Hollywood is currently facing a whirlwind of mixed emotions sparked by the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) in Marvel’s newest superhero series, ‘Secret Invasion.’ This development adds a new dimension to an already tense landscape, where writers and other creative professionals are wrestling with uncertainty about their roles in an industry progressively impacted by technology.
Ali Selim, the director of the Disney+ show, an espionage-filled thriller featuring shape-shifting aliens and starring Samuel L Jackson, has openly discussed using a blend of AI and human input to craft the opening credits. The imaginative sequence melds shadowy human figures with green-tinged cityscapes and spacecraft, gradually unmasking the eerie ‘Skrulls,’ the alien entities pivotal to the show.
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The aim of using AI was to instill a sense of impending doom, akin to the Skrull-induced paranoia encapsulated in the show, Selim told Polygon. The process was intriguing and felt explorative, novel, and inescapable. Yet, this novelty has stirred a backlash in Hollywood, where anxiety is growing over AI’s potential to jeopardize the livelihoods of scriptwriters, designers, and even actors.
With the ongoing writers’ strike now into its eighth week, streaming giants such as Netflix and Disney have not explicitly discounted the possibility of AI replacing human writers. This factor has significantly contributed to the strike.
Jeff Simpson, the visual development concept artist for ‘Secret Invasion,’ expressed deep concerns over the use of AI, terming it as unethical, perilous, and a potential career-killer for artists. Similarly, storyboard artist Jon Lam called it a bitter pill for all artists and writers amidst the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike.
The WGA has called for a binding agreement to regulate AI use, proposing that any AI-created content should not qualify for royalties as ‘literary’ or ‘source’ material, and that scripts written by WGA members should not be used for training AI. However, these suggestions were rejected by the studios, with a counter-proposal to hold yearly discussions about technological advancements.
Method Studios, which designed the main titles for ‘Secret Invasion,’ stated that AI is merely one tool within a broader toolkit utilized by their artists, emphasizing that no artists lost their jobs due to AI use. Nevertheless, these claims are little consolation for an industry grappling with its future in an increasingly digitized world.
This report is based on a story published by Malay Mail.
