Could AI Direct A Film?

One of the movies presented at the annual New Directors Showcase was directed by AI.

19:09 24 June 2016

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been a subject for film makers. However, at the Cannes Lions advertising festival held on Thursday morning, one of the entries had AI as a director.

 

The short film, which was presented at the annual New Directors Showcase, involved the use of AI at every stage. The entry was commissioned by Saatchi and Saatchi, which also runs the Cannes.

 

Andy Gulliman, the director of the film and content, said that the computer was only given a track. “We then relied on the machine to give us a script and then a treatment.”

 

All the other machines connected to the “AI Spielberg” took the treatment and directed the shooting of the promo using cameras on drones. Other AI programs used include facial recognition software, a Microsoft chatbot, IBM Watson, and Ms Rinna.

 

The editing part was performed by a program designed to make its own decision to make cuts depending on the beat of the music and its emotional content. Another program was used for casting that examined the electroencephalogram (EEG) brain data from actors and matched them to the emotions it had detected in the song and its singer.

 

Although the first AI-directed short film is not impressive when it comes to production values, the technology behind it can make it a ground-breaking tool in a decade or so.