“The Lion King” directors Roger Allers (left) and Rob Minkoff.
Kevin Winter | Getty Images
The director of “The Lion King” says artificial intelligence is the “Wild West” with “few rules” but it has the potential to democratize the film industry in the long term.
Rob Minkoff, co-director of the 1994 animated classic disney Roger Allers, who worked with Roger Allers on the film, told CNBC that artificial intelligence has the potential to “democratize” filmmaking by cutting out the amount of expensive equipment involved. Reduce the cost of film production and directing.
“I think what artificial intelligence is going to do is potentially democratize the content production process, because if virtually anyone has access to these incredibly powerful tools, then we should see a real explosion of content, an explosion of new voices. ,” Minkoff, 62, told CNBC.
Minkoff spoke to CNBC ahead of the Reply AI Film Festival. The event, hosted by Italian tech company Reply during the Venice International Film Festival, is a competition that rewards filmmakers who use artificial intelligence to develop short films. Minkoff was a judge on the panel that decided the winner.
“Exaggeration” and “reasonable concerns”
Minkoff points out that the arrival of new technology has been a fear among those working in the film industry for decades. For example, when computer animation emerged in the 1990s, there were concerns about its impact on employment.
“When computer animation came out, a lot of people were very scared of what it would mean and how it would affect people’s jobs,” said Minkoff, who also directed 1999’s Scrat and 2003’s The Amityville Horror 》.
“What became very apparent early on was that it became very important for people to really learn and adapt to changes in technology if they wanted to maintain their personal relevance in the industry,” he added. “We’re going through something very similar right now with artificial intelligence.”
Minkoff recalled using computers to create the famous stampede scene in “The Lion King.” In the scene, dozens of wildebeests chase the film’s protagonist, Simba.
In that scene, Minkoff recalls, “we could render thousands of wildebeests, but the technology we used made it look very seamless with the rest of the animation being drawn.”
“When people see what artificial intelligence can do, they’re understandably worried,” Minkoff said. However, he added that he didn’t think the technology could replace all filmmakers and that there were currently a lot of “hyperbole” surrounding the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
Still, there are some concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in movies, Minkoff said, such as those related to copyright and the use of intellectual property rights in the entertainment industry to train artificial intelligence models.
“My hope is that technology will eventually save us in some way or make life better or easier or more prosperous,” Minkoff told CNBC. “But this is the Wild West and anything seems possible. Everything is possible.”
Minkoff added that there are “legitimate concerns” about artificial intelligence when it comes to protecting intellectual property rights in media and addressing issues such as copyright theft. “I understand why people might want to slow down or put guardrails on it to be careful and safe,” he said.
But ultimately, he doesn’t see AI’s positive momentum slowing down. “My impression is that it’s probably not going to slow down because those decisions are left to judges and courts to decide what’s right and what’s wrong,” Minkoff said.
On copyright issues, he suggested setting up a special agency to protect and remunerate the intellectual property rights of film producers, much like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the Broadcast Music Corporation do for the music industry.
“Behind technology is always human beings”
The Reply Artificial Intelligence Film Festival, which awarded three winners this week, began as an internal competition among employees to use artificial intelligence tools to create cinematic-quality films, Reply Chief Technology Officer Filippo Rizzante told CNBC.
“The technology for creating creative work has come a long way,” Lizante said in an interview last week. “This greatly affects the quantity and quality of what we humans produce.”
Lizant dismissed concerns that artificial intelligence will replace people working in the entertainment industry. He said the technology “will revolutionize the way the industry delivers content today, but it won’t necessarily change employment numbers in the film industry.”
One of the runners-up at this year’s festival, “Gia Pham,” depicts a woman looking at a takeaway menu before being transported into a colorful, picturesque 2D world. The narrator of the film starts out speaking in English, and then begins speaking in Japanese after switching from 3D to 2D.
“Gia Pham” co-director Alexander de Lukowicz told CNBC that humans were crucial to the way he and his team made the short film. He says AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney help his short film directors “enhance worlds we couldn’t create before.”
“The people behind the technology always have to guide the technology to get the right results out of it. We wanted to make something like a movie that really examines the boundaries of what’s possible,” de Lukowicz told CNBC.
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