Director Gareth Edwards isn’t afraid of generative AI and what it may portend for Hollywood. In fact, he’s pumped about it.
The helmer of Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One has been experimenting with diffusion models in depth for the last nine months and even wants to create a hybrid generative AI film, he said on a panel on Thursday. But he isn’t doing so yet, because the rate at which technological developments are occurring might outpace the filmmaking process.
“It feels like this stuff’s changing every three months,” he said. “It’s like we have to revisit the plan six months from now because it might be a totally different series of tools. And the things that … weren’t possible three months ago or six months ago, some of them are now possible.”
His interest is perhaps unsurprising, given that he directed 2023’s The Creator, a sci-fi film that largely took a positive approach to the topic of artificial intelligence. But his public embrace of the technology is still rare amongst his cohort, a.k.a. directors entrusted with big-budget IP properties.
Edwards, who made the remarks during a panel about world-building at Amazon’s AI on the Lot event in Culver City, started his professional career doing visual effects, and compared the rise of AI to the mainstream arrival of CGI in movies in the ‘90s. Still, he believes AI might be more impactful. “I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t become interested in this stuff as a filmmaker. It’s so clearly a tool that might be up there with the camera. It’s going to be be better than CGI,” he told the assembled audience. “I’m excited, I hope you are.”
Still, he argued that generative AI is primarily helpful in terms of organizing ideas, testing concepts and producing images, rather than generating human stories that resonate with audiences. “It has no taste whatsoever. It is a fucking genius at helping you,” Edwards said. “I view it like having a second-unit director who is a billionaire on acid. Like, it’ll do anything you ask, not a problem. Sometimes it’ll [go] batshit crazy. And you’ll give it notes, and it’ll be like, ‘I don’t do notes. I’ll just do something totally different.’ But it’s worth it.”
Though AI won’t transform any random movie fan into a good filmmaker, it might allow more people to “enter the competition” by allowing them to develop trailers for their concepts and produce work at a lower cost. “It’s only good for iteration and discovering what the movie should be, and then once you know what it is, go in and start making it your movie,” Edwards said.
He emphasized throughout his remarks that AI filmmaking requires oversight, with a filmmaker needing to frequently prompt a tool to realize a specific creative vision. Doing so isn’t so different from intense level of decisionmaking involved in designing shots on a traditional film or TV show, he said.
Still, the director was clear that he doesn’t know where AI in Hollywood is headed. “We don’t know where it’s going to go,” he said. “I think anybody saying they know exactly what’s going to happen over the next five years is just a liar.”
Edwards, one of the highest-profile creatives to appear at Amazon’s event, followed an appearance earlier in the day by American Gigolo and First Reformed director Paul Schrader. Schrader was more bullish on the storytelling capabilities of generative AI, describing an attempt he made to create a story idea in his wheelhouse using ChatGPT. “I could send it out,” he said of the result. “I know what response I would get: This is second-rate Schrader… but it’s going to be first-rate Schrader soon enough.”