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Comment by throw_pm23 | Hacker News Reader

AI will also eliminate 90% of the audience. I certainly don't see myself queuing up to watch any AI-produced or -enhanced movie. TBH, they lost me much longer time ago, but I assume it will be a larger transition.

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> I certainly don't see myself queuing up to watch any AI-produced or -enhanced movie.

When animated hand drawn cartoons (think Disney) were first introduced, film critics said they would never watch it, because didn't have actors in it.

When CGI was introduced, film critics said they would never watch it, because the acting wasn't real.

When 3D rendered movies (think Pixar) were first introduced, film critics said they would never watch it, because it wasn't hand drawn.

Just like cartoons, CGI and 3D rendered movies, AI generated movies has the potential to become a huge market. Maybe not in long format at the beginning, but you bet that short format video platforms such as TikTok and YouTube (shorts) will be flooded with AI generated content soon.

> TBH, they lost me much longer time ago, but I assume it will be a larger transition.

The 'great' thing about platforms like TikTok, is that it'll give a very fast feedback loop on whether the audience is willing to watch it or not. So I expect we'll know whether this transition you speak of will happen or not rather soon. My bet is that it won't, I expect people to watch it anyway.

People already don't care for job-killing products and processes that have way more negative impact than AI-generated movies. For instance, they don't care that they are eating food that is mass produced through a process that eliminated 90% of the jobs previously required for producing it, and which now contains high-fructose sugar, artificial preservatives, etc.

There will be a short-lived, knee jerk reaction against AI-created content. But ultimately, if the content looks good, people will wholeheartedly embrace it.

Are any of these things true at scale? The two I can remember -- CGI and 3D rendered movies, were all lauded by audiences and critics as well as the industry when they emerged. The two films which brought CGI to mainstream audiences were Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, both critical hits. Toy Story was also huge with critics and no one claimed it wasn't 'real' animation.

I think you are just making things up because they make a good argument.

At scale? I don't think so. Most didn't care, I remember 80's magazines questioning CGI and predicting another death of true art (no soul! computers do the job for you!!1), but that's it. Others were fascinated by the novel gimmick. But the same is true for AI-generated imagery - nobody cares in general how the sausage is made, people care about the message and execution. As long as it's good, people like it.

And unlike with Toy Story/Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within/The Phantom Menace, this time there might not even be a novel gimmick/look to sell, as you'll be free to choose any style you like.

GP is actually responding to @throw_pm23, and their number (losing 90% of the audience) seems arbitrary and implausible.

> Maybe not in long format at the beginning, but you bet that short format video platforms such as TikTok and YouTube (shorts) will be flooded with AI generated content soon.

This is already happening to some degree, not usually 100% AI-produced, but AI as a labor saving device or to get some kind of output you couldn’t get before. Presidents playing Yu-Gi-Oh! were practically a genre on YouTube last year, and that’s not all that’s been done with their voices.

I liked watching them play Minecraft

When CGI was introduced, film critics said they would never watch it, because the acting wasn't real.

I know I'm likely the minority here, but I really dislike heavy use CGI films, like a LOT.

Same here. And it's starting to look worse and worse over time. Before CGI was used to enhance a scene. Now no one shoots a scene in camera and adds CGI later (think Transformers / Jurassic Park), the whole scene is just CGI and it looks like crap.

I would wager you mostly dislike bad CGI – that's any CGI you actively notice being CGI – like most of us do. Of course, the disdain varies, but I have yet to meet someone who thought CGI was cool, because it was noticeable.

Early computer generated visual effects were obvious and bad, they had to be used sparingly to avoid alienating the audience.

Now, they're on basically every frame of basically every film.

Even today, there's good and bad uses of CG, usually coming down to schedule and creative direction. The average quality has gone up substantially, though. As you pointed out, there's all kinds of ways to use CGI and VFX more subtly that most people would never realize. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k is a great example of green screen set replacement being used for things as ordinary as a city street, 15 years ago on a TV series budget.

I expect the use of AI will be similarly varied in the beginning. It could be used just for background details. It could be used in a hybrid fashion where artists design the characters with reference poses, a storyboard, and maybe even some keyframes, and the AI fills in the gaps. And of course some studios will just be sloppy and use AI to generate larger pieces without fixing the glitches and inconsistencies.

People are sometimes dismissive of AI based on the "fire and forget" prompting modes but don't consider AI-assisted tools or human-assisted AI like inpainting.

But that's the thing, I am completely alienated from films already and watch maybe one a year or so when flying long distance. Whether it will be a mass transition, though, I agree that is hard to tell.

Fair enough. I'm not a big film buff either, but for me that's due to the simplifications necessary for film as a medium rather than the acting, plot, or effects. Those simplifications are less present in a series, miniseries, or a multi-part film.

Why not? Why do you assume you could tell if its AI-produced or -enhanced?

I find art to be a communication (however indirect) between people. I have no interest in it if there is no other person on the other side. It could be that production gets technically so good that I cannot recognize it, but I will check out much earlier when the suspicion will already be there.

CGI jobs are already boring and repetitive industrial "cog in the machine" type jobs though. The grunts doing the actual work don't have any say what their output should look like, there is no "personal touch" or creativity involved. It's all been professionalised to death long ago.

You are right of course, which is partly why I find almost everything produced in the last decade totally uninteresting, except maybe small independent stuff.

AI has already written the last few Disney movies, so why not animation?

I think we'll see these types of films going the way of books and recorded music. We'll have an explosion of films released to hyper-niche audiences (at best). The middle of the market goes away. 10-20 traditional films still get produced and marketed to large audiences. This evolution makes more sense, since to your point — people like you have already stopped watching the product.

I suspect there is a market for adult-focused genre-based animated films that where never economically feasible before.

I feel the same way, but time after time it's shown that 90% of people stick with the heavily enshittified product if it's what they're used to. Most people are passive and docile.

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