For this impulse i wanted to spend some time getting to know the minds behind the Curious Refuge team. The first episode is less of a podcast and more of an interview of Caleb Ward, founder of Curious Refuge, conducted by Shelby Ward. The episode seems to have been aimed as an intro to the topic of AI in creative workflows, especially in Hollywood.
Content
C. Ward states in the beginning, that AI can be useful in many ways, a VFX artist may use it to help with code, a creative director may use it to come up with an idea and so on. Generally, AI at the moment is more like a creative assistant, more specifically, a hungover assistant as per C. Ward. User input is still vital and many AI tools still need to be used diligently and thoughtfully.
C. Ward goes on to tell the story about how his first big AI film project, Star Wars by Wes Anderson Trailer | The Galactic Menagerie, went viral and gained media attention from the likes of the Hollywood Reporter, and ultimately sparked the idea and funding of the Curious Refuge bootcamp centred around AI filmmaking.
The next major point Ward makes is claiming that AI art is just as valid as other art forms, comparing it to the computer as a tool, saying that just by sitting in front of a computer no art would be made, and that it’s all about the person creating the art as well as the person consuming the art. He defines art as something that’s created by human skill and evokes emotion.
They also speak about the arguments that AI art is killing art, and that it is trained on art by artists that may not consent to that usage. C. Ward says that art is definitely not the death of art and compares it to other times in history where new methods and technologies emerged to create art that were frowned upon, but have never ‘killed’ an art form. They more or less ignore the legal consequences of AI training data, saying that it’s being figured out at the moment. As far as the morality of the situation goes, they say that AI generations are always novel in the way that they will never recreate any of the images it was trained on, but always combine many aspects of the billions of parameters and data it was trained on.
They also speak about AI stealing or replacing jobs. C. Ward thinks that AI primarily replaces repetitive or tedious tasks, which in his opinion is a good thing. Secondly, he says that AI will replace some jobs, just not as soon as anyone thinks and says that it will overall improve most jobs, rather than completely replace them. I’m inclined to agree, I think it’s just a tool that we need to use as efficiently as possible and has the potential to remove some of the more tedious tasks about many jobs. I’m thinking that AI will not cause a big deletion of jobs, but rather a shift of tasks done by humans vs. computers. C. Ward gives the examples of studios using 3D scanned people as background actors, freeing background actors to focus on roles where they are in the centre of the action. I’m not sure if it’s the best comparison but it’s fine for now.
They go on to speak about Hollywood production pipelines and AI’s position in that. C. Ward says that the jobs will stay the same, but that AI will be another tool in the belt of professionals. Meaning there will be a producer, and then a producer that can use AI. Ultimately this has the potential to even the playing field between bigger clients and smaller clients, and improve production quality across the board. He does emphasise that AI does require a lot of creative vision and finesse, so it is only a sort of add-on skill for someone who is already skilled in their field.
S. Ward asks how to stay grounded in times where technologies evolve so quickly that, as an artist, one has to stay on ones feet to keep up with the new tools and trends to stay relevant. C. Ward recommends going back to traditional approaches, to keep active physically, to go to art museums and spend time on things that inspire and not necessarily have anything to do with AI.
How to stay relevant is another argument, of course C. Ward recommends you sign up to their newsletter to stay up to date, but also mentions other creatives like Theoretically Media and Matt Wolf, both of which produce fantastic quality films and share their knowledge about the current state of AI openly.
The podcast closes with C. Ward answering some rapid fire questions:
Q: Is AI dangerous for the creative industry?
A: No
Q: Is AI art real art?
A: Yes
Q: Are AI artists less creative?
A: No
Q: Is AI the end of Hollywood?
A: Hollywood is the end of Hollywood.
S. Ward continues to ask similar questions, and given that C. Ward is the founder of a company that is based on teaching how to use AI in creative workflows, his answers continue to be unsurprisingly in favour of the technology.
Thoughts
Overall the podcast is a nice introduction for people unfamiliar with AI, however it is quite biased in favour towards AI technologies, given that both the interviewer and the interviewee are founders of a company that profits off of the technology. They do offer some interesting arguments about how it may change the industry, however, which gives me some inspiration about where to potentially take the theoretical part of my master’s thesis. I would also love to conduct at least one interview for my master’s thesis, as literature takes so long to publish that by the time it is released, it may be outdated already and therefore interviews may be a better source for more recent information. This is of course also concern about the relevance of my thesis but I would prefer not to think about that for the time being.
