philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Great Pivot: How Hollywood Studios Are Moving Beyond AI Experimentation

Three years ago, Hollywood executives sat silently in the audience at AI on the Lot, a conference on AI’s place in the media industry furiously taking notes while independent filmmakers shared their experiments with artificial intelligence tools. This year, Amazon Studios executives took the stage publicly on Thursday to discuss how they’re using generative AI — a milestone that signals the entertainment industry’s dramatic shift from fearful observer to active participant in the AI revolution.

... The event’s location in Culver City — where Amazon, Apple and other tech companies have planted flags in their bid to reshape entertainment — underscores how the boundaries between Silicon Valley and Hollywood are blurring through AI adoption. ...

...  the goal no longer being to create “AI content” but rather good content that happens to leverage AI tools.  ...

This year’s conference, sold out at 1,200 attendees, had a fundamentally different energy. ...

The conference’s defining moment came when Amazon MGM Studios executives spoke publicly about AI for the first time in a panel titled “Cloud-Connected Workflows to Empower Storytellers With Gen AI.” The session featured Chris Del Conte, director of VFX at Amazon MGM Studios; Gerard Medioni, vice president and distinguished scientist; and Danae Kokenos, head of technology innovation, discussing how the studio is helping creative partners navigate generative AI and integrating these tools into creative pipelines. ...

Dan O’Brien, the 54-year-old mayor of Culver City and feature film and promo editor with 25 years of experience, captured the mood in his remarks during the conference’s opening: “Do I embrace the change that is coming or do I let it roll me over?” ...

A key factor enabling Hollywood’s embrace of AI has been the emergence of “clean models” — AI systems trained on verifiably licensed data rather than scraped web content. Rachel Joy-Victor, co-founder of AI studio FBRC AI who has come to all three AI on the Lot conferences, sees this as crucial to the industry’s adoption. ...

The technology is advancing at breakneck speed, with tools becoming outdated within weeks of release. Video AI models still lag roughly two years behind text-based large language models, according to Amit Jain, the CEO of Luma Labs, ...

See the full story here: https://www.thewrap.com/ai-on-the-lot-hollywood-studio-experimentation/