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I'm willing to predict a >50% chance that some guy in his basement (okay, maybe expand it to a "dedicated team of five or fewer people") manage to produce a feature length (90 minute) film that is completely AI Generated and, to the general audience's view, is on par with a mid or low-budget Hollywood fare, in terms of 'quality' of the end product... by the end of THIS year. Its already been 1 year since I saw the Shadowglades 'trailer' which, despite being just 2 minutes of disconnected imagery, portrayed a world I would really like to enter and set stories in. And just today those folks put out a new trailer that is just as visually interesting, and much more dynamic and coherent! I can tell who the protagonist is!
I'd predict it WON'T be an action movie because no video AI I've seen can produce a legible fight scene, plus all the model restrictions on depicting violence. Not Scorcese quality for sure, and it'll play to AI's strengths and eschew its shortcomings, but it will be coherent visually and plotwise.
But even if that basement guy started TODAY, if he can produce 1 minute of usable footage a day, on average, it'd be 90 days to get the footage, which leaves another 90 to edit, adjust, produce (AI generated) soundtrack, and fine tune actor performances and 'line reads'. Doable for a dedicated enough, decently talented enthusiast with enough money to burn on the credits. And that assumes someone isn't already halfway done with one already.
I'm already champing at the bit to start work on the pilot episode of an anime adaptation of one of my favorite books, and the early results I've been getting with just the free options available have convinced me I could pull off producing a ~20 minute episode in about 1 month if I were able to fully 'lock in' to doing it. I won't lock in, life just won't allow that right now but it'd be such an invigorating project that, like you and your pulp novel generator, I'd be willing to spend like $100/month or so just working on it for the sheer pleasure of seeing the end product, even if its never published or enjoyed by anyone else.
@faceh @phailyoor It wasn’t done with AI, but one guy in Latvia already managed to effectively make an academy award winning box office success from his basement. It’s called Flow
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How much are you willing to wager on this claim? What are examples of a baseline of mid-budget Hollywood?
"Mid-Budget Hollywood" would be approximately any recent A24 film..
With stringent enough definition and an agreeable arbiter, I'd put up $500 in favor of it, at even odds.
Note I'm NOT saying the film gets a theatrical release or gets published on a streaming platform, just that someone releases the movie for the viewing public, even if its just a random download link, and an average American citizen could watch it and NOT immediately guess it was AI-Generated. Doesn't have to fool a film buff, but also could fool an adult, not just a kid.
I'd also still consider it a win if the film were less than 90 minutes long, but that's the fairish benchmark for 'feature length' that would differentiate it from a TV episode.
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