Saudi Makes Big Bet On AI Films As Hollywood Moves From Studios To Datacenters (reuters.com) 38
pbahra writes: Saudi Arabia is betting that the future of Hollywood won't be built in physical stages but in datacenters. In a push to anchor itself in next-generation film production, Riyadh-based Humain has led Luma AI's latest Series C round, backing the shift towards cloud-based, AI-generated video rather than traditional studio infrastructure.. Humain's announcement says the new investment will accelerate Luma's development of world models capable of learning from video, audio and language to generate photorealistic scenes, environments and characters on demand. Supporters argue this could upend film-making by pushing much of Hollywood's production pipeline into high-performance datacenters rather than physical sets.
Sure....uh huh (Score:3, Funny)
oh wait.....
Re: (Score:3)
And there is a small chance that "making movie making cheap via AI" might allow to form some small, independent studios that can take risks at least regarding the story, even if the AI-produced images look less than unique.
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To be fair, that has already long been the case for entire genres like "superhero movies" or "Bollywood melodramas" or "Final Destination Part 1 to Part 347".
That was the OP's point. Hence the "oh wait..."
Re: Sure....uh huh (Score:1)
Have you seen AI porn?
Re: Sure....uh huh (Score:1)
Is "6 7" just the new All your base?
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No, I don't know where to find it. :-)
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More or less.
AI companies are overselling the capability, but who wants to watch this shitty EP-mode VHS-quality videos with no lip sync, and sounding like they're being played on an analog telephone.
The few "looks not that shitty" AI stuff I've seen has been stuff set to music. But there is no consistency scene to scene.
The few good uses of the AI video shit are like "vine" style 10 second react meme's. Stuff that you need a 'react' to immediately and can't commission someone to animate and wait a month to
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The next Star Wars movie will be told in Stormtrooper vlog posts interspersed with 'look at my new armor' and 'here's how I apply my Stormtrooper makeup' videos from Foxtrot Squad.
Many of the Bigfoot and Stormtrooper vlogs on Youtube are more entertaining than the Hollywood movies I've watched in the last few years.
Re:Sure....uh huh (Score:4, Interesting)
This video does a good job of examining why movies look bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re: Sure....uh huh (Score:1)
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Just like Country Music. It turns out the #1 song on the Country Charts is generated by AI, and nobody can tell the difference.
Re: Sure....uh huh (Score:2)
Also, it sounds like absolute crap and the lyrics suck ass. Nobody had ever listened to the song before the fake headline, but if they did, I'm pretty sure almost everyone would have skipped that unlistenable garbage after 5 seconds.
Lets ask the studio exectcutives.... (Score:2)
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Re:Lets ask the studio exectcutives.... (Score:4, Funny)
"Our fingers go to 11"
Re: Lets ask the studio exectcutives.... (Score:1)
When real movies have Starbucks cups in a medieval scene, are you as critical? Or do you hold AI to a doubly high standard?
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When real movies have Starbucks cups in a medieval scene, are you as critical? Or do you hold AI to a doubly high standard?
Game of Thrones wasn't a movie, it was a television show where the creators gave up on the concept part way through and then bum-rushed the finish line. But, to your point, *EVERYBODY* was critical of that, including the people that were actually involved in the scene.
Movies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Movies? (Score:2)
Like a tasp but far more sophisticated
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The future entertainment will be generated on the fly, individualized and driven by the AIs close attention to your responses.
That assumes a future where "responses" from puny humans matter. If AI becomes good enough to create entertainment content, similar to what we know today, on the fly in real time, chances are it has no incentive to do so.
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Why not just have it design an actual drug for you? You could tell it to make it twice as good as the movie.
Re:Movies? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm convinced of it. You'll supply a script, cast, and style and it will generate the movie. At some point, you will also be able to interact with the movie, talking to the characters ("your other left"), talking to the generator ("skip this scene").
Famous actors will sell their personas, famous writers will sell scripts, famous directors and producers will sell styles, but I think most people will pay less for B-list and C-list and Z-list content that they can tweak to get something different every time.
Unions Unite! to stop this job killing BS! (Score:2)
Unions Unite! to stop this job killing BS!
predictable (Score:2)
This has been predictable for a year or two, but maybe it isn't a bad thing. A few people with lots of imagination but not much money could make some decent films without having to remortgage their house. As the cost of movie production drops, people will be more able to take a flyer at something that isn't a clone of the recent blockbusters. I want to see films that were rejected because they were too risky and expensive to make.
Re: predictable (Score:2)
Not that great movies need those effects. The most exciting and risky movies are probably more likely to come from two students with a 90s camcorder and living on cup noodles, rather than someone
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>> the true cost of GenAI would be with the endless reprompting
I don't know when I last bothered to watch a "two students with a 90s camcorder" movie. But two creative people without much money could very well craft a masterpiece in high fidelity. As it said in the article;
A $100,000 production using traditional filming techniques would cost $1,000 if generated by AI, according to Jain. “The economic forces are so strong that it is inarguable.”
'Cause data centers in the desert makes sense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Electricity may be cheap in Saudi Arabia, but it's also 45 degrees Celsius for much of the year.
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Electricity may be cheap in Saudi Arabia, but it's also 45 degrees Celsius for much of the year.
At least the AI actors won't complain about the heat
Right after the failure of Neom (Score:2)
Their crazy linear city in the desert didn't pan out: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
So now they are going to make fake movies instead?
A country can afford to do stuff like this if they are a monarchy with a giant pile of oil money.
Re:Right after the failure of Neom (Score:4, Insightful)
I have my doubts about freedom of expression (Score:2)
If they plan to actually generate movies in Saudi Arabia, their morality police are going to restrict them heavily. I doubt most of the rest of the world would be interested for long.
If their plan is only to make the software, will those contracts ban anything forbidden by the Saudi morality police? Will the software have hidden restraints? It would be easy to detect forbidden scenes. It might not be so easy to detect more subtle restraints, such as ideological bias.
At least full transition to AI ain't gonna happen (Score:2)
Wonder how the Saudis would like... (Score:2)
AI-generated hadiths?