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Blumhouse goes AI.
Speak No Evil
A major horror movie studio seems to be turning into a bit of an industry horror show.
As Variety reports, Blumhouse Productions, best known for franchises like “Halloween” and “The Purge,” has announced a partnership with Meta that grants it access to an early version of the tech company’s recently-unveiled video generation AI model Movie Gen.
“Artists are, and forever will be, the lifeblood of our industry,” Blumhouse founder and CEO Jason Blum said in a statement, as quoted by Variety. “Innovation and tools that can help those artists better tell their stories is something we are always keen to explore, and we welcomed the chance for some of them to test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it’s still in development.”
Given the major rifts between artists and AI companies, though, the fact that yet another movie studio is promoting the technology will undoubtedly prove controversial.
Happy Death Day
Blumhouse, which is also behind acclaimed features like “Get Out” and “Split,” says that it’s already chosen a group of filmmakers who will first get to use Movie Gen: Aneesh Chaganty, the Spurlock Sisters, and actor Casey Affleck.
To tease what’s to come from this collaboration, Chaganty — best known for the 2018 film “Searching” — created a bite-sized short film that’s been promoted by Meta and is available on YouTube.
Called “i h8 ai,” it’s more or less a three-minute advert in which Chaganty uses his memories of being a young, aspiring filmmaker to discuss his ambivalence about AI. “From everything that I have been told, AI is going to hurt my industry,” he says at the beginning.
Whatever his reservations, Chaganty turns to Movie Gen to spruce up the “cringe” movies he shot as a kid with better visual effects and locations. “I hate AI,” he says by the end. “But with a tool like this? I don’t know. Maybe I’d have just dreamed a little bigger.”
Insidious
Several big movie studios have already announced partnerships with AI companies, such as Lionsgate’s team-up with the Runway.
It’s striking to see Blumhouse go the same way, however, since it’s always positioned itself as a bit of a maverick that punches above its weight in the industry, championing lesser-known directors with box office hits made on relatively small budgets.
Some moviegoers have been quick to call out the irony of the partnership. At least two Blumhouse movies to come out in recent years, “M3GAN” and “AFRAID,” were explicitly about some of the dangers surrounding our relationship with AI technology.
Many creatives see generative AI as an existential threat. Aside from any philosophical questions about using a machine to churn out “art,” the technology was only able to be created by ingesting untold amounts of existing images and writing.
Because of this, Meta’s vice president of generative AI said in a statement, per Variety, that the company “feels it’s important to have an open and early dialogue with the creative community” about its “responsible use.”
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