A passionate debate about whether computers and robots can supplant human creativity took place during the session: Up and Coming: Could AI Replace the Traditional Creative Process?
“What is impossible to replace is the creator’s vision and voice,” argued Claire Lemarechal, a writer at France-based Azad Films. “How you see the world and why you may want to tell a story about it is a human vision. A computer has no vision.”
Marina Pavlovic Rivas, consultant/founder of LLimn, a Canada-based specialist in AI tech, countered: “It might be possible to create without a vision.”
“But do we really want that?” Lemarechal responded. At which point, Nadira Azermai, CEO of Scriptbook, a Belgium-based AI company focusing on automated scriptwriting, intervened and said: “There are a lot of shitty movies out there, so I agree some human intervention will be needed.”
Ironically, Scriptbook’s mission is to revolutionise the film-making business. “In the future, it would make sense to produce beautiful artistic movies that are 100% machine-engineered and specifically targeted.”
Scriptbook’s cloud-based platform is able to process and analyse one script in less than five minutes and as many as 10,000 scripts daily. Moreover, the analysis is also able to help producers predict how well the film will perform in terms of viewing figures.
Azermai then explained the problem with today’s film-making system. “We’re in a business where we’re working in the same way we did 100 years ago; 87% of movies lose money at the box office; and the European sector is falling hard and fast. Until now, we had no means of analysing a script’s potential apart from reading it line by line, which is time-consuming.”
And while she was there to advocate why AI, deep-learning and algorithms will one day be able to produce original hit-making creative scripts, she said the tech was still embryonic.
Pavlovic Rivas noted the significant progress already taking place with AI able to recreate human faces used in videos. Furthermore, AI-created original music might be used as movie soundtracks in the next few years, she added.
Writer Lemarechal said she welcomed any computer-assistance as opposed to computer replacement. “Of course, experience and what has been done before is basis of writing by humans. What comes next is the creation of original characters and giving life to them. Maybe, the computer can help us, but as a co-writer with no egos.”
This article was written by Juliana Korenteng for MIPTV News magazine, and edited by Kristine Clifford. Read all MIPTV publications online here…
