A person mourns the lack of his useless superstar mother, who unexpectedly seems earlier than him as a hologram in his childhood dwelling, singing and strumming a guitar.
The touching scene is from a brand new brief movie known as “Sweetwater” that has an unlikely backer: Google.
Amid all of the hand-wringing over synthetic intelligence and the potential risk it poses to Hollywood and the inventive group, the tech big is seeking to reframe the narrative with a 21-minute movie that examines whether or not expertise may also help people course of grief on this new period of the digital age.
Google set the stage for that dialogue with a glitzy occasion on the Academy Museum of Movement Photos on Monday night time. Actors, filmmakers, producers and leisure employees packed a Los Angeles theater to observe “Sweetwater,” starring Michael Keaton and Kyra Sedgwick.
Google commissioned “Sweetwater” with Santa Monica-based expertise administration agency Vary Media Companions to discover the complicated relationship between AI and humanity.
The Mountain View firm has a vested curiosity in portray AI in a extra favorable gentle. The YouTube proprietor is a significant investor and companion within the AI agency Anthropic, which itself has been the goal of lawsuits over accusations of copyright infringement within the arts. Along with its partnership with Anthropic, Google is individually growing its personal AI instruments, together with Gemini and Venture Astra.
“The aim proper now could be to not particularly be promoting their product,” mentioned Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Heart for Tv and Common Tradition at Syracuse College. “The aim proper now could be to be making a world the place individuals are comfy supporting AI, utilizing it with no worry, with no crucial qualms by any means, like we dove into social media … I believe that’s been a more durable process with AI.”
Depictions of the digital afterlife in reveals resembling “Black Mirror” can really feel bleak, foreshadowing a dystopian future the place folks get resurrected from the grave as chatbots and robots.
In “Sweetwater,” a hologram of the deceased mother tugs on the heartstrings of viewers, hinting on the risk that AI might be used to digitally protect a beloved one or present consolation to those that are grieving.
“It simply poses the query, I haven’t even actually resolved it for myself,” mentioned Sean Douglas, Keaton’s son and the movie’s author, in an interview. “If offered with this risk, would you need that — and what are the parameters of how actual an expertise like this may be?”
The rise of synthetic intelligence has prompted conversations and criticism concerning the impression of the expertise, together with the way it may change the way in which folks expertise the world.
Hollywood is reckoning with related questions as storytellers carry up fears about copyright violations, compensation and the danger of AI competing with actors, writers and artists for work. Expertise has made it potential to carry again actors, writers and musicians from the useless in digital type. Some folks already use chatbots like therapists.
Tech corporations resembling Google that present AI assistants and merchandise to generate pictures, textual content and video market their instruments as a means to assist inventive folks, not substitute them.
Google’s AI merchandise don’t seem within the “Sweetwater” movie, though the corporate does have a holographic 3D communication expertise known as Google Beam that makes use of AI.
Customers are cut up on whether or not AI will assist or hurt creativity, in line with a report from the Pew Analysis Heart. Roughly 53% assume AI will worsen folks’s capacity to assume creatively whereas 16% say elevated use of AI will make this higher. Others aren’t positive or thought it might be neither higher nor worse.
Neil Parris, head of strategic content material partnerships for Google’s movie and tv 100 Zeros initiative, mentioned as folks see a wide range of AI tales — some much less dystopian — it may develop how they consider the usage of expertise.
“It’s meant to empower human creativity,” mentioned Parris, who government produced the brief movie. “It would evolve and form the roles that folks have within the inventive course of as any expertise has over the course of the historical past of filmmaking.”
“Sweetwater” first premiered in September in New York however its distribution hasn’t been finalized . The filmmakers mentioned they’re additionally open to creating it longer.
The panel dialogue concerning the movie additionally shined a highlight on the strain between people and machines.
“I used to be excited concerning the prospect of an actor enjoying AI as a substitute of AI enjoying an actor. I believed that was factor,” mentioned Sedgwick because the viewers applauded.
Earlier this 12 months, many Hollywood actors have been outraged when the creator behind an AI-generated character, Tilly Norwood, introduced Norwood would quickly be signed to a expertise company. The AI character might be used to behave in movies and TV reveals, roles that might immediately compete towards human actors.
Keaton, who additionally directed the movie, mentioned that whereas he isn’t probably the most tech savvy, curiosity and the chance to work along with his son led him to direct and star within the movie, but it surely’s not meant to be a business for AI.
The “Google of us” have been “nice,” he mentioned on stage Monday, however the actor additionally expressed considerations concerning the impression of AI on jobs and fairness.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, additionally added AI instruments to its platform that prepare on the work of its video creators. Some creators have expressed worry that this might make it simpler for others to repeat their work and inventive kinds.
“You don’t substitute anyone within the trade. I’m very old school about folks and employment and work and being protected,” Keaton mentioned in an interview. “And on the similar time, I discover these items actually fascinating and curious.”
Whereas the movie is about AI, the filmmakers deliberately didn’t use AI to create digital actors.
“We didn’t need to make it murky the place, oh, we’re utilizing AI, and we’re speaking about it,” Douglas mentioned.
One good thing about working with Google, he mentioned, was the corporate gave entry to researchers and their tech employees to be taught extra concerning the digital afterlife.
Jed Brubaker, an affiliate professor on the College of Colorado Boulder who has researched the advantages and dangers of AI afterlives with Google DeepMind, labored with the filmmakers as they sorted out the design of the “generative ghost” of the mother. In “Sweetwater,” the mother’s hologram will get projected from an orb.
“These are all selections we get to make with generative ghosts as nicely, and so they’ll have completely different impacts on how folks expertise and work together with them,” Brubaker mentioned. “In the identical means that studying your grandfather’s journal is completely different than wanting by means of a photograph album of photographs of your grandfather.”
Already, Google mentioned after the screening, folks within the leisure trade expressed curiosity in working with the corporate on future movie tasks.
“Our worry of machines has been massively fanned by Hollywood over many many years,” mentioned Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman College’s Dodge School of Movie and Media Arts. “You could possibly say Hollywood is choosing up societal fears.”
