AI x Creativity News: November 21st, 2024
This week: Ben Affleck, Coca-Cola and Harper-Collins
This is our a new newsletter format about the latest happenings at the intersection of creativity and AI…
BEN AFFLECK ON AI AND MOVIE MAKING
A video of Ben Affleck opining on the future of AI in film making blew up on X, in it Affleck says that AI isn’t going to replace film-makers, saying:
“movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI.”
What he did say was that AI film making would lower the barrier to entry for film-making:
“What AI is going to do is dis-intermediate the more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier to entry, that will allow more voices to be heard.”
This reminded us of a great clip of Affleck in 2003 when asked for his take on how the internet and file sharing would impact the movie industry - he’d go on to predict annual subscription based on demand entertainment like Spotify and Netflix, saying:
"I think an annual subscription-based system is one that works, It will be movies on demand but it will be a tiered structure"
COCA-COLA AI HOLIDAY ADVERT
Coca Cola released its Christmas advert, this year generated using AI. This unsurprisingly irked those opposed to AI image generation… leading to headlines about ‘controversy’ triggered by the ad.
A note on the ad says ‘created with ‘Real Magic AI’ - Coca-Cola’s own AI system - leading us to think, some kind of Christmas themed branded content creation app may be in the works. The AI generated Ad might well be a ploy to court controversy - as free marketing. All publicity is good publicity as they say…
Could this be the start of a new trend in AI ‘outrage marketing’ - where brands deliberately antagonize the anti-AI crowd?
HarperCollins AI Deal
Giant publisher Harper-Collins has started to ask its authors to opt-in to AI training systems from companies it is working with - offering a flat fee to authors of $2,500 - it seems this wasn’t enough to avoid backlash…
Earlier this year HarperCollins announced a deal with ElevenLabs to create audiobooks for foreign translations it wouldn’t otherwise have made.
This is an important reminder that AI will likely do more things that wouldn’t have otherwise been done, than it will replace things already done by humans - stuff like creating foreign language audiobooks, will increase the reach and sales of authors work. This will of course require authors give permission that their work be fed into AI systems.