by the AI. When it stops being "no", and not before, is when Hollywood is screwed.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  In fairness, I agree that end-of-2025 AI probably could make a film so badly that 41% of the crew get cancer within 24 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film)
  - opo 2mo ago
    Considering that about 39.2% of the population is expected to get diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes, do you actually think a rate of 41% is statistically significant? https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html
    - extra88 2mo ago
      It is significant because cancer is much more detectable today than in 1956-80, both because of better tests and more testing being conducted. In that earlier era, if you knew you had cancer, it was likely because it was already bad. I also expect that of the 39.2% of the population, the cancer is diagnosed much later in life than it was for the 91 movie crew members, I doubt 41% of the crew was over 50 in 1956.
      - opo 2mo ago
        Think about this for a minute. If three months of filming actually cause an increase in cancer rates the long-term residents of St. George (the downwinders), would have have devastatingly high cancer rates, right? The nearby residents were exposed to fallout from 100+ above ground nuclear tests and they were exposed for multiple decades, not just three months. This issue has actually has been studied and published in peer reviewed journals. A paper that studied the mortality of residents in that area concluded: >...There was no excess risk of cancer mortality in southwestern Utah, for single or grouped sites, with the single exception of leukemia which showed statistically significant odds ratios of 1.45 based on 62 deaths at all ages, and 2.84 based on nine deaths at ages 0-14. The finding for childhood leukemia was based on different time periods and geographic comparisons from those of two earlier studies in which no such excess was found. Mortality from all cancer sites combined was significantly lower in southwestern Utah than in the remainder of the state, even after adjustment for the higher proportion of (lower risk) Mormons in southwestern Utah. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3788954/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3788954/ Trying to figure out when this strange idea about The Conqueror first appeared, I saw references to a 1980 article in People magazine. People magazine is not actually a peer reviewed journal.
bwfan123 2mo ago
AI is just another tool in the arsenal of tools for both developers (Linus [1]) and movie makers (Ben Affleck [2]). These are expert practitioners in their fields intelligently opining on AI, and they are promoting it not as a magic machine, but as another tool in the toolbox. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSSGt9bZag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSSGt9bZag [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2OsvVJC0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2OsvVJC0s

they might manage to get a semi passable AI movie... but will people pay to watch it? I certainly would not.

mjr00 2mo ago

> Anyone remember when YC declared they would replace Hollywood? I specifically remember a prolific HN commenter working on an AI video startup claiming that by the end of 2025, children would be able to create Hollywood-quality, feature-length movies using available AI video tools. I believe this person's startup has (wisely) pivoted to building AI-powered tools for the movie industry.

nubg 2mo ago
He might be off by a decade, but isn't necessarily wrong.
- card_zero 2mo ago
  Is that a prediction about where "Hollywood quality" is heading?
- mrhottakes 2mo ago
  When someone makes a prediction but is off by a decade+, that prediction is, necessarily, wrong.
- bazoom42 2mo ago
  By that standard, no prediction can be wrong.
jnwatson 2mo ago
We're at the point now where we're seeing 30 second commercials that are mostly GenAI. In other words, this is a failure of degree, not of category.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  Degree is the entire problem. I mean, four years back I was thinking: I don't know how long it will take, but Hollywood is obviously screwed the moment something like Stable Diffusion gets temporal coherency and stops randomly adding limbs, because the energy cost per image on my laptop multiplied by how many frames in a film and $0.1/kWh, is ballpark the same as the cost of a cinema ticket. Right now temporal coherency is still quite limited, and the models still do enough daft things you can't easily take the first version even when cutting every 5 seconds. I still have no idea how far we are from something that would be good enough to render a Hollywood film. Well, a Hollywood that isn't a complete disaster. Writing it is a separate problem, my experiments there show gradual improvement that has now reached the level of "obviously not publishable but also slightly less bad than going on reddit and sorting posts in short story groups by most recent instead of upvoted".
  - bazoom42 2mo ago
    But why is Hollywood screwed then? Same thing was said when cameras became cheap, when editing became cheep, and when internet made it possible for anyone to distribute movies: Now the movie industry is screwed because anyone with talent and an iphone can make and distribute a movie. Turns out there is more to it than that.
    - ben_w 2mo ago
      Like I said, "Writing it is a separate problem". From what I've seen while experimenting with "creative" writing, I think they'd struggle with writing an episode of a kids TV show with a short running time in length (anything over about 9 minutes); and even then I would also doubt it would write correctly for a specific audience based on my experience while experimenting with writing myself educational apps (in my case to help me learn German, I'm extrapolating from that to not overburdening kids with too-complex vocabulary). But do also consider that when cameras became cheap, *painting* is what became somewhat less valuable, and cinema became possible in the first place. And consider that when cinema got sound, live musicians in theatres went away: The time is coming fast when the only living thing around a motion picture house will be the person who sells you your ticket. Everything else will be mechanical. Canned drama, canned music, canned vaudeville. We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing. We are not against scientific development of any kind, but it must not come at the expense of art. We are not opposing industrial progress. We are not even opposing mechanical music except where it is used as a profiteering instrument for artistic debasement. - 2012 reporting on 1927, even the reporting well before AI could do any of this at an interesting level; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-against-evil-robots-92702721/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-ag... If the AI could write… it can, but the degree to which it can is not enough; if the AI could make coherent videos… it can, but the degree to which it can is not enough. "If". It's a matter of degree, but functionally the answer *today* is "no", because today when some humans make a video with AI, they need to put in a lot of effort to throw out the rubbish attempts by the AI. When it stops being "no", and not before, is when Hollywood is screwed.
ben_w 2mo ago
In fairness, I agree that end-of-2025 AI probably could make a film so badly that 41% of the crew get cancer within 24 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film)
- opo 2mo ago
  Considering that about 39.2% of the population is expected to get diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes, do you actually think a rate of 41% is statistically significant? https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html
  - extra88 2mo ago
    It is significant because cancer is much more detectable today than in 1956-80, both because of better tests and more testing being conducted. In that earlier era, if you knew you had cancer, it was likely because it was already bad. I also expect that of the 39.2% of the population, the cancer is diagnosed much later in life than it was for the 91 movie crew members, I doubt 41% of the crew was over 50 in 1956.
    - opo 2mo ago
      Think about this for a minute. If three months of filming actually cause an increase in cancer rates the long-term residents of St. George (the downwinders), would have have devastatingly high cancer rates, right? The nearby residents were exposed to fallout from 100+ above ground nuclear tests and they were exposed for multiple decades, not just three months. This issue has actually has been studied and published in peer reviewed journals. A paper that studied the mortality of residents in that area concluded: >...There was no excess risk of cancer mortality in southwestern Utah, for single or grouped sites, with the single exception of leukemia which showed statistically significant odds ratios of 1.45 based on 62 deaths at all ages, and 2.84 based on nine deaths at ages 0-14. The finding for childhood leukemia was based on different time periods and geographic comparisons from those of two earlier studies in which no such excess was found. Mortality from all cancer sites combined was significantly lower in southwestern Utah than in the remainder of the state, even after adjustment for the higher proportion of (lower risk) Mormons in southwestern Utah. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3788954/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3788954/ Trying to figure out when this strange idea about The Conqueror first appeared, I saw references to a 1980 article in People magazine. People magazine is not actually a peer reviewed journal.

bwfan123 2mo ago

AI is just another tool in the arsenal of tools for both developers (Linus [1]) and movie makers (Ben Affleck [2]). These are expert practitioners in their fields intelligently opining on AI, and they are promoting it not as a magic machine, but as another tool in the toolbox. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSSGt9bZag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSSGt9bZag [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2OsvVJC0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2OsvVJC0s