humans

At the AI on the Lot media conference last week in Culver City, speakers laid out a view of artificial intelligence that was very much complementary to human workers.

Artificial intelligence is a tool that must be wielded by humans, several said. The idea was to help skilled artists and production specialists do their jobs and experiment, others said.

Of course, to many in Hollywood, AI is not that simple.

Guardrails on its usage emerged as a central issue in the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, and additional rules were added in the recent Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Writers Guild of America contracts. There are still big questions about AI’s effect on jobs in the entertainment business, as well as copyright and ethical concerns.

Whether it’s good or bad or some combination of both, AI, in some form, is probably here to stay.

So, eight months ago Amazon MGM Studios opened an AI Studios division to start work on Project Nara, an AI production toolkit built on Amazon’s AWS cloud computing platform that could be used by teams of filmmakers. Project Nara is still in beta mode, and the company set up a GenAI Creators’ Fund to give filmmakers interested in using the toolkit financial support, while also giving the studio feedback.

The beta testers got eight weeks to produce an animated short and, out of those, the company greenlighted three animated series.

Shortly after the conference, filmmaker Jorge Gutierrez, whose stop-motion-style “Punky Duck” was chosen as one of the greenlighted series, pulled out after an online backlash over his use of AI.

“We respect Jorge’s decision, as well as his incredible talent, his voice and the world he created with ‘Punky Duck,’” an Amazon MGM Studios spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue to be excited about the innovative work moving forward at our studio and the GenAI Creators’ Fund.”

Before the flap over “Punky Duck,” I spoke with Albert Cheng, head of Amazon MGM Studios’ AI Studios, about the goal of the division, what’s next for AI and his belief that humans are at the center of creativity. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why was AI Studios formed?

AI Studios was started last fall because we wanted to learn how to leverage AI technology to build tools that would help enhance or redefine the workflows for film and TV production.

When you look at the horizon of what it takes to drive continued engagement of a global streaming service like Prime Video, we need more original programs. So if you can figure out how we take the same amount of money that we spend and be able to make more shows, that’s ultimately what we want, and we think AI is going to be a help to drive that.

With AI, now we’re looking at how does technology change the way we actually create our cinematic storytelling? It could mean that with AI, we will hear from a lot more voices. If we can actually get the biggest costs down, we will be able to have more voices, be able to take more risks and creative risks most of all.

There’s always concern about what does AI mean for jobs. We believe that it actually creates more jobs and different types of jobs. In fact, people with experience, plus the tools, become even more valuable in terms of their ability to produce excellent quality work. So it’s always about the human behind it.

You mentioned that some of these production crews had more than 100 people, but crews in the past would have been much larger. How do you respond to concerns about that?

You may have smaller crews, but we’ll do more of them [productions], and more in a short period of time. When you actually have smaller productions and you do more of them, you’re increasing your throughput. Your turnover rate of the available jobs is much faster, so your job totals are actually going to be bigger.

You spoke about the idea of AI filmmaking bringing jobs back to L.A. and expanding California’s production incentive eligibility to include AI-assisted filmmaking. Can you elaborate on that?

When you look at AI production, it can be done on a soundstage. We don’t need to go to London, we don’t need to go to other places.

We do have technology companies in California that are driving this, we have people here in the city that have experience, if given the AI tools, can produce great work. So, how can we not incentivize more companies to use our soundstages and finally make productions and make more of them?

Have you or anyone else at Amazon spoken with government officials about this idea of expanding the incentive criteria?

We’ve been talking to a number of bodies about whether it’s possible. The question is, who’s going to take the ball?

How much can you decrease a show’s production budget by using AI?

I think we can get a show to half the cost, [or] to almost a fifth of the cost.

What was the thinking behind the GenAI Creators’ Fund?

We wanted to provide a support and invest in creators who wanted to try it, and then also give us feedback.

We also wanted to show that storytelling is the thing that drives the content. It’s not the technology; the technology just enabled them to make it.

What is the biggest misconception of AI use in production?

There’s a narrative that AI can do so many things by itself, that you don’t need people. That’s absolutely not true. It’s just a technology, it can’t make decisions.

In order for something actually quality to be made, a person actually needs to be behind that, and that’s been proven over and over again. People are still responsible for the output.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Internet culture drove the box office over weekend, with A24’s “Backrooms” hauling in $81.4 million in the U.S. and Canada.

The $10-million horror flick, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture store owner who finds a mysterious portal in his basement, was directed by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons and is based on his online series of the same name. Worldwide, the film made nearly $118 million in its debut weekend.

Focus Features’ “Obsession” also had a big weekend with a 10% jump in domestic box-office revenue in its third outing. The horror movie, which had a production budget of less than $1 million, was directed by Curry Barker, who also built his reputation on YouTube.

Together, the two films highlight the growing power of YouTube — and online culture as a whole — on the big screen. They beat out franchise film “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which dropped 69% from its debut last weekend to rank third at the box office.

What I’m watching

I’m just one episode away from finishing this season of “Bridgerton” on Netflix. While I liked that the show dived into the social class dynamics behind Benedict and Sophie’s romance, I have to say that I loved the secondary focus on Violet Bridgerton and Lord Anderson finding a second chance at love.

A few days ago came the astonishing news that the world record in the half-marathon was obliterated by a 5-foot-5 humanoid robot named Lightning in Beijing.

Now a robot named Ace has achieved another milestone for AI and robotics by defeating expert-level humans at table tennis in Tokyo, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

What’s next, a robotic baseball player named Babe that swats 500-foot home runs and throws 120 mph pitches, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s real-life achievements and commanding a billion dollar contract?

It’s all fun and games until it isn’t.

Extraordinary athletic achievements by AI robots might seem innocuous, especially compared to far more grave threats described by various experts, including the landmark publication “An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks” by the Center for AI Safety in 2023.

To name a few: Misinformation and social media manipulation; job displacement and economic inequality; cybersecurity threats; lethal autonomous weapons; environmental impact; psychological dependence; and ultimately, the existential risk to humanity of losing control of rogue AI systems.

For now, let’s get back to ping-pong.

Ace was developed by good, old Sony, the 80-year-old makers of gaming consoles, televisions, smartphones, cameras and audio equipment that we enjoy every day.

Of course Sony has an AI research division, and while most consumers were still going ga-ga over PlayStation 5 Pro 2TB, it developed the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a competitive physical sport that requires rapid decisions and precision execution.

Ace integrates nine synchronized cameras and three vision systems to track the spinning plastic ping-pong ball. Its lightning-fast processing time would be the envy of even Lightning, the humanoid robot that broke the world record in the half-marathon by nearly seven minutes.

“Here we present Ace, to our knowledge the first real-world autonomous system competitive with elite human table tennis players,” the study said. “Ace addresses the challenges of physical real-time interaction through a new, high-speed perception system using event-based vision sensors and a new control system based on model-free reinforcement learning, as well as state-of-the-art high-speed robot hardware.”

Ace showed out in matches that followed International Table Tennis Federation rules and were officiated by licensed umpires. Most of the matches took place in 2025 — before table tennis tale “Marty Supreme” even hit theaters — although Ace defeated professional players as recently as March.

One such human is Mayuka Taira, who said in comments provided by Sony AI to Reuters that the robot’s strengths are what one might expect: unpredictability and an absence of emotion.

“Because you can’t read its reactions, it’s impossible to sense what kind of shots it dislikes or struggles with, and that makes it even more difficult to play against,” Taira said.

Initial real-world applications of Ace-like robots likely would be in manufacturing and service industries, although untapped potential lies across sports, entertainment and safety-critical environments, according to the study.

“These results highlight the potential of physical AI agents to perform complex, real-time interactive tasks, suggesting broader applications in domains requiring fast, precise human–robot interaction,” the study said.

Those domains certainly could include baseball diamonds, basketball courts and gridirons. Hockey rinks could be lumped in provided robots can skate.

AI already is used in MLB. The vaunted Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS) uses AI-powered Hawk-Eye camera technology and computer vision to determine if pitches are strikes or balls. Twelve high-speed cameras track ball flight and AI delivers the definitive call to the scoreboard within seconds of a challenge.

A robotic batter facing a robotic pitcher with calls made by ABS might eliminate any disagreements over balls and strikes.

Terrifying.

Reuters contributed to this story.