answers

SEOUL, May 1 (UPI) — South Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM premiered its AI-hybrid feature film The House this week, presenting the low-budget occult thriller as a test case for how artificial intelligence could help revive a struggling film industry.

The 60-minute film, unveiled Thursday at CGV Yongsan I’Park Mall in Seoul, follows a young woman who can see dead souls after moving into a decrepit apartment building. It is scheduled to be released Friday on CJ ENM’s streaming platform TVING.

Taken on its own merits, The House is far from innovative. It scans as a fairly forgettable horror flick, leaning heavily on gloomy atmospherics, digital gore and jump scares in service of a paper-thin story.

But behind the scenes, the film represents a cutting-edge use of fast-evolving technology that dramatically reduces both costs and production time.

CJ ENM said the actors’ performances were filmed entirely indoors on a green-screen stage, while every background and visual effect was created with AI, using Google tools including Imagen, Nano Banana and Veo.

“We have expanded the production paradigm,” Jeong Chang-ik, head of CJ ENM’s AI Studio and lead producer of The House, said at a panel discussion after the premiere Thursday.

The film cost about $337,000 to produce — at least five times less than a comparable conventional production, Jeong said.

He added that the efficiency gains could be especially significant for genre films, disaster movies and other effects-heavy productions.

“From our perspective, there isn’t much difference in production costs between making a scene where a main character drinks coffee at a cafe and making a scene where that main character defeats a monster,” he said. “In reality, there is a huge difference, but in terms of AI, the difference is not much.”

Actor Kim Shin-yong, who plays a security guard in the film, said the process differed sharply from traditional chroma-key filming, where performers must imagine effects that are added later.

“I could perform while seeing the completed backgrounds in real time, which made immersion much better,” Kim said, adding that the entire shoot took just four days.

The rapid adoption of AI has raised alarm across the global entertainment industry, helping fuel strikes in Hollywood in 2023 amid concerns over job losses and creative control. But the technology is already being widely integrated across production pipelines.

The team behind The House said the goal is not to replace actors or creators, but to integrate AI into existing production workflows.

Ahn Sung-min, director of customer engineering at Google Cloud Korea, said AI is being used not to “take the place of creation,” but to help realize creators’ intent within the filmmaking process.

CJ ENM executives also pushed back on the idea that AI could replace human performers.

“We are actually certain that AI cannot replace the acting of actors,” Baek Hyun-jung, head of content innovation, said. “That’s why we designed this hybrid approach — to preserve the actor’s unique expressiveness while using AI for backgrounds and effects.”

The experiment comes as South Korea’s film industry faces mounting pressure from rising production costs, reduced investment and competition from streaming platforms.

Korean Film Council data showed theater admissions fell 13.8% in 2025 from a year earlier, while revenue from domestic films plunged 39.4%.

Despite the global popularity of Korean content, Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Chae Hwi-young said in September that the reality facing the country’s creative industries is one of “despair.”

He singled out the film sector as the most vulnerable, noting the number of commercial Korean productions has dropped from around 60 per year to about 20 in 2025.

“Investment has stopped, and the film production scene has run out of money,” Chae said. “The ecosystem of the film industry is collapsing to the point where filmmakers can’t make a living.”

Some A-list filmmakers have responded with dramatic measures such as “microbudget” productions. Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho’s 2025 film The Ugly was made for around $150,000 and performed respectably, drawing more than 1 million theatrical viewers before landing on Netflix.

Against that backdrop, AI is increasingly being seen as a potential lifeline for the industry.

For CJ ENM, The House builds on a growing slate of AI-driven projects, including the animated series Cat Biggie, released online last year.

The new film is less a finished template than a proof of concept. Its visual seams remain visible, and panelists acknowledged that AI tools still struggle with consistency, particularly in longer narrative works.

Still, executives said AI will likely become inseparable from mainstream filmmaking.

“I think AI will be the next generation after CGI,” Baek said. “The era in which the boundaries between regular movies and AI movies disappear will surely come quickly.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the federal government was not informed about the inclusion of CIA officers in an operation targeting a drug lab in the country’s north, adding that she is demanding answers from the US ambassador and state officials.

KATIE Price has put on a busty display during a workout after confessing she “begged doctors” for answers over her weight loss.

Over the last year the former glamour model’s shrinking frame has caused concern amongst her fans.

Katie went strength training with her husband Lee Andrews in a bright pink plunging top and matching shorts.

Lee shared the video clip to Instagram and can be heard motivating his wife and helping her to train.

And although Katie was concentrating hard on her exercises, the glamour model raised a smile when her husband joked: “You can smile, you know.”

Katie recently revealed she was too thin and had begged Doctors for help, when TV host Susanna Reid explained she was worried about the “very skinny” star when she appeared on GMB.

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After talking about her whirlwind marriage to fourth husband Lee Andrews, 41, the topic of the former pin-up’s weight came into question.

Host Susanna then revealed her concern for Katie’s tiny frame, and said: “Katie, can I ask, because I am concerned about your weight. Because you are very, very, very skinny.”

To which the star replied: “So people who follow me online will know I have lost weight. I recognise I lose weight. I look too skinny. I look gaunt.

So I have been to the doctors to see why am I losing this weight. I’ve done all the blood tests. I even had to do the poo one as well to find out.”

Susanna then asked: “The doctor says you’re OK?”

Katie then replied: “And I said to them, ‘everyone says I’m on Ozempic’.

“And they said, ‘well, we can tell in your blood you’re not’. I am lack of iron.

“They’re now checking the other bit.

“And I’m going through pre-menopause at the moment as well.”

Last month, Katie revealed she had actually PUT ON weight after marrying Lee.

After previously calling herself a “stick woman”, she told fans in an Instagram video: “I actually have a confession to make.

“Number one: he is a feeder,” she said pointing to self-proclaimed millionaire businessman Lee.

“I’ve been to the doctors and everything, asking why,” she trailed off, before revealing she had put on weight, and the exact figure.

“I’ve actually put on half a stone,” Katie confessed.

“So it goes to show, that when you’re happy…

“So you’ll be please to know that I’ve put on half a stone because I can’t stop eating.”