00:00This music video from Lewis Capaldi was fully generated by artificial intelligence and it turns
00:06out more budding filmmakers are using AI to do their storytelling more cheaply and quickly. Does
00:12that mean AI is going to kill movies? Not necessarily, it's probably just going to change
00:16who gets to make them. The video was created by Wonder, an AI production studio co-founded by
00:22Justin Hackney. You might recognize him as the infected kid from 28 Days Later. He's aged a bit
00:29since then and looks a lot less gray and murderous, but his pivot into artificial intelligence made him
00:35a bit of a pariah in the movie industry. His filmmaking friends stopped talking to him.
00:40One ad executive literally put his head in his hands when Hackney was giving him a pitch. And
00:46honestly, I don't blame them because when you see a video this good made for a fraction of the cost,
00:51the fear in Hollywood is 100% understandable. The founder of DreamWorks has predicted that soon
00:58a world-class animated movie will require less than 10% of the artists that it needs today.
01:04Even Conan O'Brien joked about it at the Oscars.
01:06I'm honored to be the last human host of the Academy Award.
01:11But here's the part no one is talking about. What YouTube did for distribution,
01:16AI is doing for production. High-end films usually cost up to a million dollars per finished minute.
01:23Wonder says it can do the same for $20,000. Studios like Netflix also operate on the so-called
01:29cost-plus model where they own everything. Negotiating for your own ownership rights is
01:35rare. That's how George Lucas became a billionaire and it's why Ryan Coogler's ownership deal for
01:41Sinners made such massive waves. Wonder is changing that traditional model though by offering a 50-50 split
01:48on intellectual property. That means a creator like the Swedish author of the children's book
01:53Maxi and Helium can use AI to build a global show and actually keep her stake in it rather than
01:59selling
02:00her soul to a giant studio just to get it made. While AI will almost certainly hurt some background
02:06actors and VFX workers, there are some grounds for cautious optimism. The rise of YouTube effectively
02:12made a new economy. It added $55 billion to U.S. GDP and created half a million full-time jobs.
02:21Disruption hurts, but sometimes thoughtful gatekeepers can help it create more jobs.
02:27That's a big responsibility for AI movie producers like Justin Hackney, but it probably means that his
02:33days as an industry pariah are over.
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