It has become almost impossible to browse the internet without having an AI-generated video thrust upon you. Open basically any social media platform<\/a>, and it won\u2019t be long until an uncanny-looking clip of a fake natural disaster or animals doing impossible things slides across your screen. Most of the videos look absolutely terrible. But they\u2019re almost always accompanied by hundreds, if not thousands, of likes and comments from people insisting that AI-generated content is a new art form that\u2019s going to change the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That has been especially true of AI clips that are meant to appear realistic. No matter how strange or aesthetically inconsistent the footage may be, there is usually someone proclaiming that it\u2019s something the entertainment industry should be afraid of. The idea that AI-generated video is both the future of filmmaking and an existential threat to Hollywood has caught on like wildfire among boosters for the relatively new technology. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The thought of major studios embracing this technology as is feels dubious when you consider that, oftentimes, AI models\u2019 output<\/a> simply isn\u2019t the kind of stuff that could be fashioned into a quality movie or series. That\u2019s an impression that filmmaker Bryn Mooser wants to change with Asteria<\/a>, a new production house he launched last year, as well as a forthcoming AI-generated feature film from Natasha Lyonne (also Mooser\u2019s partner and an advisor at Late Night Labs, a studio focused on generative AI<\/a> that Mooser\u2019s film and TV company XTR acquired last year<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Asteria\u2019s big selling point is that, unlike most other AI outfits, the generative model it built with research company Moonvalley<\/a> is \u201cethical,\u201d meaning it has only been trained on properly licensed material. Especially in the wake of Disney and Universal suing Midjourney for copyright infringement, the concept of ethical generative AI may become an important part of how AI is more widely adopted throughout the entertainment industry. However, during a recent chat, Mooser stresses to me that the company\u2019s clear understanding of what generative AI is and what it isn\u2019t helps set Asteria apart from other players in the AI space.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAs we started to think about building Asteria, it was obvious to us as filmmakers that there were big problems with the way that AI was being presented to Hollywood,\u201d Mooser says. \u201cIt was obvious that the tools weren\u2019t being built by anybody who\u2019d ever made a film before. The text-to-video form factor, where you say \u2018make me a new Star Wars movie\u2019 and out it comes, is a thing that Silicon Valley thought people wanted and actually believed was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Mooser\u2019s view, part of the reason some enthusiasts have been quick to call generative video models a threat to traditional film workflows boils down to people assuming that footage created from prompts can replicate the real thing as effectively as what we\u2019ve seen with imitative, AI-generated music. It has been easy for people to replicate singers\u2019 voices with generative AI<\/a> and produce passable songs. But Mooser thinks that, in its rush to normalize gen AI, the tech industry conflated audio and visual output in a way that\u2019s at odds with what actually makes for good films.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t go and say to Christopher Nolan, \u2018Use this tool and text your way to The Odyssey<\/em>,\u2019\u201d Mooser says. \u201cAs people in Hollywood got access to these tools, there were a couple things that were really clear \u2014 one being that the form factor can\u2019t work because the amount of control that a filmmaker needs comes down to the pixel level in a lot of cases.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To give its filmmaking partners more of that granular control, Asteria uses its core generative model, Marey<\/a>, to create new, project-specific models trained on original visual material. This would, for example, allow an artist to build a model that could generate a variety of assets in their distinct style, and then use it to populate a world full of different characters and objects that adhere to a unique aesthetic. That was the workflow Asteria used in its production of musician Cuco\u2019s animated short \u201cA Love Letter to LA.\u201d By training Asteria\u2019s model on 60 original illustrations drawn by artist Paul Flores<\/a>, the studio could generate new 2D assets and convert them into 3D models used to build the video\u2019s fictional town. The short is impressive, but its heavy stylization speaks to the way projects with generative AI at their core often have to work within the technology\u2019s visual limitations. It doesn\u2019t feel like this workflow offers control down to the pixel level just yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mooser says that, depending on the financial arrangement between Asteria and its clients, filmmakers can retain partial ownership of the models after they\u2019re completed. In addition to the original licensing fees Asteria pays the creators of the material its core model is trained on, the studio is \u201cexploring\u201d the possibility of a revenue sharing system, too. But for now, Mooser is more focused on winning artists over with the promise of lower initial development and production costs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re doing a Pixar animated film, you might be coming on as a director or a writer, but it\u2019s not often that you\u2019ll have any ownership of what you\u2019re making, residuals, or cut of what the studio makes when they sell a lunchbox,\u201d Mooser tells me. \u201cBut if you can use this technology to bring the cost down and make it independently financeable, then you have a world where you can have a new financing model that makes real ownership possible.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Asteria plans to test many of Mooser\u2019s beliefs in generative AI\u2019s transformative potential with Uncanny Valley<\/em>, a feature film to be co-written and directed by Lyonne. The live-action film centers on a teenage girl whose shaky perception of reality causes her to start seeing the world as being more video game-like. Many of Uncanny Valley<\/em>\u2019s fantastical, Matrix<\/em>-like visual elements will be created with Asteria\u2019s in-house models. That detail in particular makes Uncanny Valley <\/em>sound like a project designed to present the hallucinatory inconsistencies that generative AI has become known for as clever aesthetic features rather than bugs. But Mooser tells me that he hopes \u201cnobody ever thinks about the AI part of it at all\u201d because \u201ceverything is going to have the director\u2019s human touch on it.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like you\u2019re just texting, \u2018then they go into a video game,\u2019 and watch what happens, because nobody wants to see that,\u201d Mooser says. \u201cThat was very clear as we were thinking about this. I don\u2019t think anybody wants to just see what computers dream up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Like many generative AI advocates, Mooser sees the technology as a \u201cdemocratizing\u201d tool that can make the creation of art more accessible. He also stresses that, under the right circumstances, generative AI could make it easier to produce a movie for around $10\u201320 million rather than $150 million. Still, securing that kind of capital is a challenge for most younger, up-and-coming filmmakers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of Asteria\u2019s big selling points that Mooser repeatedly mentions to me is generative AI\u2019s potential to produce finished works faster and with smaller teams. He framed that aspect of an AI production workflow as a positive that would allow writers and directors to work more closely with key collaborators like art and VFX supervisors without needing to spend so much time going back and forth on revisions \u2014 something that tends to be more likely when a project has a lot of people working on it. But, by definition, smaller teams translates to fewer jobs, which raises the issue of AI\u2019s potential to put people out of work. When I bring this up with Mooser, he points to the recent closure of VFX house Technicolor Group<\/a> as an example of the entertainment industry\u2019s ongoing upheaval that began leaving workers unemployed before the generative AI hype came to its current fever pitch. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n