May 1, 2025 • 22 mins
Grab your screenplay and your last shred of optimism, because today we’re getting a broader understanding of the AI Invasion of Hollywood… starting with a movie I was excited for—until I wasn’t. Uncanny Valley- Natasha Lyonne and Brit Marling are making a movie together- but theyre using an AI studio to make it.
What does this mean for the future of film & the consumption of the art?
In this episode we’re going through the five stages of grief and taking you with us through the uncanny valley of AI film
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/broads-next-door--5803223/support.
What does this mean for the future of film & the consumption of the art?
In this episode we’re going through the five stages of grief and taking you with us through the uncanny valley of AI film
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/broads-next-door--5803223/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Natasha Leone is set to make her feature directorial debut
with a film that will make abundant use of AI.
The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the film, titled Uncanny Valley,
will be set in the world of immersive video games
and utilize AI. Leon is working on the project Grit Marling,
and they've teamed up with longtime technology innovator and sometimes
(00:22):
skeptic Chair and Lanier. The project is back by Asteria,
a new AI based studio founded by Leon and filmmaker
and entrepreneur Brit Musser. Leon will direct from a script
she wrote with Marling. Both will star. The movie is
centered on a teenage girl who becomes unmoored by a
hugely popular AR video game in a parallel present. It
will blend traditional live action and game elements. The latter
(00:43):
will be created by Lanier as well as Leon and Marling,
and the entire enterprise will draw on AI from Asteria
partner Moon Valley via a model called MARI, which, unlike
systems from companies like Runway and OpenAI, is built only
on data that has been copyright cleared. Representative for Asteria
says the film QUI will blend traditional storytelling techniques with
cutting edge AI technologies to create a radical new cinematic
(01:06):
experience for much more on the story.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and soulless cyborgs. I'm Daniella Scrima
and this is Broad's next door. Grab your screenplay and
your last shread of optimism, because today we're getting a
broader understanding of the AI invasion of film studios, starting
with a movie I was so excited for until I wasn't.
(01:33):
Britt Marling and Natasha Leone are doing a film together,
but they're using an AI studio to make it. So
upon learning this news, I'm going through the five Stages
of grief and I'm taking you with me. Well.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
One entertainment giant embracing AI is Lionsgate, which has recently
announced a partnership with artificial intelligence company Runway to allow
a new AI model to be trained on their extensive
film and TV archive. But at what cost? Asks The Guardian.
Some film producers have now joined forces to develop best
(02:10):
practice for the use of generative AI in factual storytelling.
This is currently one of the more organized efforts in
Hollywood to grapple with the ethics of the technology that
could prove devastating for jobs.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I Hello is everyone. I woke up to see some
social media posts from Natasha Leone saying she's making a
movie with Britt Marling, which I was originally so psyched
for until I started reading it, and they're using an
AI studio, So I want to see what this really means.
Am I overreacting personally? I do not think I am,
(02:44):
because I know so many people losing jobs right now.
One of my jobs is as a film producer. This
hasn't affected me yet, but it will. I mean, even
the projects I'm getting offered now, most of them are
filming overseas, so I wasn't expecting this to happen as
quickly as it is. I keep thinking about the last
time I was on a film set and how human
(03:06):
it felt. I was shooting The three two Bowl Down.
My friend Greg Boulding that I went to high school with.
We were in drama club together. He told me one
day he would he would make a movie and irore
me for it, and he stayed true to his words.
So we made a film with Wry Feldman, and it
kind of tackles a lot of this AI futurism posthumanism,
it's not out yet. When we were filming, even though
(03:27):
this story involved so much fear of the future, it
was such a human experience. We were filming in La
the day of Worri's wardrobe fitting, Paul Rubins, who he
was super close to, died, so he was getting his
phone blown up by like TMZ. All these vultures of
people had entertainment tonight come to set. Then our air
(03:47):
conditioner broke, but I had to go to home depot
by like two standing air conditioners per set. So many
things went wrong, but that's what made everything great. And
I just cannot imagine if this if we had made
all of it with AI instead of just using a
couple of green screens. But even a lot of people
who do the post stuff are losing their jobs. So
(04:09):
I just don't know how to feel right now with
all of this information. I feel like I should be
more accepting of change than I am, but I don't
know if all of this change is good. And that's
what I want to talk about today. Britt Marling and
Natasha Leone, certified members of the patron Saints of Weird Girls,
have just announced they're making a movie together and that
(04:31):
they're using an AI studio that Natasha helped found to
make the movie. I do not even fully understand what
an AI film studio does, so that's something I'd also
like to know. Do they just relace literally everything we
do the footage the boys? I mean, I don't know
the extent of what it can do. The film is
(04:52):
called Uncanny Valley, and this is a term I'm much
more familiar with. If you don't know what that is,
it's a real psychological term, not just a spooky sounding
phrase for a film. The uncanny Valley describes that eerie,
unsettling feeling we get when something looks almost human but
not quite like a robot baby or a CGI Tom
(05:13):
Hanks in Polar Express. If you've ever made an AI
photo of yourself, you've probably had that same feeling.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
But wow, that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Looks a lot like me, but also not at all,
almost in a way you can't even put your finger
on other than this is really off. The term on
canny Valley was coined by roboticist Mashira Marii in the
nineteen seventies, and it refers to this dip, this valley
in our comfort level when we see something that mimics
humanity too well. When the imitation is too close for
(05:43):
comfort but not close enough to be real, our brains
kind of freak out. This may be some evolutionary protection
thing from when we used to fight Neanderthals. It may
be something else, but it does feel like a perfect
metaphor for AI in Hollywood. It's not just that these
synthetic images synthetic scripts suck, it's that they're close enough
(06:06):
to reel that they make us question what real is.
It's the feeling of watching a movie trailer made by
a machine and thinking, wait, why do I feel less
than nothing? The Uncanny Valley has gone from a visual
blitch to an emotional breakdown, at least for me. This
is from Rolling Stone. Natasha Leone bets on AI with
(06:28):
directorial debut Uncanny Valley. The technology has been controversial among
Hollywood natives, but studios are looking for any way to
leverage it. By miles clee from the slums of Beverly
Hills to the heart of Silicon Valley, Actress, writer and
director Natasha Leone isn't shotting away from artificial intelligence, even
as fellow creatives in Hollywood bread over what the tech
(06:49):
means for their industry. As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter,
Leone is teaming up with The OA co creator Britt
Marling and virtual reality pioneer Jarren Leoneer on a sci
fi film called Uncanny Valley. The movie will include AI
generated visuals from Mysteria, a self described artist led generative
AI film and animation studio co founded by Leone and
(07:11):
her partner, the filmmaker and entrepreneur Brynmoser. Asteria in its
partner Moon Valley, AI recently debuted the video model Memory,
which they tout as clean and ethical because it was
trained only on licensed content, whereas similar models have scraped
publicly available or copyrighted material without permission. Uncanny Valley, co
(07:33):
written by Leone and Marling, co stars both actresses, with
Leone making her feature directorial debut. It follows Mila, a
teenage girl who becomes immersed in an open world augmented
reality video game with the boundaries between physical and digital
reality is increasingly blurred. In a statement, Leone described working
on the project with Marling as if Diane West and
(07:55):
Diane Keaton at their Loquetius Best decided to take a
journey through the max for sport, only to find themselves
holding up an architectural blueprint. It's not yet clear whether
the film, which Leon has also compared to the films
of the Wakowski sisters, who wrote and directed The Matrix,
is intended for theatrical release or streaming platform. Presumably, a
(08:16):
GENERATIVEAI will figure into sequences involving the game played. A
Nysteria representative told The Hollywood Reporter that the movie will
blend traditional storytelling techniques with cutting edge AI technologies to
create a radical new cinematic experience. AI has been a
fractitious issue across the entertainment industry, and was a major
sticking point in the twenty twenty three Hollywood strikes, which
(08:37):
found screenwriters and actors fearful that studios could use it
to churn out script or insert a movie star's likeness
into visual content long after their death. Hundreds of actors, directors,
and other film insiders, led by Leone, recently signed a
letter urging the federal government not to loosen copyright protections
preventing AI companies from training their models on a wider
(09:00):
pool of writing, visuals, and more.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
While unions have pushed back on these tools, companies like
Open Ai, which in West Hollywood this March staged a
festival of shorts made with its text to video model Sora,
have sought to convince Hollywood of their potential. Some studio executives, meanwhile,
are eager to implement such models and their production flows,
not least for achieving impressive visual effects with far less
(09:23):
human labor, all of which makes Uncanny Valley a precarious
proposition for Leone and he creative team. On the one hand,
it sounds like the story aims to comment on the
latest innovations in tech while showcasing them, and Asteria has
clearly marked itself as a non predatory AI company. On
the other hand, the public has a generally negative view
(09:43):
of AI and is far less optimistic about its prospects
than those working in the field. Among twenty twenty four
Oscar's favorites, more than one film was criticized for relying
on AI. That said, it's anyone's guess whether Hollywood can
fend off the machines in the long run. Those who
embrace them now maybe just be adapting to the inevitable.
(10:04):
As for Uncanny Valley, audiences will decide for themselves if
it represents the future they want to see. Okay, I
love britt Marling. I think she's one of the most
genre defying storytellers of my lifetime. The OA literally changed
my life, changed my brain chemistry. I cried for a
(10:24):
week after watching Another Earth Natasha Leone. I love her
so much. Slums of Beverly Hills. Orange is the new
black Russian doll, poker face. She does so much. She's
brilliant too, So I really was so excited to hear
they were collaborating. But these film studios, these companies like Asteria,
(10:45):
Fable Studios, and Waymark, are designed to reduce the number
of human beings required to make a film. They use
machine learning to generate scripts, animate scenes, dub voices, and
even cast actors with deep fat make them a little older,
or they're not even there, Like they've done this for
a while, like when people were dead already and stuff.
(11:06):
But this is just like because they want to. From
Asteria's press materials, our mission is to accelerate the filmmaking
process through AI powered tools that allow creatives to generate assets,
test ideas, and iterate faster translation. We're replacing you. These
studios are already hiring fewer screenwriters, fewer editors, fewer animators.
(11:27):
They're even replacing voice actors with synthetic voice models. I've
actually seen a string of emails go out just this
week to my friends who are voice actors, letting them
know that they're being replaced. And if you're like me
and you work in storytelling in any way, you see
this seeping in with everything, this slow AI takeover. And
(11:49):
it's really ironic to me, especially for Britt Marling, because
it seems like she's spent so much of her career
writing about the dangers of posthumanism. The oh Ay if
it ever gets as season three, it could be about
half creating some computer AI system and locking them all
in there. I mean, it literally feels straight from that.
(12:10):
In a twenty seventeen interview, brit said, we've lost sight
of the unknown. The unknown used to be the most
exciting part being human. Well, it definitely seems like she's
doing the next step of the unknown. I don't know
if I think that Britt Marling and Natasha are selling out.
I don't think that's really it. I do think they're
(12:30):
trying to innovate inside a collapsing industry. The problem I'm
having is the things that are using are one of
the reasons the industry is collapsing. These tools are part
of this whole machine that's spitting everything out and regurgitating content.
Not art, not film, not storytelling content. It just feels
(12:53):
like everything is for content. But then there's this whole
argument too, of this ethical AI, which I have a
harder time understanding. Okay, so it's getting all its copying
all this stuff from things it's allowed to copy. Who
told it it could copy it, who gave that copyright permission?
Like I just army of a listeners.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Are challenging open AI and Google over copyright exemptions for
training AI models. I'm Brian Welk, and this is in
neire News. The fight over AI and copyright just got serious.
Over four hundred Hollywood heavyweights including Gier Moo, Dol Toro,
Paul McCarty, Kate Blanchett, Ron Howard, Janelle Money, and Ryan
(13:34):
Johnson are taking on Open AI and Google, demanding they
play by the rules when it comes to copyrighted content.
Speaker 7 (13:40):
Jd Vance is warning foreign leaders against placing regulations on
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Jd Vance did take part in the discussion only to
end with the.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Warning to keep it that way. All started when US
Vice President.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
He Killed the Pope.
Speaker 6 (13:57):
Criticized Europe's AI regulations, calling them bad for innovation. That
gave Google an Open AI the green light to post
sweeping copyright exemptions to the White House, claiming that restricting
AI training would hurt national security and scientific progress. Hollywood
isn't buying it. Top creatives argue that letting AI companies
bypass copyright would undermine an industry that fuels two point
(14:20):
three million jobs and two hundred twenty nine billion in wages.
Their message America's AI leadership should it come at the
cost of its creative economy, and the battle is already
playing out. New York Times is suing Open Ai. Scarlett
Johansson called out AI for cloning her voice.
Speaker 5 (14:36):
How are you doing, I'm doing fantastic, Thanks for asking it.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
Deals like lions Gate's partnership with Runway are raising new
questions about AI's role and entertainment.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
You say that whole qut pie toast was written by
none other than your friend ch at GPT.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Meanwhile, Fatasha Leone, a signatory of the letter, is pushing
back with a solution. Her company Hysteria just launched Mary
and AI model they claim is the first trained without
any copyrighted material. As the White House weighs its next move,
the stakes are clear, will AI innovation take priority or
will copyright protections pull the line.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
This is from CBS. It's a year old, which is
like five hundred ygars in AI terms, at.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
The age of eighty.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
Harrison Ford is starring as Indiana Jones. Both old and
young audiences could soon see a new performance by James Dean,
who died in nineteen fifty five, and an upcoming film
will feature Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as they appeared
in Forrest Gump nearly thirty years ago, How.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
To Show You Magic.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
This man became famous as a young Tom Cruise a
makeover from the AI company Metaphysic.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
You know I do all my own stunts. Obviously.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
It is now immortalizing actors through image capture like this
to appear in future films without ever.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Being on set.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
CEO Tom Graham.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
There is a move now from many people to preserve
their likeness in the future.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
It could be used.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
To create their performance. This is going to be a
core asset for every performer.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
You know I could be hit by a bus tomorrow
and that's it. But my performances can go on and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
On and on and on and on.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
But how that likeness is preserved like they would have anyway?
Like Tom Hanks is going to go away if we
don't digitally clone him. I mean he's in every movie AI.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
It is okay for performers likeness, image, voice to be
digitally modeled and captured, provided they know exactly what it's
going to be used for and see that there are
appropriate safeguards in place to make sure that that data
is not made available beyond its intended.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Use, safeguards that currently don't exist.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
We need to focus heavily on the ethics and how
we deploy AI, and so we need to really work
hard to move our institutions very very quickly to be
able to accommodate some of these.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
New potential outcomes.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Tyler Perry was supposed to put eight hundred million dollars
into the expansion of his Atlantis studio, but after seeing
a demo of a I studio, he told the Hollywood Reporter,
I had gotten word that it was coming, but I
had no idea until I saw the full demonstration. I
(17:24):
immediately canceled the plans. He also said, I am very,
very concerned that in the near future a lot of
jobs are going to be lost. It's shocking to see.
Is it shocking to see? And it's this is all
happening now. The Frost was an AI generated short film
using Runway mL tools. Netflix Japan has used AI to
(17:46):
generate backgrounds in anime, citing light labor shortages. Sarah can
generate entire scenes from text prompts, landscape movement, even lighting
and camera angles. A quote from AI researcher and critic
Kate Crawford says, AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It's
made from the labor data and exploitation of real people.
(18:08):
I'll probably watch on Candy Valley. I'm sure that I will,
because I love indie cinema and moral contradictions. But I'll
probably walk in the same way that I would watch
a Pizza hut get turned into a spirit Halloween, a
Blockbuster video turning into a QR code. I'd like to
learn more about ethical AI. I think there are some
(18:30):
things that are really cool, like on Netflix, if you
change the language of a film, they move the mouths
now so like the dub looks like the words they're
saying are those words? Stuff like that is cool to me,
But our voice actors losing work because of that yet?
Or is are do they are they still needed? It's
(18:51):
just all such a slippery slope. And I don't know
if I'm being stubborn. Am I like one of those
people who was like, the Internet is a fad and
it's bad. I kind of feel like that right now,
But at the same time, I'm seeing these real consequences
of people losing work. My group chats of film people
right now have a huge sense of desperation. I don't
(19:11):
even think a movie is filming in Portland right now.
I think only like corporate commercials are filming. How has
this impacted you as a viewer, as a watcher, or
as a creative as for whatever you do? How is
AI changing your life? And did you think it would
change our movies and what we consume so quickly? I
(19:32):
didn't think this would happen so fast, And now it's
just going to get faster and faster. I just I
think that there's you can't unring a bell. I don't know.
I feel really conflicted. I'm definitely going through the five
stages of grief. I think that we're an acceptance right now,
so I'm going to end it there. This was a
(19:53):
short one, but I just wanted to talk about this.
I know so many of us, our friend our friends
are fans of Natasha Leon and britt Marling. If you
haven't watched The OA, I recommend it so much. Maybe
part of this is my bitterness that I am not
getting a season three of The OA and instead getting
(20:13):
AI film. I don't know. I'm more sad about this
than I thought it would be. I had like a
very strong reaction when I saw all of this that
I wasn't expecting. But it's emotional for me, Like I
would be fine if I never worked on a film again.
It's not my bread and butter. It's something I love doing.
But I have so many friends who it's their entire world,
(20:36):
and I just my heart hurts for them. I hope
that there's still space. I hope that there's a way
with all this AI stuff to create more jobs. What
happens after it just steals everything from us. There'll be
no original ip left. Everything will just be a remake
of content until next time. Thank you so much. For
(20:58):
listening to another episode of Broads next Door. Huge request
for you today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share
it with a friend. If you also like, rate and review,
It really really helps me out. I'm doing daily episodes
right now, Monday through Friday, so it's a lot of work.
It's just me. I say we a lot because I
(21:21):
mean you as well. But as far as doing the work,
I edit, write, and record everything myself. That's why it's
so helpful to be able to use clips from other creators,
which I'm deeply grateful for, mostly deeply grateful for you.
I appreciate every single one of you. You can find
me online on social media at Daniellascrima or at broads
(21:43):
next Door. My email addresses on all my profiles, I
check all my dms. I check my message request once
a week. So even if I don't get back to
you right away, I promise that I will. I love
talking to all of you, keep sending episodes suggestion. Such
an amazing community that I'm so deeply grateful for. I
(22:05):
love that you're all humans and not AI robots, and
I will talk to you very soon. Bye.
Natasha Leone is set to make her feature directorial debut
with a film that will make abundant use of AI.
The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the film, titled Uncanny Valley,
will be set in the world of immersive video games
and utilize AI. Leon is working on the project Grit Marling,
and they've teamed up with longtime technology innovator and sometimes
(00:22):
skeptic Chair and Lanier. The project is back by Asteria,
a new AI based studio founded by Leon and filmmaker
and entrepreneur Brit Musser. Leon will direct from a script
she wrote with Marling. Both will star. The movie is
centered on a teenage girl who becomes unmoored by a
hugely popular AR video game in a parallel present. It
will blend traditional live action and game elements. The latter
(00:43):
will be created by Lanier as well as Leon and Marling,
and the entire enterprise will draw on AI from Asteria
partner Moon Valley via a model called MARI, which, unlike
systems from companies like Runway and OpenAI, is built only
on data that has been copyright cleared. Representative for Asteria
says the film QUI will blend traditional storytelling techniques with
cutting edge AI technologies to create a radical new cinematic
(01:06):
experience for much more on the story.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and soulless cyborgs. I'm Daniella Scrima
and this is Broad's next door. Grab your screenplay and
your last shread of optimism, because today we're getting a
broader understanding of the AI invasion of film studios, starting
with a movie I was so excited for until I wasn't.
(01:33):
Britt Marling and Natasha Leone are doing a film together,
but they're using an AI studio to make it. So
upon learning this news, I'm going through the five Stages
of grief and I'm taking you with me. Well.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
One entertainment giant embracing AI is Lionsgate, which has recently
announced a partnership with artificial intelligence company Runway to allow
a new AI model to be trained on their extensive
film and TV archive. But at what cost? Asks The Guardian.
Some film producers have now joined forces to develop best
(02:10):
practice for the use of generative AI in factual storytelling.
This is currently one of the more organized efforts in
Hollywood to grapple with the ethics of the technology that
could prove devastating for jobs.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I Hello is everyone. I woke up to see some
social media posts from Natasha Leone saying she's making a
movie with Britt Marling, which I was originally so psyched
for until I started reading it, and they're using an
AI studio, So I want to see what this really means.
Am I overreacting personally? I do not think I am,
(02:44):
because I know so many people losing jobs right now.
One of my jobs is as a film producer. This
hasn't affected me yet, but it will. I mean, even
the projects I'm getting offered now, most of them are
filming overseas, so I wasn't expecting this to happen as
quickly as it is. I keep thinking about the last
time I was on a film set and how human
(03:06):
it felt. I was shooting The three two Bowl Down.
My friend Greg Boulding that I went to high school with.
We were in drama club together. He told me one
day he would he would make a movie and irore
me for it, and he stayed true to his words.
So we made a film with Wry Feldman, and it
kind of tackles a lot of this AI futurism posthumanism,
it's not out yet. When we were filming, even though
(03:27):
this story involved so much fear of the future, it
was such a human experience. We were filming in La
the day of Worri's wardrobe fitting, Paul Rubins, who he
was super close to, died, so he was getting his
phone blown up by like TMZ. All these vultures of
people had entertainment tonight come to set. Then our air
(03:47):
conditioner broke, but I had to go to home depot
by like two standing air conditioners per set. So many
things went wrong, but that's what made everything great. And
I just cannot imagine if this if we had made
all of it with AI instead of just using a
couple of green screens. But even a lot of people
who do the post stuff are losing their jobs. So
(04:09):
I just don't know how to feel right now with
all of this information. I feel like I should be
more accepting of change than I am, but I don't
know if all of this change is good. And that's
what I want to talk about today. Britt Marling and
Natasha Leone, certified members of the patron Saints of Weird Girls,
have just announced they're making a movie together and that
(04:31):
they're using an AI studio that Natasha helped found to
make the movie. I do not even fully understand what
an AI film studio does, so that's something I'd also
like to know. Do they just relace literally everything we
do the footage the boys? I mean, I don't know
the extent of what it can do. The film is
(04:52):
called Uncanny Valley, and this is a term I'm much
more familiar with. If you don't know what that is,
it's a real psychological term, not just a spooky sounding
phrase for a film. The uncanny Valley describes that eerie,
unsettling feeling we get when something looks almost human but
not quite like a robot baby or a CGI Tom
(05:13):
Hanks in Polar Express. If you've ever made an AI
photo of yourself, you've probably had that same feeling.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
But wow, that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Looks a lot like me, but also not at all,
almost in a way you can't even put your finger
on other than this is really off. The term on
canny Valley was coined by roboticist Mashira Marii in the
nineteen seventies, and it refers to this dip, this valley
in our comfort level when we see something that mimics
humanity too well. When the imitation is too close for
(05:43):
comfort but not close enough to be real, our brains
kind of freak out. This may be some evolutionary protection
thing from when we used to fight Neanderthals. It may
be something else, but it does feel like a perfect
metaphor for AI in Hollywood. It's not just that these
synthetic images synthetic scripts suck, it's that they're close enough
(06:06):
to reel that they make us question what real is.
It's the feeling of watching a movie trailer made by
a machine and thinking, wait, why do I feel less
than nothing? The Uncanny Valley has gone from a visual
blitch to an emotional breakdown, at least for me. This
is from Rolling Stone. Natasha Leone bets on AI with
(06:28):
directorial debut Uncanny Valley. The technology has been controversial among
Hollywood natives, but studios are looking for any way to
leverage it. By miles clee from the slums of Beverly
Hills to the heart of Silicon Valley, Actress, writer and
director Natasha Leone isn't shotting away from artificial intelligence, even
as fellow creatives in Hollywood bread over what the tech
(06:49):
means for their industry. As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter,
Leone is teaming up with The OA co creator Britt
Marling and virtual reality pioneer Jarren Leoneer on a sci
fi film called Uncanny Valley. The movie will include AI
generated visuals from Mysteria, a self described artist led generative
AI film and animation studio co founded by Leone and
(07:11):
her partner, the filmmaker and entrepreneur Brynmoser. Asteria in its
partner Moon Valley, AI recently debuted the video model Memory,
which they tout as clean and ethical because it was
trained only on licensed content, whereas similar models have scraped
publicly available or copyrighted material without permission. Uncanny Valley, co
(07:33):
written by Leone and Marling, co stars both actresses, with
Leone making her feature directorial debut. It follows Mila, a
teenage girl who becomes immersed in an open world augmented
reality video game with the boundaries between physical and digital
reality is increasingly blurred. In a statement, Leone described working
on the project with Marling as if Diane West and
(07:55):
Diane Keaton at their Loquetius Best decided to take a
journey through the max for sport, only to find themselves
holding up an architectural blueprint. It's not yet clear whether
the film, which Leon has also compared to the films
of the Wakowski sisters, who wrote and directed The Matrix,
is intended for theatrical release or streaming platform. Presumably, a
(08:16):
GENERATIVEAI will figure into sequences involving the game played. A
Nysteria representative told The Hollywood Reporter that the movie will
blend traditional storytelling techniques with cutting edge AI technologies to
create a radical new cinematic experience. AI has been a
fractitious issue across the entertainment industry, and was a major
sticking point in the twenty twenty three Hollywood strikes, which
(08:37):
found screenwriters and actors fearful that studios could use it
to churn out script or insert a movie star's likeness
into visual content long after their death. Hundreds of actors, directors,
and other film insiders, led by Leone, recently signed a
letter urging the federal government not to loosen copyright protections
preventing AI companies from training their models on a wider
(09:00):
pool of writing, visuals, and more.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
While unions have pushed back on these tools, companies like
Open Ai, which in West Hollywood this March staged a
festival of shorts made with its text to video model Sora,
have sought to convince Hollywood of their potential. Some studio executives, meanwhile,
are eager to implement such models and their production flows,
not least for achieving impressive visual effects with far less
(09:23):
human labor, all of which makes Uncanny Valley a precarious
proposition for Leone and he creative team. On the one hand,
it sounds like the story aims to comment on the
latest innovations in tech while showcasing them, and Asteria has
clearly marked itself as a non predatory AI company. On
the other hand, the public has a generally negative view
(09:43):
of AI and is far less optimistic about its prospects
than those working in the field. Among twenty twenty four
Oscar's favorites, more than one film was criticized for relying
on AI. That said, it's anyone's guess whether Hollywood can
fend off the machines in the long run. Those who
embrace them now maybe just be adapting to the inevitable.
(10:04):
As for Uncanny Valley, audiences will decide for themselves if
it represents the future they want to see. Okay, I
love britt Marling. I think she's one of the most
genre defying storytellers of my lifetime. The OA literally changed
my life, changed my brain chemistry. I cried for a
(10:24):
week after watching Another Earth Natasha Leone. I love her
so much. Slums of Beverly Hills. Orange is the new
black Russian doll, poker face. She does so much. She's
brilliant too, So I really was so excited to hear
they were collaborating. But these film studios, these companies like Asteria,
(10:45):
Fable Studios, and Waymark, are designed to reduce the number
of human beings required to make a film. They use
machine learning to generate scripts, animate scenes, dub voices, and
even cast actors with deep fat make them a little older,
or they're not even there, Like they've done this for
a while, like when people were dead already and stuff.
(11:06):
But this is just like because they want to. From
Asteria's press materials, our mission is to accelerate the filmmaking
process through AI powered tools that allow creatives to generate assets,
test ideas, and iterate faster translation. We're replacing you. These
studios are already hiring fewer screenwriters, fewer editors, fewer animators.
(11:27):
They're even replacing voice actors with synthetic voice models. I've
actually seen a string of emails go out just this
week to my friends who are voice actors, letting them
know that they're being replaced. And if you're like me
and you work in storytelling in any way, you see
this seeping in with everything, this slow AI takeover. And
(11:49):
it's really ironic to me, especially for Britt Marling, because
it seems like she's spent so much of her career
writing about the dangers of posthumanism. The oh Ay if
it ever gets as season three, it could be about
half creating some computer AI system and locking them all
in there. I mean, it literally feels straight from that.
(12:10):
In a twenty seventeen interview, brit said, we've lost sight
of the unknown. The unknown used to be the most
exciting part being human. Well, it definitely seems like she's
doing the next step of the unknown. I don't know
if I think that Britt Marling and Natasha are selling out.
I don't think that's really it. I do think they're
(12:30):
trying to innovate inside a collapsing industry. The problem I'm
having is the things that are using are one of
the reasons the industry is collapsing. These tools are part
of this whole machine that's spitting everything out and regurgitating content.
Not art, not film, not storytelling content. It just feels
(12:53):
like everything is for content. But then there's this whole
argument too, of this ethical AI, which I have a
harder time understanding. Okay, so it's getting all its copying
all this stuff from things it's allowed to copy. Who
told it it could copy it, who gave that copyright permission?
Like I just army of a listeners.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Are challenging open AI and Google over copyright exemptions for
training AI models. I'm Brian Welk, and this is in
neire News. The fight over AI and copyright just got serious.
Over four hundred Hollywood heavyweights including Gier Moo, Dol Toro,
Paul McCarty, Kate Blanchett, Ron Howard, Janelle Money, and Ryan
(13:34):
Johnson are taking on Open AI and Google, demanding they
play by the rules when it comes to copyrighted content.
Speaker 7 (13:40):
Jd Vance is warning foreign leaders against placing regulations on
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Jd Vance did take part in the discussion only to
end with the.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Warning to keep it that way. All started when US
Vice President.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
He Killed the Pope.
Speaker 6 (13:57):
Criticized Europe's AI regulations, calling them bad for innovation. That
gave Google an Open AI the green light to post
sweeping copyright exemptions to the White House, claiming that restricting
AI training would hurt national security and scientific progress. Hollywood
isn't buying it. Top creatives argue that letting AI companies
bypass copyright would undermine an industry that fuels two point
(14:20):
three million jobs and two hundred twenty nine billion in wages.
Their message America's AI leadership should it come at the
cost of its creative economy, and the battle is already
playing out. New York Times is suing Open Ai. Scarlett
Johansson called out AI for cloning her voice.
Speaker 5 (14:36):
How are you doing, I'm doing fantastic, Thanks for asking it.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
Deals like lions Gate's partnership with Runway are raising new
questions about AI's role and entertainment.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
You say that whole qut pie toast was written by
none other than your friend ch at GPT.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Meanwhile, Fatasha Leone, a signatory of the letter, is pushing
back with a solution. Her company Hysteria just launched Mary
and AI model they claim is the first trained without
any copyrighted material. As the White House weighs its next move,
the stakes are clear, will AI innovation take priority or
will copyright protections pull the line.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
This is from CBS. It's a year old, which is
like five hundred ygars in AI terms, at.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
The age of eighty.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
Harrison Ford is starring as Indiana Jones. Both old and
young audiences could soon see a new performance by James Dean,
who died in nineteen fifty five, and an upcoming film
will feature Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as they appeared
in Forrest Gump nearly thirty years ago, How.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
To Show You Magic.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
This man became famous as a young Tom Cruise a
makeover from the AI company Metaphysic.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
You know I do all my own stunts. Obviously.
Speaker 5 (15:49):
It is now immortalizing actors through image capture like this
to appear in future films without ever.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Being on set.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
CEO Tom Graham.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
There is a move now from many people to preserve
their likeness in the future.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
It could be used.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
To create their performance. This is going to be a
core asset for every performer.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
You know I could be hit by a bus tomorrow
and that's it. But my performances can go on and.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
On and on and on and on.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
But how that likeness is preserved like they would have anyway?
Like Tom Hanks is going to go away if we
don't digitally clone him. I mean he's in every movie AI.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
It is okay for performers likeness, image, voice to be
digitally modeled and captured, provided they know exactly what it's
going to be used for and see that there are
appropriate safeguards in place to make sure that that data
is not made available beyond its intended.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Use, safeguards that currently don't exist.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
We need to focus heavily on the ethics and how
we deploy AI, and so we need to really work
hard to move our institutions very very quickly to be
able to accommodate some of these.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
New potential outcomes.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Tyler Perry was supposed to put eight hundred million dollars
into the expansion of his Atlantis studio, but after seeing
a demo of a I studio, he told the Hollywood Reporter,
I had gotten word that it was coming, but I
had no idea until I saw the full demonstration. I
(17:24):
immediately canceled the plans. He also said, I am very,
very concerned that in the near future a lot of
jobs are going to be lost. It's shocking to see.
Is it shocking to see? And it's this is all
happening now. The Frost was an AI generated short film
using Runway mL tools. Netflix Japan has used AI to
(17:46):
generate backgrounds in anime, citing light labor shortages. Sarah can
generate entire scenes from text prompts, landscape movement, even lighting
and camera angles. A quote from AI researcher and critic
Kate Crawford says, AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It's
made from the labor data and exploitation of real people.
(18:08):
I'll probably watch on Candy Valley. I'm sure that I will,
because I love indie cinema and moral contradictions. But I'll
probably walk in the same way that I would watch
a Pizza hut get turned into a spirit Halloween, a
Blockbuster video turning into a QR code. I'd like to
learn more about ethical AI. I think there are some
(18:30):
things that are really cool, like on Netflix, if you
change the language of a film, they move the mouths
now so like the dub looks like the words they're
saying are those words? Stuff like that is cool to me,
But our voice actors losing work because of that yet?
Or is are do they are they still needed? It's
(18:51):
just all such a slippery slope. And I don't know
if I'm being stubborn. Am I like one of those
people who was like, the Internet is a fad and
it's bad. I kind of feel like that right now,
But at the same time, I'm seeing these real consequences
of people losing work. My group chats of film people
right now have a huge sense of desperation. I don't
(19:11):
even think a movie is filming in Portland right now.
I think only like corporate commercials are filming. How has
this impacted you as a viewer, as a watcher, or
as a creative as for whatever you do? How is
AI changing your life? And did you think it would
change our movies and what we consume so quickly? I
(19:32):
didn't think this would happen so fast, And now it's
just going to get faster and faster. I just I
think that there's you can't unring a bell. I don't know.
I feel really conflicted. I'm definitely going through the five
stages of grief. I think that we're an acceptance right now,
so I'm going to end it there. This was a
(19:53):
short one, but I just wanted to talk about this.
I know so many of us, our friend our friends
are fans of Natasha Leon and britt Marling. If you
haven't watched The OA, I recommend it so much. Maybe
part of this is my bitterness that I am not
getting a season three of The OA and instead getting
(20:13):
AI film. I don't know. I'm more sad about this
than I thought it would be. I had like a
very strong reaction when I saw all of this that
I wasn't expecting. But it's emotional for me, Like I
would be fine if I never worked on a film again.
It's not my bread and butter. It's something I love doing.
But I have so many friends who it's their entire world,
(20:36):
and I just my heart hurts for them. I hope
that there's still space. I hope that there's a way
with all this AI stuff to create more jobs. What
happens after it just steals everything from us. There'll be
no original ip left. Everything will just be a remake
of content until next time. Thank you so much. For
(20:58):
listening to another episode of Broads next Door. Huge request
for you today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share
it with a friend. If you also like, rate and review,
It really really helps me out. I'm doing daily episodes
right now, Monday through Friday, so it's a lot of work.
It's just me. I say we a lot because I
(21:21):
mean you as well. But as far as doing the work,
I edit, write, and record everything myself. That's why it's
so helpful to be able to use clips from other creators,
which I'm deeply grateful for, mostly deeply grateful for you.
I appreciate every single one of you. You can find
me online on social media at Daniellascrima or at broads
(21:43):
next Door. My email addresses on all my profiles, I
check all my dms. I check my message request once
a week. So even if I don't get back to
you right away, I promise that I will. I love
talking to all of you, keep sending episodes suggestion. Such
an amazing community that I'm so deeply grateful for. I
(22:05):
love that you're all humans and not AI robots, and
I will talk to you very soon. Bye.
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