Hollywood is on strike, with writers and actors unions demanding measures to protect their livelihoods from the threat of AI, which begs the question: just how good is AI at filmmaking? We’ve rounded up the most successful examples of AI generated film, including works scripted, directed, or completely generated by AI. Let’s start at the beginning …

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THE SAFE ZONE

Right at the start of the ChatGPT boom, Filipino entertainer and former Big Brother contestant Richard Juan stole a march on the entire entertainment industry. ChatGPT was launched on November 30th, 2022; just seventeen days later Juan had created the world’s first AI scripted - and directed - short film, The Safe Zone.

ChatGPT didn’t just provide the script, but also instructions for specific camera movements, lighting requirements and even wardrobe; the crew also used DALL-E to generate storyboards. The results are mixed, it’s fair to say; the film is beautifully shot, so credit is due to ChatGPT’s ability to fill the director’s chair, but the script is clunky and forced. On this showing, it’s Hollywood’s directors who should be the most concerned for their professional futures, because ChatGPT cannot write dialogue! 

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THE FROST

“In the icy depths of Antarctica, a team sets out to investigate a strange signal, unknowingly embarking on a journey that will challenge everything they thought they knew about their past and future.” 

Thus reads the blurb for The Frost - a short film published by generative video firm Waymark - and this dystopian sci-fi short certainly sends a strange signal. The show’s creator provided the script, and used DALL-E to create the remarkable video. As one of the film’s creators, Stephen Parker, explained,  the producers “hit a point where we just stopped fighting the desire for photographic accuracy and started leaning into the weirdness that is DALL-E”. 

The result will be recognizable to those familiar with celebrity deepfake videos; our protagonists look convincing (hands excepted) until they try to do anything, at which point the illusion shatters, and you’re left with non-existent lipsyncing and uncanny movements. Nonetheless, there is a lot to be impressed by here. Director Josh Rubin has stated that he was trying to emulate Kurosawa’s 1980 short film The Blizzard, capturing the glacial pace of humans as they try to navigate deep snow in poor visibility, and at this he has been largely successful.

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CHECK POINT

We move from sci-fi to documentary short, with a film that seeks to blur the lines between human and AI creators, rather than sharpen them. Check Point - made by New York based Hungarian director Áron Filkey and Vox’s Joss Fong - credits several image generators and “GPTChat” with providing the assets for the film, and they have created arguably the most successful AI film to date, and certainly the most successful script. It’s a thought-provoking, informative and ultimately inspirational look at AI as a collaborative tool, with some brilliantly simple explanations of complex machine learning concepts. Most pleasing of all, there’s no way of knowing to what degree that success has stemmed from human input or AI creativity, and that’s very much the point of the film.

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GIVEN AGAIN

From non-fiction film to high-concept vibes, with a deeply personal project from director Jake Oleson. The inspiration for the film came from learning that his father, who had passed away when he was nine, was not his biological parent; the emotional impact of that news planted the seed for Given Again. The film was made using a technique called NeRF - neural radiance fields - which allows for the generation of 3D models from 2D images. Oleson found that if you corrupted the datasets used to generate the 3D models, you could create interesting effects. These form the basis for the film, which depicts a painter “becoming fascinated by the roots of a tree”, before losing her grasp on reality and embarking on a visual trip with echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Annihilation, backed up by a superb electronic score that evokes artists such as Aphex Twin and Burial.

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