Depending on who you talk to, AI is either the future, a cheap parlor trick or the death of creativity as we know it. But at this week’s “AI on the Lot” conference, up and coming filmmakers, developers and wanna-be showbiz entrepreneurs were all banking that AI will be their on-ramp into an insular business.
Over two days at Amazon MGM’s Culver City lot, filmmakers like Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,”) and Jon Erwin (one half of the faith-based film duo the Erwin Bros.) discussed how they’re adapting to the AI era, while other up and coming creatives showcased their work.
Meanwhile, you could walk into a room where developers were training how to code and render (among the only Hollywood conferences to include the phrase “Gaussian splatting”). There were entrepreneurs looking for funding, founders pitching investors and studio execs talking up how their AI film production studios are the next big thing.
While there weren’t many bold-faced Hollywood names in attendance, there was representation from every major studio and agency — with mid-level execs and staffers that either already had “AI” in their job title or were on the business or production side of things. Some of the biggest names were “Taxi Driver” scribe Paul Schrader (who, during a meandering keynote, predicted there will be fully-generated AI lead actors and that AI should be used to create new episodes of “I Love Lucy”), O-T Fagbenle, Ryan Kavanaugh, Bryn Mooser, Rob Friedman and Justin Wilkes, along with the aforementioned Edwards and Erwin. Erwin was quickly mobbed after his panel by a throng of attendees, many of whom wanted to pitch their own projects and business prospects. The two-day conference apporpriately ended with “Silicon Valley” star Thomas Middleditch doing improv opposite an AI generated character.