September 2, 2025 • 7 mins
Tech Tuesday with ABC's Mike Dobuski- The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere; Mitigating energy use at data centers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, let's jump over to the Legacy Retirement Group
(00:02):
dot com phone line and say good morning to ABC
News tech reporter Mike Dbuski. Mike, I hope you had
a nice weekend. Thank you for the time. This morning,
I saw a video of the AI Wizard of Oz
that was being shown at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
It looked really really cool.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, it's really interesting thing that's kind of garnering some
attention in both Hollywood but also further afield. These are
apparently sold out tickets. These are tickets that go for
more than one hundred dollars, So it seems like there's
a lot of interest in this right now. But let's
just talk about what it is first. The Sphere is
this big new event venue. It's a big sphere. It's
got a big sort of fourteen k excuse me, sixteen
(00:41):
K led screen that runs around the entire inside of
this venue, so it kind of goes up and around
and behind the audience. Over the weekend, they started playing
this very special version of The Wizard of Oz that
is essentially an expanded version of the original film designed
to fit this massive screen. And to do this, they
went to Google's Artificial intelligence team to help. There's a
(01:04):
couple different technologies that they're employing here. For one, they
had to blow up the image to a degree that
it had not been blown up to before. And if
you've ever sort of expanded a photo or zoomed in
on an iPhone photo, you know that you kind of
sacrifice image quality the bigger an image gets right. So
they're using AI to basically sharpen and make clearer a
(01:26):
lot of these images. It's a process that Google calls
super resolution, but that's just one step here. They're actually
going much further with artificial intelligence through this process known
as out painting, where if you're watching a traditional movie, right,
there's framing and you might only see kind of the
head and shoulders of a given character. Well, now, because
the screen is so big, they're using AI to basically
(01:46):
invent what the rest of that character looks like, even
kind of generating what the ruby slippers would look like
in scenes that didn't originally have them. In some cases,
they're also creating full characters. For example, in an early
scene in The Wizard of Oz, the camera moves it
pans away from Uncle Henry, Dorothy's uncle, so that he's
not in the frame anymore. Well, because now there's this
(02:07):
wider field of view, Uncle Henry doesn't disappear off screen.
So the creative team used AI to basically come up
with something for him to do. They call this performance
generation in propotional videos. They actually went back to the
original script, they say, to kind of inform what that
performance was going to look like. But you can imagine
there are many people who are excited about this. Again
(02:27):
they say it's sold out, but there are also people
who are pushing back on this in a pretty big way.
It was not so long ago that Hollywood went on
strike in large part to protest the creeping influence of
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Interesting, and I saw the video I saw they actually
had they created a tornado inside the sphere.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, so there's a number of what are known as
four D effects involved in this as well, where there's
wind that actually blows through the space and there are
flying monkeys that come down that kind of like exist
in the space with you. This is actually part of
a larger trend that we're seeing in movie theaters in general.
There are four D X screenings. This is popular last
summer with the movie Twisters, where they could actually like
(03:06):
blow kind of wind effects into theaters for people. Obviously
it costs a little bit more to do that, but
these theaters are in pretty dire straits generally, so they
kind of need extra margin. They need extra you know
stuff to kind of get people into seats and make
some money. So that is a piece of this as well.
There's there's a four D element to it. And you know,
(03:28):
tickets are not your average movie ticket, right They are
about one hundred and nine dollars to start. They go
all the way up to three hundred and forty nine
dollars for like the Ultra Exclusive package. But they also
say they spent about eighty million dollars modernizing this version
of The Wizard of Oz, so ticket verses are maybe expected.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
To go a lot higher. Have you been to the
Sphere yet?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I've been outside of the Sphere. I've not been to
a show there, but I was in Las Vegas last
year and I saw it from the outside.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I mean it looks cool. I think it's primarily a
concert venue. I have not been. I would like to go.
My fear is that I would be I would get
motion sick inside that thing.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I think that's definitely a risk that you run.
I hear that the U two show that they did,
they did a run of shows at the Sphere that
was like really interesting and really transformative. Apparently the Backstreet
Boys have a show a series of shows coming up
in the wintertime that is interesting. The Eagles, I think,
are playing there now. So yeah, it's primarily a concert venue,
(04:22):
but they are now seemingly getting into the world of film.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology Reporter, I want to switch
gears on you real quick, Mike story. I heard you
do maybe a couple of hours ago in one of
our news blocks about data centers, and we know how
much energy they take, and you know, they a lot
of electricity to run those, a lot of water to
keep them cool. And I think the crux of your
story is they're looking for ways to mitigate the energy
(04:49):
uses from these data centers and they're starting to look
at cooler climates and even somebody suggested to build one
of these underwater to keep them cool.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, So a data center, Just to explain what that is,
it's basically a big building full of computers, right, A
lot of the processing that you do on your phone
or on your kind of desktop computer. A lot of
the computing doesn't actually happen there. It goes kind of
to a separate location full of these like ultra high
powered computers. And with the rise of generative artificial intelligence,
(05:19):
which is very compute heavy, there's been a lot of
focus on these data centers, these big buildings full of
computers because you know, there's just an increased pressure on them,
right They're being used more and being used more intensely
by this very energy hungry technology. So what do computers
do when you kind of run them very you know, aggressively.
(05:40):
They generate heat, and that is a big concern around
these data centers. I actually went to go see a
data center here in New York that was being built,
and so much of the thought process that went into
the design of this building really came back not to computers,
but to air conditioning. There was a you know, about
a seven foot gap between the floor of the building
and the actual round beneath it that was just designed
(06:02):
for airflow to like kind of flow cool air underneath
all these computers to keep them cool. Water cooling is
another thought that is being kind of tossed out there
as a more modern, more effective way to do this,
And yes, someone did suggest building one of these on
the floor of the ocean, though that has not actually
come to be. Your data is further away from you
(06:23):
in that scenario as well, so maybe it kind of
harder to fix in case something goes wrong, But like
that is an idea that's tossed out there. Of course,
the other piece of this is that all that energy
draw from these data centers are putting pressure on you
people's electric bills, to say nothing of the local environment.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, oh, you're absolutely right, and very interesting stuff there,
Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology reporter, thank you for that time.
Appreciate you very very much.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
My friend sounds good, Tae.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, and we obviously are well versed in that here
with all of the data centers. We've got Microsoft and Google,
of course the Intel plant which is not quite yet operational.
But they all need energy and they all need cool
and it's going to be really interesting to see what
our electric bills do here in the next couple of
week
All right, let's jump over to the Legacy Retirement Group
(00:02):
dot com phone line and say good morning to ABC
News tech reporter Mike Dbuski. Mike, I hope you had
a nice weekend. Thank you for the time. This morning,
I saw a video of the AI Wizard of Oz
that was being shown at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
It looked really really cool.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, it's really interesting thing that's kind of garnering some
attention in both Hollywood but also further afield. These are
apparently sold out tickets. These are tickets that go for
more than one hundred dollars, So it seems like there's
a lot of interest in this right now. But let's
just talk about what it is first. The Sphere is
this big new event venue. It's a big sphere. It's
got a big sort of fourteen k excuse me, sixteen
(00:41):
K led screen that runs around the entire inside of
this venue, so it kind of goes up and around
and behind the audience. Over the weekend, they started playing
this very special version of The Wizard of Oz that
is essentially an expanded version of the original film designed
to fit this massive screen. And to do this, they
went to Google's Artificial intelligence team to help. There's a
(01:04):
couple different technologies that they're employing here. For one, they
had to blow up the image to a degree that
it had not been blown up to before. And if
you've ever sort of expanded a photo or zoomed in
on an iPhone photo, you know that you kind of
sacrifice image quality the bigger an image gets right. So
they're using AI to basically sharpen and make clearer a
(01:26):
lot of these images. It's a process that Google calls
super resolution, but that's just one step here. They're actually
going much further with artificial intelligence through this process known
as out painting, where if you're watching a traditional movie, right,
there's framing and you might only see kind of the
head and shoulders of a given character. Well, now, because
the screen is so big, they're using AI to basically
(01:46):
invent what the rest of that character looks like, even
kind of generating what the ruby slippers would look like
in scenes that didn't originally have them. In some cases,
they're also creating full characters. For example, in an early
scene in The Wizard of Oz, the camera moves it
pans away from Uncle Henry, Dorothy's uncle, so that he's
not in the frame anymore. Well, because now there's this
(02:07):
wider field of view, Uncle Henry doesn't disappear off screen.
So the creative team used AI to basically come up
with something for him to do. They call this performance
generation in propotional videos. They actually went back to the
original script, they say, to kind of inform what that
performance was going to look like. But you can imagine
there are many people who are excited about this. Again
(02:27):
they say it's sold out, but there are also people
who are pushing back on this in a pretty big way.
It was not so long ago that Hollywood went on
strike in large part to protest the creeping influence of
artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Interesting, and I saw the video I saw they actually
had they created a tornado inside the sphere.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, so there's a number of what are known as
four D effects involved in this as well, where there's
wind that actually blows through the space and there are
flying monkeys that come down that kind of like exist
in the space with you. This is actually part of
a larger trend that we're seeing in movie theaters in general.
There are four D X screenings. This is popular last
summer with the movie Twisters, where they could actually like
(03:06):
blow kind of wind effects into theaters for people. Obviously
it costs a little bit more to do that, but
these theaters are in pretty dire straits generally, so they
kind of need extra margin. They need extra you know
stuff to kind of get people into seats and make
some money. So that is a piece of this as well.
There's there's a four D element to it. And you know,
(03:28):
tickets are not your average movie ticket, right They are
about one hundred and nine dollars to start. They go
all the way up to three hundred and forty nine
dollars for like the Ultra Exclusive package. But they also
say they spent about eighty million dollars modernizing this version
of The Wizard of Oz, so ticket verses are maybe expected.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
To go a lot higher. Have you been to the
Sphere yet?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I've been outside of the Sphere. I've not been to
a show there, but I was in Las Vegas last
year and I saw it from the outside.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I mean it looks cool. I think it's primarily a
concert venue. I have not been. I would like to go.
My fear is that I would be I would get
motion sick inside that thing.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I think that's definitely a risk that you run.
I hear that the U two show that they did,
they did a run of shows at the Sphere that
was like really interesting and really transformative. Apparently the Backstreet
Boys have a show a series of shows coming up
in the wintertime that is interesting. The Eagles, I think,
are playing there now. So yeah, it's primarily a concert venue,
(04:22):
but they are now seemingly getting into the world of film.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology Reporter, I want to switch
gears on you real quick, Mike story. I heard you
do maybe a couple of hours ago in one of
our news blocks about data centers, and we know how
much energy they take, and you know, they a lot
of electricity to run those, a lot of water to
keep them cool. And I think the crux of your
story is they're looking for ways to mitigate the energy
(04:49):
uses from these data centers and they're starting to look
at cooler climates and even somebody suggested to build one
of these underwater to keep them cool.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, So a data center, Just to explain what that is,
it's basically a big building full of computers, right, A
lot of the processing that you do on your phone
or on your kind of desktop computer. A lot of
the computing doesn't actually happen there. It goes kind of
to a separate location full of these like ultra high
powered computers. And with the rise of generative artificial intelligence,
(05:19):
which is very compute heavy, there's been a lot of
focus on these data centers, these big buildings full of
computers because you know, there's just an increased pressure on them,
right They're being used more and being used more intensely
by this very energy hungry technology. So what do computers
do when you kind of run them very you know, aggressively.
(05:40):
They generate heat, and that is a big concern around
these data centers. I actually went to go see a
data center here in New York that was being built,
and so much of the thought process that went into
the design of this building really came back not to computers,
but to air conditioning. There was a you know, about
a seven foot gap between the floor of the building
and the actual round beneath it that was just designed
(06:02):
for airflow to like kind of flow cool air underneath
all these computers to keep them cool. Water cooling is
another thought that is being kind of tossed out there
as a more modern, more effective way to do this,
And yes, someone did suggest building one of these on
the floor of the ocean, though that has not actually
come to be. Your data is further away from you
(06:23):
in that scenario as well, so maybe it kind of
harder to fix in case something goes wrong, But like
that is an idea that's tossed out there. Of course,
the other piece of this is that all that energy
draw from these data centers are putting pressure on you
people's electric bills, to say nothing of the local environment.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, oh, you're absolutely right, and very interesting stuff there,
Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology reporter, thank you for that time.
Appreciate you very very much.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
My friend sounds good, Tae.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, and we obviously are well versed in that here
with all of the data centers. We've got Microsoft and Google,
of course the Intel plant which is not quite yet operational.
But they all need energy and they all need cool
and it's going to be really interesting to see what
our electric bills do here in the next couple of
week
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