It’s no secret that AI is a hot-button topic in Hollywood right now. It’s being used to de-age actors, to expand the frames of film, and to create new movies from scratch. But it’s still mired with controversy: the use of generative AI in Hollywood was a major talking point during the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes, and still remains a touchy subject among creatives.
But as the use of it gets more and more normalized in everyday life, major studios are toying with incorporating generative AI more and more — but there are two recent examples that prove it’s not here to stay just yet.
A new report from The Wall Street Journal claims that Disney was planning to use generative AI for two major upcoming releases: the Moana live-action remake and Tron: Ares, the upcoming sequel to the already tech-focused sci-fi thriller. The Moana example is fairly straightforward: because Dwayne Johnson’s role of Maui takes the form of a larger-than-life demigod that even Johnson wouldn’t be able to attain in the gym, Disney contacted an AI company to explore the possibility of deep-faking Johnson’s face onto a body double.
While Johnson consented to the process, it didn’t go through for more mundane reasons than you might expect: anything generated by the AI company would be owned by them, which posed issues for Disney. The companies were unable to come to a consensus, so the idea was nixed.
Tron: Ares, on the other hand, embraced the AI trend wholeheartedly, at least at first. According to the report, executives pitched a character who would be completely AI-generated: a writer would inform an AI program about the context of the film, and then, as lines are spoken on set, the program would respond, voiced by a human actor.
It was pitched as a buzzy marketing strategy that could entice viewers to watch if only to see how seamless the AI-generated lines really are, but it’s this buzziness that was the character’s downfall as well. This idea was being bandied about while union negotiations were being held, and Disney decided the bad publicity wasn’t worth it — a choice that makes sense when you consider the backlash other films that use AI have faced.
Tron: Ares is probably one of the few movies that could justify the use of AI, as the entire plot of the movie revolves around an AI program going rogue. But for now, that’s still the stuff of science-fiction movies, and maybe it’s the best if it stays that way.
