How Artificial Intelligence Is Used in the Film Industry
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Filmmaking, Data Science, AI

Ever watched a movie written by Artificial Intelligence and animated by a deep learning algorithm? Sounds fantastic, no? But the reality is that AI has already been integrated into many aspects of the film industry to predict the success of movies, write scripts, design graphics, select the cast and even promote the film projects.

Let’s see how AI may be used at different stages of filmmaking.

Writing scripts

Choosing the script that will gain impact and generate revenues is important. Using AI to create new scripts may help filmmakers deal with this task more efficiently. Being fed with large amounts of data in the form of movie scripts, machine learning algorithms analyze the data, learn from them, and come up with unique scripts. This makes the process much faster, saving significant time and resources for filmmakers.

Predicting the success of a film

AI may also be used to analyze a film’s script so as to predict the revenues the film is likely to earn. Though algorithmic predictions may not always prove to be completely accurate, they’re already attracting growing interest from major film studios. For example, Warner Bros. has turned to Cinelytic AI-based platform to predict the success of its movies and box office receipts. 20th Century Fox has integrated the Merlin system that uses AI and machine learning to match movies to particular genres and audiences, as well as provide complete demographics for any movie. ScriptBook is another AI-based film prediction system that has been used by Sony Pictures to analyze 62 of its movies.

Selecting actors

AI technologies can speed up the process of casting actors by performing auditions automatically. AI platforms look for actors in the database according to the specified criteria and textual image description, they may also be used to add actors in films digitally in different emotions and even de-age actors for certain roles. Filmmakers may also benefit from applying AI to create various digital characters, such as the fictional supervillain Thanos for Avengers: Infinity War that was designed by using machine learning.

Promoting movies

Film studios have been using AI for effective advertising and promotion. Analyzing different factors such as audience base, actors’ popularity across the globe, film studios may plan their campaigns according to certain locations where they expect the highest interest from the audience. For example, 20th Century Fox has developed the Merlin Video neural network to predict the success of promotional videos. The film studio has also used IBM’s supercomputer for making the advertising clip for the movie Morgan.

Producing movies

The last but not the least — Artificial Intelligence also makes its own movies. Benjamin AI created the science fiction movie “Zone Out” in just 48 hours in collaboration with Ross Goodwin. Though the movie is not likely to win any awards, it’s still an impressive and challenging experience and a step forward into automating video creation with the intelligent use of AI technology.

With so many innovative applications across moviemaking, AI brings a multitude of benefits to the film industry, including improving the overall filmmaking process, saving time and resources, and generating higher revenues.