Mountain view – For decades, Hollywood directors, including Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron and Alex Garland, have chosen artificial intelligence as a villain who can become a killing machine.
Even the “AI: artificial intelligence” relatively hopeful of Steven Spielberg had a pessimistic advantage in his vision of the future.
Now Google, a leading AI technology developer, wants to keep the cultural conversations of technology as seen in “The Terminator”, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Ex machina”.
To do so, the technological giant of Mountain View, California, is financing short films that portray technology in a less nightmare light.
The Google initiative, called “AI on the screen”, is an association with Range Media Partners, a talent management and production company that represents a wide variety of entertainment customers, including actors and writers. The range is producing movies.
Until now, two short films have been green through the project: one, titled “Sweetwater”, tells the story of a man who visits his childhood house and discovers a hologram of his famous mother Muerta. Michael Keaton will direct and appear in the film, which was written by his son, Sean Douglas. It is the first project they are working together.
The other, “lucid”, examines a couple who wants to escape from their suffocating reality and risk everything in a device that allows them to share the same dream.
“They were looking for stories that were not stories of the Final Judgment Day, with what was fine, because I think we have seen many of those,” Douglas told The Times. “It's nice to see more, not too positive, but a kind of medium terrain stories.”
The effort comes at a time when many Americans have feelings found on AI. A 2024 survey from the University of Bentley and Gallup showed that 56% of Americans believe that AI makes “equal amounts of damage and well”, while 31% believe that it does “more damage than well.” Changing the way AI in popular culture is represented could help change those perceptions, or at least that is what some AI technicians and enthusiasts expect.
Google has a lot to convince consumers that AI can be a force for good, or at least not bad. The hot space is increasingly full of startups and players established such as Operai, Anthrope, Apple and Facebook Meta.
Google financed shorts, which last for 15 to 20 minutes, are not commercial for AI, per se. Rather, Google is looking to finance films that explore the intersection of humanity and technology, said Mira Lane, Vice President of Technology and Google Society. Google is not pressing its products in the movies, and the movies are not made with AI, he added.
“Stories about technology in movies are overwhelmingly characterized by a dystopian perspective,” said Lane. “When we think of AI, there are so many nuances to consider, which is what this program is about. How could we tell more human stories? How do you look coexist? What are some of those dilemmas that will arise?”
Google did not reveal how much they are investing in the movies. The company said it wants to finance many more films, but it does not have an objective number. Some of the shorts could eventually become long -term characteristics, Google said.
Creators who work with Google have access to company technology experts who can share more information about technology. Does technology in the script already exist, for example? How would it work in real life?
“We are living with this technology and AI: the questions arise include: how does it affect us and how can we connect emotionally through this type of technology?” Rachel Douglas said, a Range partner, who is married to Sean Douglas.
The AI has been a controversial issue in Hollywood, playing an important role in the strikes of the writers and actors of 2023.
The actors fear that their similarities and voices will be replicated and manipulated without permission or payment. Writers concern that their work is being used without their permission to create scripts and stories schemes generated by AI. Animation and special effects work could be destroyed. Editors and record stamps have sued to protect their intellectual property.
Negative public perceptions on AI could put technological companies at a disadvantage when such cases go to the jurors of lay people. That is a reason why companies are motivated to change the reputation of AI.
“There is an incredible amount of skepticism in the public world about what the AI is and what AI will do in the future,” said Sean Pak, an intellectual property lawyer of Quinn Emanuel, in a conference panel. “We, as an industry, have to do a better job by communicating public benefits and explaining in a simple and clear language what we are doing and what we are not doing.”
The AI companies, including OpenAi, Google and Meta, have demonstrated or shared their tools with studies and directors of films and televisions. Meta has been associated with horror Studio Blumhouse and Venture Lightstorm Vision de Cameron in AI -related initiatives.
On Tuesday, Google announced an association with the primary soup of the director of the director of “The Whale” Darren Aronofsky, who will work with three filmmakers in short films and will give access to Google's Video Video AI generator.
Proponents say that technology can make cinema cheaper and give artists more flexibility at a time when the cinema business is fighting.
“If we want to continue watching the types of movies that I have always loved and that I like to do and that I will see … we have to discover how to reduce the cost of that in half,” Cameron said in a podcast last month with the director of Meta technology. Cameron sits on the Stability Start Board AI.
IA companies are finding other creative ways to make technology more accessible. In an example, the important artificial intelligence firm Anthrope is sponsoring an upcoming exhibition in the Exploratorium, a museum of science and art in San Francisco. Eric Dimond, senior director of exhibitions, said he hopes that the exhibition, called “adventures in AI”, make more people explore the costs and benefits of AI.
Anthrope did not participate in the conceptualization of the exhibition, said Dimond, although visitors can interact with their AI Claude model, as well as Openai and Olevenlabs tools.
As Google and others try to put a softer approach to technology, spectators are still receiving many stories about the dangers that robots go crazy.
The recent stories of the IA Gone Wrong include the Blumuse horror movie of Blumhouse “M3Gan”, on a robot that becomes so protective of a young woman who begins to wreak havoc. Last year, another Blumhouse horror movie, “Tarar”, followed a family terrified by an AI assistant.
This summer, “M3Gan” is getting a sequel, launched in the cinemas of Universal Pictures. It is expected to be a box office success.
