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September 2, 2025 11 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, it is Tech Tuesday. So this AI Wizard
of Oz was at the sphere. It kind of debuted
over the weekend. And let's bring in Mike Dubuski, ABC
News Technology Reporter and Mike, welcome again to the Mark
Blazer Show.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
How you been, brother, Yeah, doing pretty well, doing pretty well,
staying on this side of the rainbow.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I would say, ah, I like it.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I like it.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
You know, I've been to last year. I was in
Las Vegas nine times, literally nine times. Last year. I
was in a couple of different blackjack tournaments, and I
could do you know, I have the luxury of doing
my show from out there. I can do it live
from We have a iHeart there in Las Vegas, which
is right on Fremont Street actually, and so I'll i

(00:43):
go out there, you know with my friends that I'm
almost like, I'm almost the guy they call up and
they go, hey, let's see if Blazer will go out
with us, because he can work from out there, because
otherwise I'd have to have about, you know, three or
four full months of time off every year, which is impossible.
That's not going to happen. So I was there a
lot anyway, where I'm going with all this is still
I stayed at Palazzo, I stayed at Encore and Win

(01:06):
and I'm staring right at the Sphere and I've never
been there for a show. I've never even been in
for the.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Tour or what have you.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
This looks really kind of cool, especially if you're looking
at any of the videos and so on. But this
is a really interesting concept that they're doing with this.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, definitely, and the Sphere, Just to explain it for
people who haven't gotten a chance to see, the Sphere
is basically that it's a giant like sphere. It's kind
of like a basketball that's just sitting in the middle
of Las Vegas, and it's got a big screen on
the outside and a big screen on the inside about
four football fields, whereas of sixteen k led screens kind
of the top of the industry right now when it

(01:45):
comes to screen technology. And over the weekend they started
screening The Wizard of Oz. But given the sort of
unique design of the Sphere, they had to make some
modifications to this classic movie from nineteen thirty nine. Again,
they this screen sort of like stretches all over top
of you and around you and behind you, and the
Wizard of Oz in its traditional format is just a rectangle, right,

(02:09):
So the creators of this new Wizard of Oz went
to Google, specifically their artificial intelligence team, to employ a
couple different technologies. For one, they're upscaling this image. So
you know how when you zoom in really far on
an iPhone photo, it kind of gets muddy, it gets grainy,
it starts to fall apart. That same principle applies when
you blow up a film to this huge level, right

(02:31):
to this huge screen. So they're using AI to basically
sharpen the images in the Wizard of Oz to make
it a little bit clearer for people to see. That's
kind of one thing, and that's pretty conventional you would
expect something like that to be done. However, this is
this They're going further than that, and this is kind
of where we get into the sort of controversial territory
with this new AI Wizard of Oz. They're using this

(02:53):
feature called out painting, where you know, if you're watching
that old school sort of rectangular Wizard of Oz, you
might see just someone's head or kind of the top
part of their body maybe well with the sphere given
the nature of that screen, they actually have to edit
in the rest of that character's body just to make
it look kind of in line with the rest of
the movie. So they're using artificial intelligence to basically invent

(03:16):
what the rest of the character looks like. In some cases,
they're going even further than that, creating full performances. For example,
in an early scene in The Wizard of Oz, the
camera moves, it pans and cuts Uncle Henry out of
the frame entirely because there's this wider field of view
at the sphere. Uncle Henry just doesn't disappear off screen can't,
So the creative team used AI to basically come up

(03:38):
with something for him to do. They call this performance generation.
In promotional videos, the creators say they went back to
the original text, the original script, and director's notes to
kind of inform what those performances would look like. But
you can imagine there's been some real pushback in Hollywood
and among critics who say this is exactly why the
writers and actors went on strike to years ago, protesting

(04:01):
sort of creeping influence of artificial intelligence and its potential
to replicate human performances, to say nothing of performances from
people who have passed away since the creation of the
word lot.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, so that begs the question, then you know, the
royalties or you know, all of that stuff is still applicable,
I would imagine, and that's got to be in place, right,
I mean for something like this, like you pointed out,
they passed away and I don't know how it's set
up with regard to you know, do you have family,
current family members or the movie companies that did all.

(04:33):
I don't know any of that that's connected to the
original Wizard of Oz. But if all of that is
in place, it's and this is all kind of separate
from what you're mainly talking about here. But as far
as you know, the people complaining or a lot of
the actors going yeah, no thanks because you know, AI
is going to steal a bunch of this type stuff

(04:53):
from us.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, I mean it's we don't really have any insight
into you know, what rights they've gotten. You to imagine,
they they've consulted with, you know, whoever is Warner Brothers specifically,
you know who owns the Wizard of Oz and that's
a piece of this as well. But yeah, that is
kind of the ethical concern that a lot of people
in Hollywood are raising is It's like, is that actually cool?

(05:14):
Even if you have your rights all cleared away? Is like,
is it okay to digitally resurrect a person who's passed away,
who has no agency here? And this is something that
we've seen crop up in other movies. Last year, Alien Romulus,
sort of the seventh movie in the Alien franchise, digitally
resurrected Ian Holme, who's an actor who passed away years prior,
and you know, his family gave the okay. But again,

(05:36):
is that okay? Do you have audiences want that or
would it have been better to just test somebody else
as that character? You know, it's some one of the
many questions that Hollywood is now struggling with, kind of
given the fast pace of this technological development. For what
it's worth, there are people who really like this new
AI Wizard of Oz that they say they've sold about
two hundred thousand tickets so far, and that's especially eye

(05:58):
popping considering they started about one hundred nine dollars. Ben Mankowitz,
who's the host of Turner Classic Movies. He's also the
grandson of Herman Manquitz, the writer of Citizen Kane. He
and a piece for CBS Sunday Morning said that this
experience feels like magic to see some of these images
expanded and envelop around you, but others are pushing back
on it in a pretty big way. Slate calls this
an atrocity in Indie Wire says it's the world's ugliest

(06:21):
oz that's been radically mutilated by AI and Jamel Bowie,
a columnist for The New York Times, told ABC over
the weekend that this marks an abomination and an insult
to the very idea of art, who says the sort
of larger idea being that, like you know, framing and
editing is a part of the creative process, and by
kind of eschewing that with this new form, that's a

(06:44):
flying in the face of the creator's original intent and
indeed the point of art in the first place.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Hey, have you been to the sphere or have you
seen it?

Speaker 3 (06:51):
By chance?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Ben? Outside of the sphere? I went to Las Vegas
last year but did not, unfortunately, go to see a
show there. But it's still cool to see. I mean,
it's striking thing.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah, from the outside. I mean, they make anything you
can imagine, you know, they make they make big emojis
with it. Or the you know, Planet Earth, or they
make an eyeball that's blinking, or any a beach ball.
It's it is really interesting the types of things that
they do with it to kind of make it a
spectacle if you will. That you can see pretty much,

(07:21):
you know, a lot of different places in Las Vegas,
especially along the Strip, in any of the hotels and
and so on. I think it's a really cool concept
something like this. Though then my mind starts going, Mike,
where I'm going, Man, what other really cool like Jurassic
World or you know Star Wars. You know if you
were in.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Star Wars earlier today and I was like, okay, I
could kind of see that for what it's worth. Jim Dolan,
who's the guy who runs the sphere. He's also the
owner of Madison Square Garden here in New York City,
owner of the New York Knicks and the New York
Rangers as well. He kind of floated the idea of
Gone with the Wind as kind of their next project here,
but there's no confirmation on any of that. It was
just sort of a thing he said it over you

(08:00):
one time. But yeah, you can see that there's there's
some big possibilities here, and Hollywood's going to be watching
the success or failure of this very very closely because
it could point to the future of their industry. You know,
might not be at the sphere specifically, but some of
the technologies that are employing certainly could trickle down to
everyday theaters that you or I will go to.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
Are they going to is this already done or are
they going to let it run.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
For a little bit. No, I believe it's supposed to run,
you know, for the next few weeks and months. I
continuing to go. But again, those those tickets are pretty hefty,
so you know, definitely save up and for what it's worth.
They are also adding in four D effects as they're known,
so during the tornado scenes, the wind will blow through
your hair. There are prop flying monkeys that will come

(08:44):
down and swoop over the audience. They're really trying to
make it a show, right, It's Las Vegas. At the
end of the day, you're going out and you're having
a night at you know, the show as opposed to
just kind of go into the movies. But you know, again,
will people go for it? Well, two hundred thousand tickets
they say, have been sold so far, so it does
seem like there's an apple for this, but again also
some really severe pushback, right.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Mike Dubuski, ABC News Technology Reporter. Pretty fascinating, Mike, thanks
very much, appreciate it. Of course, we'll see.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yah.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
I could see where they do this with the kind
of money they're charging, like he was talking about. I'm
glad he mentioned that because I didn't know that, like
with a you know, a tornado, they whipped the wind
up in there so you feel like and then the
monkey's flying around there trying to make it like, well,
I paid all this money to just I'm not just
watching a movie. It's almost interactive, it's almost immersive.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Have you ever been to a forty movie?

Speaker 1 (09:34):
I never have.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
I went to I was in Times Square one Dunkirk
was out, okay, and I wasn't exactly sure what a
forty movie was. I wasn't sure what I was getting into.
But it was basically an aerial.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's a war picture, right, Dunkirk.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
No, No, it's a Christopher Nolan WARLD War two movie.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
So they're flying in planes and like there's the camera
or the screen looks at a guy flying a plane
and like a bullet whizzzs past his head and when
it does, air shoots right by your ears out of
the chair like a bullet whizzing pasture.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Like, oh, so did it feel like realistic? Like when
you're watching it, you're like, oh, that's kind of cool.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
It was cool. You have to be ready for it
because like when the plane turned left.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
The seat would jerk left.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
Oh, stuff like that, so it was really neat and your.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Seat belted in.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
No.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Oh, and some of.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
It when they would land, like water would splash up. Yeah,
and it would squirt water on you.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
You hope that's what it was anyway.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Well, I mean I was fine either way, so I
could see how some people wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
You know.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
I've heard that it's amazing seeing a show there, But
then I've also heard as far as the sphere back
to this, like with you know you two is the
one who kicked off the sphere. They did a run
there on residency. I think the Eagles did some stuff,
but it's you know, this is the this is the
not the the Eagles, but it's the Eagles. If you anyway,

(10:58):
that seeing a show there is pretty incredible, But then
I've also heard people say, like, look, it makes me
almost sick being in there because you're surrounded no matter
you have to like close your eyes and depending on
you know, there's all kinds of extra curricular type stuff
you can be doing in Las Vegas. Then you go
inside that place and you're just like this, you know,

(11:21):
like or whatever. But I've heard people say it is
trippy in there, and again I've been a million times.
But they have a you can go through and tour
it and pay all this. I've just never wanted to
pay to go inside of it. I think it's a
pretty cool concept and so is this. But I could
see where a lot of people push them back on
it too, so
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