December 5, 2023 • 26 mins
Current senior Jeff Staub talks with Alumni Michele Terpstra, Director of Digital Content at Toolfarm.com, about AI and tools for filmmakers. They talk about what AI is, recent legal issues surrounding it, how it will affect the film industry, and whether students should be taught how to use it and the ethics surrounding it.
AI tutorial: https://www.toolfarm.com/tutorial/a-i-tools-for-video-pros-filmmakers-content-creators-indepth/
To learn about ways you can support GVSU film and video students:
AI tutorial: https://www.toolfarm.com/tutorial/a-i-tools-for-video-pros-filmmakers-content-creators-indepth/
To learn about ways you can support GVSU film and video students:
- The Dirk Koning Memorial Film and Video Scholarship
- The Chuck Peterson Memorial Fellowship
- Morse-Cuppy Film, Video, Animation Study Abroad Endowed Scholarship
- GVSU F/V Alumni: https://www.facebook.com/groups/gvsufilmvideoalumni
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to Alumni Live (00:03):
The Podcast.
These are conversations with GrandValley State University film and video
graduates about the industry, thefilm, video, major and alumni profiles.
Welcome back to Alumni Live.
I'm Jeff Staub, a senior in Grand Valley'sfilm and video production program.
Joining us to talk about artificialintelligence and the ways that
(00:25):
it will impact filmmakers isMichelle Terpstra, the Director of
Digital Content at toolfarm.com.
Hi.
Thank you for having me.
So for students and alumni who arelisting right now who are afraid
of artificial intelligence, may notknow a lot, do you have a simple
definition that you could explain?
AI, it stands for artificialintelligence and it is machine learning.
(00:49):
Basically, these computershave been trained on data.
It could have been trained onbooks, or trained on images,
or trained on old films, and itlearns different things about those
films and it then is put to use.
For example, this has nothingto do with film and video, but I
think it's a really good example.
(01:09):
I'm a breast cancer survivorand so I keep up on that.
And they have been using AI to go overdifferent scans and mammograms, and
they have trained the AI to find tumors.
And it does it as well as a doctor,if not better in certain cases.
So that's something that theyhave a specific goal in mind.
(01:30):
And they have trainedthe AI to do that job.
For something like generative AI,where they are creating images
like Adobe Firefly or Midjourneyare a couple of examples where you
can put in a prompt, you can say,do it in such and such a style.
Make a teddy bear who's sittingon a table, in the desert.
(01:51):
I don't know.
But you put that in there and theAI has been trained on images and it
will go through all of those imagesand create something and generate
an image based on those prompts fromwhat it has learned from artists and,
photographs and everything else thathas been trained on over the years.
I think you said somethingreally important.
(02:12):
Artificial intelligence ismade for a specific task.
We're not talking about Skynet,something that has the full experience
of life like we see ourselves, butit's there to do repetitive tasks,
it's there to learn patterns.
Artificial intelligence is good atthings that we are bad at naturally,
like our memories, for instance.
(02:32):
It has a computer databasethat knows millions of things.
Terabytes of information.
It was trained to see andrecognize patterns and to spit out
things that fit those patterns.
Exactly.
Yes.
Most platforms that we already usehave AI built into them, but they don't
necessarily broadcast that everywhere.
For instance, this podcast that you'relistening to, we ran it through an AI and
(02:56):
it sounds a lot better and most podcastsrun through Adobe Audition, software
plugin that cleans up the background.
It can remove ums, cantranscribe the sequence.
It can help you in alot of different ways.
We sell a lot of audio plugins atmy company that are AI enhanced and
they have trained those on all sortsof different background noises and
(03:17):
crowd noises and birds and nature.
And so it can recognize what isbackground noise, what is an HVAC
system sounds and that kind of thing.
So you can remove them.
It's pretty impressive.
Yeah.
I believe on this podcastwe're using Descript.
And it does, like you mentioned,it removes the background and,
and it helps edit the podcast ina cohesive way, saving us time.
(03:39):
That's awesome.
It was a great day to sit down and havethis conversation because the SAG-AFTRA
strike just reached a deal with Hollywoodand there are new regulations and
definitions on artificial intelligence.
Yes, that's pretty interesting.
One of the things that I've read aboutthat is that they cannot take a deceased
(04:00):
actor and use their face withoutpermission from that actor's estate.
Yeah, and I saw that there's a clausewhere when you do give your consent
that that consent will stay after youdie, unless you say otherwise, which is
interesting that we have those regulationsin place for people already deceased,
and not those that are living right now.
(04:22):
Also one of the things that I read aboutit is that if you're an actor who's in
the background, that the studios wanted tobe able to use your likeness to create or
to generate background people and crowdsin future productions without paying you.
So I guess they are not able to do that.
Two out of the four definitions thatI'm aware of are those on generative
(04:43):
artificial intelligence, which arecreating wholly new characters without
referencing people who exist in real life.
So they're people whohaven't walked the earth.
If they do have a facial structure ora nose that looks similar to someone,
that's where they have to pay someone.
So, you have these new regulationswhere you can have a claim that this
(05:05):
character has a likeness to your own.
And if they find that to be true,then you'll get a check in the
Hmm.
That's interesting.
And the other definition are for, thedigital replication of the background
actors, like we were talking about.
With any of these AI regulations,it goes to an actor's voice or
likeness, and without being physicallypresent, they get paid for each
(05:26):
day that that character is used,
I wonder the whole likeness thing,if the actor, or if the character does
look like you, with music in the past,they've had lawsuits saying that, "Oh,
this sounds like this song," even if itreally doesn't sound that much like it,
and juries will go a certain direction.
That seems like it's alittle sticky, legally.
(05:48):
But who knows, I guess we'lljust have to wait and see.
I believe it was Midjourney who wasfound using Adobe's stock photos to
program their AI and a court ruled thatany AI photo does not have any copyright
claim, therefore you can't make moneyoff of selling that or distributing it.
I didn't realize that it was Adobe.
(06:09):
That's interesting.
I know with Adobe's AI, if you makesomething that looks like it's from
Disney or Pixar or something like that,that goes against their terms of service.
You can't actually say a companyname or a proper name, or a
character like Mickey Mouse orDarth Vader or anything like that.
It won't allow you to.
You can describe something like that,but you can't actually use the name or
(06:31):
it goes against their terms of service.
And they have not been trainingtheir AI only on their own content.
I think they're going to have to justput in a whole bunch of regulations here.
I know that Biden just filed someexecutive order about, they need
to get this AI regulations going,all these different industries do.
It's like in the Wild West right now.
(06:52):
And I know that they've done thingsin Europe and in the UK working toward
getting regulations in place for AI.
I think it's going to be an interestingnext few years to see what comes
of all of this with laws aboutdeep fakes and that kind of thing.
Yeah.
So in, terms of filmmaking howdo you see this change in the
industry affecting people who arejust getting into the industry?
(07:15):
Some of those entry level jobs areprobably going to be disappearing.
But I don't know ifthat's such a bad thing.
It's a lot of the tedious work,rotoscoping and green screen keying and
transcription jobs and things like that.
Those are not going to be needed anymore.
However, if you know how to do that,you're still going to have a job, because
the AI isn't going to do it perfectly.
(07:37):
You're going to have to go inand fix things and I just don't
see them doing it perfectly.
If you're a student right now or someonewho's just getting started in the
industry, it is in your best interestto get up to speed with the current
AI tools out there, because it's agreat thing to list on your resume.
A lot of employers are looking forthat, at least familiarity with it.
(07:58):
At Toolfarm, do you give suggestionsto employers on these tools?
Are they reaching out to youin regards to ways that they
can improve their workflows?
Yes, all the time, actually, we sellvideo plugins and animation software,
and it is mind boggling how many toolsin the last two years have AI built in.
There's noise reduction pluginsthat are just fantastic.
(08:21):
A lot of audio plugins that willremove background sounds and
ums and birds tweeting and allsorts of things that are AI.
We have tools that havegenerative AI built in.
Like Adobe, of course, the creative cloudwith Photoshop and Firefly and all that.
But then we have some others thatuse Midjourney or Stable Diffusion,
(08:43):
for example, like Autodesk Flame.
That's one of the higher end productsthat has some built in generative AI.
Silhouette, which is ourrotoscoping tool, that now has it.
BSKL is a diffuse AE.
It uses Stable Diffusion.
There's just a lot of different toolsnow that use it for all sorts of things.
Keying tools, there's severalkeying tools out there.
(09:04):
I know I've used most of the things youjust mentioned in my projects and they've
helped me quite a bit with the repetitiveside, but, they do need to be refined
to a point, and I know that that's onlytemporary because they do learn over time.
Yeah.
I haven't had great luckwith the generative AI, getting
it to do exactly what I want.
It's a little bit frustrating.
If I'm not too specific and I don'treally care, like for Halloween, I
(09:28):
did a couple of generative things.
I was like, okay, make a spooky graveyardwith a dark road and a moon, and it
was fine, but if I wanted to be reallyspecific about things, the results
were a little bit underwhelming, soI think it does have a ways to go.
These AIs really rely on specific prompts,and I know searching on LinkedIn, I'm
a senior, I'm looking for jobs, I'veseen "prompt engineer" as a job title.
(09:52):
So people are searching.
And they make a lot of money.
Yeah, a lot of money, and they knowthe software well, and they know how
it functions and where it messes up.
Understanding or just experimentingwith the softwares, maybe for a personal
project, maybe just for fun, it'll helpyou when you need to use it, because
you can always refine your craft,even if it's an AI doing the job.
(10:12):
Writing the prompt is half of it.
Yeah, I've seen some video editingtools that are pretty interesting, how
basically, you edit with text, and there'sseveral softwares that have that now.
It's in Premiere, maybe it's onlyin the beta of Premiere, I don't
know if it's in the release yet.
Vegas, I want to say, has it, orit's coming in the beta, or it's
in the beta and coming out soon.
(10:34):
Oh, DaVinci Resolve, that also hastext editing where you can type in
what you want and you can edit by thetranscription that it generates also.
But that kind of thing too,you have to finesse it.
It's not perfect right out of the box.
It does take some skillsas an editor still.
That's another example of where Idon't think it's quite there yet.
(10:54):
Bill Gates just was quoted thathe thinks that, generative AI is
kind of plateauing right now andit's not going to get much further.
I don't think that that's true.
I think that it's going to bepretty fantastic in five years.
I still think, we'reneeded as visual artists.
I would agree with that.
My specific trade is in editing and I'duse different tools, not within Adobe
(11:16):
or DaVinci but I've used ChatGPT, forinstance, and I transcribed an interview.
I had them rearrange theinterview, basically make the edit.
And then I had to performthe tasks of cutting.
it helped me work within thetime I was given and I think
it made a better product.
I've been asked a few timesabout why are these programs free?
Most of them are free.
Some of them come withsubscriptions like in Adobe.
(11:37):
Are these companies makingprofit off of these platforms?
And do you think that theycan sustain that much longer?
Well, I think a lot of themare free for competition.
They're training.
A lot of them are in beta still.
I've beta tested a couple of audioprograms and a few other things.
They're not going to be free forever,or what they'll do is they will
(11:58):
have a free version and then theywill have a " look, more features!"
And then that will be the paid version.
Looking at how much money thesecompanies are just pouring into AI.
NVIDIA, Google, Apple, I was justreading about the billions and billions
of dollars that they're putting into it.
And it's like some serious competitionfor billionaires out there.
They're making money.
(12:19):
They're certainly making money.
They might lose moneyfor a while, but yeah.
We're taking a short break totell you about the Dirk Koning
Memorial Film and Video scholarship.
Here's Gretchen Vinnedgeremembering Dirk Koning.
The Koning Scholarship enables studentsto get that kind of an education, to be
a good filmmaker, to be able to expresstheir voice and to continue Dirk's dream.
(12:41):
For more information, and todonate to the scholarship, visit
the link in the description.
Now, back to the show.
The big question is, with newthings, people are afraid at
first, and we've definitely seenthat with artificial intelligence.
Do you have any stories fromyour life of people being afraid
of artificial intelligence?
You just hear about things all thetime, you know, people will just bring
(13:02):
up casually in conversation about,Skynet and Terminator, how they're
going to take over our systems andstart a nuclear war or whatever, but
what's probably more of a concern isprivacy and, people using your image
and deep fakes and that sort of thing.
People fear their jobs, ofcourse, being taken by AI.
(13:24):
There is a lot of fear out there But it'shere to stay so you better embrace it.
Do you have any suggestions forfilmmakers using generative AI
when it comes to ethics and reason?
I don't really have any advice for that.
I mean just use your own moral compass.
However, YouTube, they're testingsome watermarking for anything that is
(13:48):
generative AI that looks too realisticit'll be taken down if you don't check
the box that's saying "this is AI."
And so companies are goingto be hopping on that.
So we will know if it's generated AIand not something that you created.
But as it is now, I see so much AIand it's usually fairly obvious.
It just, has that look, I don'tknow how to describe it, but it has
(14:11):
an artificial sort of look to it.
I think that's going to change, of course,as the algorithms get better and better.
But I think that they will bewatermarking things in the future.
They've been testing some thatI was reading that it's pretty
easy to bypass the watermark.
So they need to make it digitalinside the image or inside the
video that you're creating.
(14:33):
And they were talking about thatwith ChatGPT to put it in the text.
I don't know how they'regoing to be doing that, but.
On the visual side, I know Ican spot it very, very easily.
On the voice side, a few weeksago, I was at my house and I get
a call from an unknown number.
And Apple put underneath the phonenumber, "AI caller suspected,"
something along those lines.
Oh.
(14:54):
So they were able to detectthat this wasn't a real person.
And I picked it up 'cause I'mlike, "I'm interested now."
And it sounded like a real person, butthere were still traces of robotic nature.
And the responses werea little bit too quick.
But what was interesting is, whoeverprogrammed it added ums and filler
words into their speech pattern.
(15:15):
So it sounded more human andit didn't sound like it was
perfect like ChatGPT does.
Wow, that's pretty impressive.
That's how they're gonna trick us all.
There's a service that I waslooking at a couple of weeks ago.
I can't think of the name ofit off the top of my head.
But basically, it will let you createyour own avatar, or you can use one
of their avatars, and it's based on aperson, an actual actor, or yourself.
(15:38):
So it will scan yourself, you dovideo, and you speak for a bit, and
it will learn your speech patterns,and your vocal tonality, and all that.
And you can give it a script and it willspeak that for you and have you moving
your head and body and natural armmovements, but you can't move too much.
It's not like you cando a full action film.
It's like just a talking head video.
(15:59):
So I think that's pretty interesting,and it was fairly inexpensive too.
That sounds like it's going toaffect the corporate industry
with filmmaking and videos.
Yeah.
I actually did a project oncewhere we used generative AI twice.
It was already a pre made character and wejust typed in the script and spit it out.
There were some things we needed tofix and cut around, but for the most
part, we worked around not filmingand not hiring an actor, saving
(16:22):
money and doing the job quicker.
And a second commercial project Iworked on, we recorded the movements
of someone on a green screen.
Didn't have any motioncapture equipment on them.
And I forget which program we used,but we turned it into an animation
and it animated a character and waspretty low poly and used a few colors.
(16:43):
So it was a stylistic thing.
It wasn't realistic, but it was ableto produce something that the client
enjoyed and, it probably took thesame amount of time as editing the
video would have taken, but we cutout all the time for animation and
research and rigging and lighting.
Which for a small team we were able toproduce something with higher quality than
we would have been able to at the time.
(17:04):
Yeah.
And I think that right there isthe beauty of a lot of these tools.
How did you get into artificialintelligence and where
you're working right now?
I've been actually at this jobfor more than 20 years now.
I've done all sorts of roles here.
So I don't really do a lot of AI stuff,but I answer customer support questions
(17:25):
and I create content for the website.
And that's just a topic that alot of people are interested in.
And we have a lot of new productsthat are coming in with it.
So it's just something I'vehad on my radar for a while.
And it's just amped up exponentiallysince the beginning of the year.
Last year, I was like, "Oh,2022, it's the year of AI."
Well, yeah, not even closeto what 2023 has given us.
(17:48):
I've learned as I've gone along and I havea couple of friends who are really on the
cutting edge of what's going on in AI.
There's a guy named Jeff Foster, if youGoogle him, he's going to be teaching
sessions at this AI summit and he writesarticles for different magazines and He's
trying out all these different things.
We've been friends for a while and heshares all sorts of images and he was
(18:09):
one of the earliest people that wascreating things with a generative AI.
I have a few friends who are alwayssharing what they're creating
with AI and it's just been fun.
They got me interested,so it came from there.
Plus the products thatwe're selling at work.
Plus, I mean, gosh, it's really goingto affect our industry in a big way.
So it's good to stay on top of this.
(18:31):
Does Toolfarm code and createthese products in house?
No, we don't create anything.
We're like the middleman.
So you might think that's a bad thing.
However, sort of like a hugesuperstore that has everything.
You can buy everything that youneed and in one place and keep
everything together all neat and tidy.
Plus we discount things and wehave really great customer service.
(18:52):
That's why people come to us.
We briefly talked about some some ethics.
Do you foresee there being toolsthat are like Midjourney where it's
like, " edit this film in the styleof David Fincher or Martin Scorsese."
Oh, a hundred percent,that is going to happen.
There's already video tools out there thatyou can do that type of thing with it.
(19:13):
I bet we're going to seethat in the next year or so.
Should institutions and schools beteaching students about how to use tools
and the ethics of using these tools?
It can't hurt.
That's for sure.
I think that they're going to have to.
AI is going to take over everything.
We'll still be doing video editingand all that, but we're going
(19:34):
to be using AI enhanced toolsand it's going to be everywhere.
And hopefully most people willhave good ethics with it and not
just let the AI do all their work.
And if they do, I think they'renot going to have a great result.
You need the human, the art,the artist's interaction to
get these tools to work well.
But it's going to be part of the industry.
The industry is changing.
(19:56):
This is just the nextstage, the next evolution.
Fight it if you want, but it's here.
I think it'll give young, independentfilmmakers a great opportunity.
Yeah, I think so too.
And if they don't see it thatway, in a few years, they'll
realize the potential of it.
Yeah, and I think that there'sso many stories to be told, that
this will just make it easierfor people to tell those stories.
(20:20):
You don't have to worry about rounding upa big budget and a full crew if you can
do it with just a few people and some AI.
I think it will open thedoor for a lot of artists.
You've mentioned the Wild West.
Why do you use that phrase?
Well, just there's like noreal law in place for it.
It's people or companiesdoing what they can.
(20:40):
I think a lot of them are probablydoing what they can get away with
right now until there are lawsin place that will change that.
But maybe that's what we need, becauseif nobody's breaking laws, they won't
know that they need these laws in place.
I think I agree with that.
It'll be interesting to seehow things are enforced also.
That's fair as well.
And this makes me wonderwith our government.
I'm not intending to get political,but having these laws written by older
(21:04):
congressmen and women who are disconnectedfrom artificial intelligence and the
internet, how will that turn out?
Will there be loopholes?
And will it be effective inwhat it's intending to do?
I think that that isgonna be a big problem.
Not only that, you have big companies whohave a lot of money invested in this who
will be pushing their agenda to lobbyists.
(21:24):
we probably won't have very stronglaws about privacy protection.
Hopefully that's not gonnabe what happens, but I just
don't see it happening.
How can you even protectyourself from that?
I don't know.
I've saw somewhere on the internetsomeone created a fashion brand
and they print this special patternon it and it somehow confuses
artificial intelligence and cameraswho recognize you and keep track of
(21:48):
where you're going what you're doing.
Wearing this shirt or this hoodie willconfuse the artificial intelligence
and it will misidentify you.
It looks like a weird camouflage ofsorts, like a digital, AI made it.
I mean, I probably would neverwear this for fashion reasons, but
functionality, it does something.
that's kind of like in the old days youcould buy fuzz busters for your car that
(22:10):
would tell you if there was a policeofficer up ahead with a speed gun, to
protect yourself from, but you feel likeyou're breaking the law by using them.
Will you feel like you'rebreaking the law by using a mask?
I don't know.
AI seems like it's a little bit ofa can of worms, an ethical can of
worms that they'll take care of onething and it'll just be more and more
(22:30):
and more that needs to be addressed.
Do you think we'll reach a point
where we get enough tools, where itimproves everyone's lives, and makes
everything more efficient, and we canjust safely say, "Okay, we have enough.
We can slow it down,even stop producing more.
We don't need to push it any further.
It helps our lives and we don't wantto see this fall back on our heads."
(22:53):
That will not happen under acapitalist, economy like this, no.
if the world were to change andwe'd all become socialists, maybe.
I think it'll just keep growing andgrowing and growing and they'll just
make more and more and more moneyand we'll have more media to consume.
We're consumers here.
And artists will need to makeall that, even with the AI.
Is there anything that we haven't touchedon yet that you'd like to talk about?
(23:16):
Runway and HeyGen are two AI toolsthat you might want to check out.
Runway They had an example of a boat,and they just took a brush over it,
and suddenly the water's moving, andit, turns a still image into video.
They had a still image of someonewith a cigarette, I think it was.
And they took a paintbrush over thesmoke and suddenly the smoke is moving.
(23:39):
So they're making moving imagesout of still images and they
look completely believable.
It's pretty impressive.
Have you seen some of those where youcan take photos from your ancestors
and animate them it's kind of creepy.
That kind of technology isvery cool and very interesting.
And I think that that's somethingthat's going to touch every
person, not just artists.
(24:01):
But what AI is, is great for filmmakersor for anybody who works in this industry.
Brainstorming.
I find, great ideas for scripts or ifI'm having problems creating an ending
or I need to touch up some dialogue,ChatGPT is a great tool for that.
I found a lot of uses for that sortof thing with grammar too, fixing
(24:22):
your grammar and your spelling, it's,really nice, tools like Grammarly.
There's so many tools out there thatbecome workhorse tools that we use
every single day, and I think that thatis where AI is going to be heading to.
Audio dubbing, I think that all ofthese languages that are not quite
as popular, if they can use dubbingfor different television shows and
that sort of thing, people willhave their audience expanded hugely.
(24:45):
Filmmakers that want your film dubbedin Czech, you can just automatically
program it to do like 10 differentlanguages and release it online and
your audience is quintupled right there.
There are a lot of things that AIis going to do to help filmmakers.
I didn't hear you mention there wasAdobe's AI and improving podcasts,
which if you're listening rightnow, this was ran through an AI.
(25:07):
Oh, cool, cool.
I haven't tried it yet.
Have you played with it much?
It works like magic.
It removes background soundsand really isolates your voice.
One thing I have noticed is when you'recutting with it, you can kind of get
more sense that it is robotic sounding.
It loses a little bit of the humanquality, but I think it sounds
a lot better than the original.
(25:27):
Well, thank you so much for sittingdown and talking with us about
artificial intelligence today.
It was a real treat to have you.
I hope our listeners got some valueout of this conversation, learned about
the tools and what's on the horizonfor filmmaking and more efficient
ways that you can tell stories.
Well, thank you for having me on.
It was a lot of fun.
Do you have any last comments,anything you want to add for students?
(25:50):
It's really worthwhile to learn AIand that AI is not going to take
your job, but what could take yourjob is another person who knows AI.
It's just a good thingto add to your skill set.
Pivot a little bit and learn about someAI, so you're keeping up with everything,
because it's going to be everywhere.
(26:10):
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(26:31):
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Thank you for listening.
The Podcast.
These are conversations with GrandValley State University film and video
graduates about the industry, thefilm, video, major and alumni profiles.
Welcome back to Alumni Live.
I'm Jeff Staub, a senior in Grand Valley'sfilm and video production program.
Joining us to talk about artificialintelligence and the ways that
(00:25):
it will impact filmmakers isMichelle Terpstra, the Director of
Digital Content at toolfarm.com.
Hi.
Thank you for having me.
So for students and alumni who arelisting right now who are afraid
of artificial intelligence, may notknow a lot, do you have a simple
definition that you could explain?
AI, it stands for artificialintelligence and it is machine learning.
(00:49):
Basically, these computershave been trained on data.
It could have been trained onbooks, or trained on images,
or trained on old films, and itlearns different things about those
films and it then is put to use.
For example, this has nothingto do with film and video, but I
think it's a really good example.
(01:09):
I'm a breast cancer survivorand so I keep up on that.
And they have been using AI to go overdifferent scans and mammograms, and
they have trained the AI to find tumors.
And it does it as well as a doctor,if not better in certain cases.
So that's something that theyhave a specific goal in mind.
(01:30):
And they have trainedthe AI to do that job.
For something like generative AI,where they are creating images
like Adobe Firefly or Midjourneyare a couple of examples where you
can put in a prompt, you can say,do it in such and such a style.
Make a teddy bear who's sittingon a table, in the desert.
(01:51):
I don't know.
But you put that in there and theAI has been trained on images and it
will go through all of those imagesand create something and generate
an image based on those prompts fromwhat it has learned from artists and,
photographs and everything else thathas been trained on over the years.
I think you said somethingreally important.
(02:12):
Artificial intelligence ismade for a specific task.
We're not talking about Skynet,something that has the full experience
of life like we see ourselves, butit's there to do repetitive tasks,
it's there to learn patterns.
Artificial intelligence is good atthings that we are bad at naturally,
like our memories, for instance.
(02:32):
It has a computer databasethat knows millions of things.
Terabytes of information.
It was trained to see andrecognize patterns and to spit out
things that fit those patterns.
Exactly.
Yes.
Most platforms that we already usehave AI built into them, but they don't
necessarily broadcast that everywhere.
For instance, this podcast that you'relistening to, we ran it through an AI and
(02:56):
it sounds a lot better and most podcastsrun through Adobe Audition, software
plugin that cleans up the background.
It can remove ums, cantranscribe the sequence.
It can help you in alot of different ways.
We sell a lot of audio plugins atmy company that are AI enhanced and
they have trained those on all sortsof different background noises and
(03:17):
crowd noises and birds and nature.
And so it can recognize what isbackground noise, what is an HVAC
system sounds and that kind of thing.
So you can remove them.
It's pretty impressive.
Yeah.
I believe on this podcastwe're using Descript.
And it does, like you mentioned,it removes the background and,
and it helps edit the podcast ina cohesive way, saving us time.
(03:39):
That's awesome.
It was a great day to sit down and havethis conversation because the SAG-AFTRA
strike just reached a deal with Hollywoodand there are new regulations and
definitions on artificial intelligence.
Yes, that's pretty interesting.
One of the things that I've read aboutthat is that they cannot take a deceased
(04:00):
actor and use their face withoutpermission from that actor's estate.
Yeah, and I saw that there's a clausewhere when you do give your consent
that that consent will stay after youdie, unless you say otherwise, which is
interesting that we have those regulationsin place for people already deceased,
and not those that are living right now.
(04:22):
Also one of the things that I read aboutit is that if you're an actor who's in
the background, that the studios wanted tobe able to use your likeness to create or
to generate background people and crowdsin future productions without paying you.
So I guess they are not able to do that.
Two out of the four definitions thatI'm aware of are those on generative
(04:43):
artificial intelligence, which arecreating wholly new characters without
referencing people who exist in real life.
So they're people whohaven't walked the earth.
If they do have a facial structure ora nose that looks similar to someone,
that's where they have to pay someone.
So, you have these new regulationswhere you can have a claim that this
(05:05):
character has a likeness to your own.
And if they find that to be true,then you'll get a check in the
Hmm.
That's interesting.
And the other definition are for, thedigital replication of the background
actors, like we were talking about.
With any of these AI regulations,it goes to an actor's voice or
likeness, and without being physicallypresent, they get paid for each
(05:26):
day that that character is used,
I wonder the whole likeness thing,if the actor, or if the character does
look like you, with music in the past,they've had lawsuits saying that, "Oh,
this sounds like this song," even if itreally doesn't sound that much like it,
and juries will go a certain direction.
That seems like it's alittle sticky, legally.
(05:48):
But who knows, I guess we'lljust have to wait and see.
I believe it was Midjourney who wasfound using Adobe's stock photos to
program their AI and a court ruled thatany AI photo does not have any copyright
claim, therefore you can't make moneyoff of selling that or distributing it.
I didn't realize that it was Adobe.
(06:09):
That's interesting.
I know with Adobe's AI, if you makesomething that looks like it's from
Disney or Pixar or something like that,that goes against their terms of service.
You can't actually say a companyname or a proper name, or a
character like Mickey Mouse orDarth Vader or anything like that.
It won't allow you to.
You can describe something like that,but you can't actually use the name or
(06:31):
it goes against their terms of service.
And they have not been trainingtheir AI only on their own content.
I think they're going to have to justput in a whole bunch of regulations here.
I know that Biden just filed someexecutive order about, they need
to get this AI regulations going,all these different industries do.
It's like in the Wild West right now.
(06:52):
And I know that they've done thingsin Europe and in the UK working toward
getting regulations in place for AI.
I think it's going to be an interestingnext few years to see what comes
of all of this with laws aboutdeep fakes and that kind of thing.
Yeah.
So in, terms of filmmaking howdo you see this change in the
industry affecting people who arejust getting into the industry?
(07:15):
Some of those entry level jobs areprobably going to be disappearing.
But I don't know ifthat's such a bad thing.
It's a lot of the tedious work,rotoscoping and green screen keying and
transcription jobs and things like that.
Those are not going to be needed anymore.
However, if you know how to do that,you're still going to have a job, because
the AI isn't going to do it perfectly.
(07:37):
You're going to have to go inand fix things and I just don't
see them doing it perfectly.
If you're a student right now or someonewho's just getting started in the
industry, it is in your best interestto get up to speed with the current
AI tools out there, because it's agreat thing to list on your resume.
A lot of employers are looking forthat, at least familiarity with it.
(07:58):
At Toolfarm, do you give suggestionsto employers on these tools?
Are they reaching out to youin regards to ways that they
can improve their workflows?
Yes, all the time, actually, we sellvideo plugins and animation software,
and it is mind boggling how many toolsin the last two years have AI built in.
There's noise reduction pluginsthat are just fantastic.
(08:21):
A lot of audio plugins that willremove background sounds and
ums and birds tweeting and allsorts of things that are AI.
We have tools that havegenerative AI built in.
Like Adobe, of course, the creative cloudwith Photoshop and Firefly and all that.
But then we have some others thatuse Midjourney or Stable Diffusion,
(08:43):
for example, like Autodesk Flame.
That's one of the higher end productsthat has some built in generative AI.
Silhouette, which is ourrotoscoping tool, that now has it.
BSKL is a diffuse AE.
It uses Stable Diffusion.
There's just a lot of different toolsnow that use it for all sorts of things.
Keying tools, there's severalkeying tools out there.
(09:04):
I know I've used most of the things youjust mentioned in my projects and they've
helped me quite a bit with the repetitiveside, but, they do need to be refined
to a point, and I know that that's onlytemporary because they do learn over time.
Yeah.
I haven't had great luckwith the generative AI, getting
it to do exactly what I want.
It's a little bit frustrating.
If I'm not too specific and I don'treally care, like for Halloween, I
(09:28):
did a couple of generative things.
I was like, okay, make a spooky graveyardwith a dark road and a moon, and it
was fine, but if I wanted to be reallyspecific about things, the results
were a little bit underwhelming, soI think it does have a ways to go.
These AIs really rely on specific prompts,and I know searching on LinkedIn, I'm
a senior, I'm looking for jobs, I'veseen "prompt engineer" as a job title.
(09:52):
So people are searching.
And they make a lot of money.
Yeah, a lot of money, and they knowthe software well, and they know how
it functions and where it messes up.
Understanding or just experimentingwith the softwares, maybe for a personal
project, maybe just for fun, it'll helpyou when you need to use it, because
you can always refine your craft,even if it's an AI doing the job.
(10:12):
Writing the prompt is half of it.
Yeah, I've seen some video editingtools that are pretty interesting, how
basically, you edit with text, and there'sseveral softwares that have that now.
It's in Premiere, maybe it's onlyin the beta of Premiere, I don't
know if it's in the release yet.
Vegas, I want to say, has it, orit's coming in the beta, or it's
in the beta and coming out soon.
(10:34):
Oh, DaVinci Resolve, that also hastext editing where you can type in
what you want and you can edit by thetranscription that it generates also.
But that kind of thing too,you have to finesse it.
It's not perfect right out of the box.
It does take some skillsas an editor still.
That's another example of where Idon't think it's quite there yet.
(10:54):
Bill Gates just was quoted thathe thinks that, generative AI is
kind of plateauing right now andit's not going to get much further.
I don't think that that's true.
I think that it's going to bepretty fantastic in five years.
I still think, we'reneeded as visual artists.
I would agree with that.
My specific trade is in editing and I'duse different tools, not within Adobe
(11:16):
or DaVinci but I've used ChatGPT, forinstance, and I transcribed an interview.
I had them rearrange theinterview, basically make the edit.
And then I had to performthe tasks of cutting.
it helped me work within thetime I was given and I think
it made a better product.
I've been asked a few timesabout why are these programs free?
Most of them are free.
Some of them come withsubscriptions like in Adobe.
(11:37):
Are these companies makingprofit off of these platforms?
And do you think that theycan sustain that much longer?
Well, I think a lot of themare free for competition.
They're training.
A lot of them are in beta still.
I've beta tested a couple of audioprograms and a few other things.
They're not going to be free forever,or what they'll do is they will
(11:58):
have a free version and then theywill have a " look, more features!"
And then that will be the paid version.
Looking at how much money thesecompanies are just pouring into AI.
NVIDIA, Google, Apple, I was justreading about the billions and billions
of dollars that they're putting into it.
And it's like some serious competitionfor billionaires out there.
They're making money.
(12:19):
They're certainly making money.
They might lose moneyfor a while, but yeah.
We're taking a short break totell you about the Dirk Koning
Memorial Film and Video scholarship.
Here's Gretchen Vinnedgeremembering Dirk Koning.
The Koning Scholarship enables studentsto get that kind of an education, to be
a good filmmaker, to be able to expresstheir voice and to continue Dirk's dream.
(12:41):
For more information, and todonate to the scholarship, visit
the link in the description.
Now, back to the show.
The big question is, with newthings, people are afraid at
first, and we've definitely seenthat with artificial intelligence.
Do you have any stories fromyour life of people being afraid
of artificial intelligence?
You just hear about things all thetime, you know, people will just bring
(13:02):
up casually in conversation about,Skynet and Terminator, how they're
going to take over our systems andstart a nuclear war or whatever, but
what's probably more of a concern isprivacy and, people using your image
and deep fakes and that sort of thing.
People fear their jobs, ofcourse, being taken by AI.
(13:24):
There is a lot of fear out there But it'shere to stay so you better embrace it.
Do you have any suggestions forfilmmakers using generative AI
when it comes to ethics and reason?
I don't really have any advice for that.
I mean just use your own moral compass.
However, YouTube, they're testingsome watermarking for anything that is
(13:48):
generative AI that looks too realisticit'll be taken down if you don't check
the box that's saying "this is AI."
And so companies are goingto be hopping on that.
So we will know if it's generated AIand not something that you created.
But as it is now, I see so much AIand it's usually fairly obvious.
It just, has that look, I don'tknow how to describe it, but it has
(14:11):
an artificial sort of look to it.
I think that's going to change, of course,as the algorithms get better and better.
But I think that they will bewatermarking things in the future.
They've been testing some thatI was reading that it's pretty
easy to bypass the watermark.
So they need to make it digitalinside the image or inside the
video that you're creating.
(14:33):
And they were talking about thatwith ChatGPT to put it in the text.
I don't know how they'regoing to be doing that, but.
On the visual side, I know Ican spot it very, very easily.
On the voice side, a few weeksago, I was at my house and I get
a call from an unknown number.
And Apple put underneath the phonenumber, "AI caller suspected,"
something along those lines.
Oh.
(14:54):
So they were able to detectthat this wasn't a real person.
And I picked it up 'cause I'mlike, "I'm interested now."
And it sounded like a real person, butthere were still traces of robotic nature.
And the responses werea little bit too quick.
But what was interesting is, whoeverprogrammed it added ums and filler
words into their speech pattern.
(15:15):
So it sounded more human andit didn't sound like it was
perfect like ChatGPT does.
Wow, that's pretty impressive.
That's how they're gonna trick us all.
There's a service that I waslooking at a couple of weeks ago.
I can't think of the name ofit off the top of my head.
But basically, it will let you createyour own avatar, or you can use one
of their avatars, and it's based on aperson, an actual actor, or yourself.
(15:38):
So it will scan yourself, you dovideo, and you speak for a bit, and
it will learn your speech patterns,and your vocal tonality, and all that.
And you can give it a script and it willspeak that for you and have you moving
your head and body and natural armmovements, but you can't move too much.
It's not like you cando a full action film.
It's like just a talking head video.
(15:59):
So I think that's pretty interesting,and it was fairly inexpensive too.
That sounds like it's going toaffect the corporate industry
with filmmaking and videos.
Yeah.
I actually did a project oncewhere we used generative AI twice.
It was already a pre made character and wejust typed in the script and spit it out.
There were some things we needed tofix and cut around, but for the most
part, we worked around not filmingand not hiring an actor, saving
(16:22):
money and doing the job quicker.
And a second commercial project Iworked on, we recorded the movements
of someone on a green screen.
Didn't have any motioncapture equipment on them.
And I forget which program we used,but we turned it into an animation
and it animated a character and waspretty low poly and used a few colors.
(16:43):
So it was a stylistic thing.
It wasn't realistic, but it was ableto produce something that the client
enjoyed and, it probably took thesame amount of time as editing the
video would have taken, but we cutout all the time for animation and
research and rigging and lighting.
Which for a small team we were able toproduce something with higher quality than
we would have been able to at the time.
(17:04):
Yeah.
And I think that right there isthe beauty of a lot of these tools.
How did you get into artificialintelligence and where
you're working right now?
I've been actually at this jobfor more than 20 years now.
I've done all sorts of roles here.
So I don't really do a lot of AI stuff,but I answer customer support questions
(17:25):
and I create content for the website.
And that's just a topic that alot of people are interested in.
And we have a lot of new productsthat are coming in with it.
So it's just something I'vehad on my radar for a while.
And it's just amped up exponentiallysince the beginning of the year.
Last year, I was like, "Oh,2022, it's the year of AI."
Well, yeah, not even closeto what 2023 has given us.
(17:48):
I've learned as I've gone along and I havea couple of friends who are really on the
cutting edge of what's going on in AI.
There's a guy named Jeff Foster, if youGoogle him, he's going to be teaching
sessions at this AI summit and he writesarticles for different magazines and He's
trying out all these different things.
We've been friends for a while and heshares all sorts of images and he was
(18:09):
one of the earliest people that wascreating things with a generative AI.
I have a few friends who are alwayssharing what they're creating
with AI and it's just been fun.
They got me interested,so it came from there.
Plus the products thatwe're selling at work.
Plus, I mean, gosh, it's really goingto affect our industry in a big way.
So it's good to stay on top of this.
(18:31):
Does Toolfarm code and createthese products in house?
No, we don't create anything.
We're like the middleman.
So you might think that's a bad thing.
However, sort of like a hugesuperstore that has everything.
You can buy everything that youneed and in one place and keep
everything together all neat and tidy.
Plus we discount things and wehave really great customer service.
(18:52):
That's why people come to us.
We briefly talked about some some ethics.
Do you foresee there being toolsthat are like Midjourney where it's
like, " edit this film in the styleof David Fincher or Martin Scorsese."
Oh, a hundred percent,that is going to happen.
There's already video tools out there thatyou can do that type of thing with it.
(19:13):
I bet we're going to seethat in the next year or so.
Should institutions and schools beteaching students about how to use tools
and the ethics of using these tools?
It can't hurt.
That's for sure.
I think that they're going to have to.
AI is going to take over everything.
We'll still be doing video editingand all that, but we're going
(19:34):
to be using AI enhanced toolsand it's going to be everywhere.
And hopefully most people willhave good ethics with it and not
just let the AI do all their work.
And if they do, I think they'renot going to have a great result.
You need the human, the art,the artist's interaction to
get these tools to work well.
But it's going to be part of the industry.
The industry is changing.
(19:56):
This is just the nextstage, the next evolution.
Fight it if you want, but it's here.
I think it'll give young, independentfilmmakers a great opportunity.
Yeah, I think so too.
And if they don't see it thatway, in a few years, they'll
realize the potential of it.
Yeah, and I think that there'sso many stories to be told, that
this will just make it easierfor people to tell those stories.
(20:20):
You don't have to worry about rounding upa big budget and a full crew if you can
do it with just a few people and some AI.
I think it will open thedoor for a lot of artists.
You've mentioned the Wild West.
Why do you use that phrase?
Well, just there's like noreal law in place for it.
It's people or companiesdoing what they can.
(20:40):
I think a lot of them are probablydoing what they can get away with
right now until there are lawsin place that will change that.
But maybe that's what we need, becauseif nobody's breaking laws, they won't
know that they need these laws in place.
I think I agree with that.
It'll be interesting to seehow things are enforced also.
That's fair as well.
And this makes me wonderwith our government.
I'm not intending to get political,but having these laws written by older
(21:04):
congressmen and women who are disconnectedfrom artificial intelligence and the
internet, how will that turn out?
Will there be loopholes?
And will it be effective inwhat it's intending to do?
I think that that isgonna be a big problem.
Not only that, you have big companies whohave a lot of money invested in this who
will be pushing their agenda to lobbyists.
(21:24):
we probably won't have very stronglaws about privacy protection.
Hopefully that's not gonnabe what happens, but I just
don't see it happening.
How can you even protectyourself from that?
I don't know.
I've saw somewhere on the internetsomeone created a fashion brand
and they print this special patternon it and it somehow confuses
artificial intelligence and cameraswho recognize you and keep track of
(21:48):
where you're going what you're doing.
Wearing this shirt or this hoodie willconfuse the artificial intelligence
and it will misidentify you.
It looks like a weird camouflage ofsorts, like a digital, AI made it.
I mean, I probably would neverwear this for fashion reasons, but
functionality, it does something.
that's kind of like in the old days youcould buy fuzz busters for your car that
(22:10):
would tell you if there was a policeofficer up ahead with a speed gun, to
protect yourself from, but you feel likeyou're breaking the law by using them.
Will you feel like you'rebreaking the law by using a mask?
I don't know.
AI seems like it's a little bit ofa can of worms, an ethical can of
worms that they'll take care of onething and it'll just be more and more
(22:30):
and more that needs to be addressed.
Do you think we'll reach a point
where we get enough tools, where itimproves everyone's lives, and makes
everything more efficient, and we canjust safely say, "Okay, we have enough.
We can slow it down,even stop producing more.
We don't need to push it any further.
It helps our lives and we don't wantto see this fall back on our heads."
(22:53):
That will not happen under acapitalist, economy like this, no.
if the world were to change andwe'd all become socialists, maybe.
I think it'll just keep growing andgrowing and growing and they'll just
make more and more and more moneyand we'll have more media to consume.
We're consumers here.
And artists will need to makeall that, even with the AI.
Is there anything that we haven't touchedon yet that you'd like to talk about?
(23:16):
Runway and HeyGen are two AI toolsthat you might want to check out.
Runway They had an example of a boat,and they just took a brush over it,
and suddenly the water's moving, andit, turns a still image into video.
They had a still image of someonewith a cigarette, I think it was.
And they took a paintbrush over thesmoke and suddenly the smoke is moving.
(23:39):
So they're making moving imagesout of still images and they
look completely believable.
It's pretty impressive.
Have you seen some of those where youcan take photos from your ancestors
and animate them it's kind of creepy.
That kind of technology isvery cool and very interesting.
And I think that that's somethingthat's going to touch every
person, not just artists.
(24:01):
But what AI is, is great for filmmakersor for anybody who works in this industry.
Brainstorming.
I find, great ideas for scripts or ifI'm having problems creating an ending
or I need to touch up some dialogue,ChatGPT is a great tool for that.
I found a lot of uses for that sortof thing with grammar too, fixing
(24:22):
your grammar and your spelling, it's,really nice, tools like Grammarly.
There's so many tools out there thatbecome workhorse tools that we use
every single day, and I think that thatis where AI is going to be heading to.
Audio dubbing, I think that all ofthese languages that are not quite
as popular, if they can use dubbingfor different television shows and
that sort of thing, people willhave their audience expanded hugely.
(24:45):
Filmmakers that want your film dubbedin Czech, you can just automatically
program it to do like 10 differentlanguages and release it online and
your audience is quintupled right there.
There are a lot of things that AIis going to do to help filmmakers.
I didn't hear you mention there wasAdobe's AI and improving podcasts,
which if you're listening rightnow, this was ran through an AI.
(25:07):
Oh, cool, cool.
I haven't tried it yet.
Have you played with it much?
It works like magic.
It removes background soundsand really isolates your voice.
One thing I have noticed is when you'recutting with it, you can kind of get
more sense that it is robotic sounding.
It loses a little bit of the humanquality, but I think it sounds
a lot better than the original.
(25:27):
Well, thank you so much for sittingdown and talking with us about
artificial intelligence today.
It was a real treat to have you.
I hope our listeners got some valueout of this conversation, learned about
the tools and what's on the horizonfor filmmaking and more efficient
ways that you can tell stories.
Well, thank you for having me on.
It was a lot of fun.
Do you have any last comments,anything you want to add for students?
(25:50):
It's really worthwhile to learn AIand that AI is not going to take
your job, but what could take yourjob is another person who knows AI.
It's just a good thingto add to your skill set.
Pivot a little bit and learn about someAI, so you're keeping up with everything,
because it's going to be everywhere.
(26:10):
Thank you for joining us for thisepisode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.
Subscribe to our podcast, to hear morefrom our alumni across the industry.
Check out Alumni Live onFacebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
For more conversations and networking.
Let us know what topics you wantto hear our alumni talk about the
Grand Valley State University FilmVideo Alumni Network is here for
(26:31):
you, and we're glad that you're here.
Thank you for listening.
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