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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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I find this unlikely. It might happen in a few years if current progress continues but this year is too early. If I arbitrarily set the threshold of a "film" at >75 minutes long, and set some baseline quality standard of say >50 on Metacritic, and stipulate that principle photography must be done entirely through AI (humans doing minor touch-ups would be fine), I think people would be very hard pressed to do that in the very short term. The scaffolding and pipelines don't really exist yet to make that feasible.

In fact, I'm writing this one down in my list of predictions that won't happen to keep track of.

My hedge is that I'm saying its >50%, so not a certainty, but I want to be clear that IF it happens I wasn't caught off-guard and if it doesn't happen (or indeed never happens) I did stick my neck out and will accept the derision.

Because obsessive auteurs (or autists) with time on their hands and the proper tools CAN in fact create amazing works in relatively short time frames. It took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the Sistine Chapel. Would we agree that with modern tools and a few decent assistants, in the current era he could easily knock it out in less than 1?

Bo Burnham produced an acclaimed 87 minute-long special all by his lonesome in just over a year.

A small and dedicated team that animated an 84-minute long film over 5 1/2 years using free tools totaled about 40-50 people working on it but was mostly down to just two guys doing the critical work.

(Incidentally, "Flow" is also what Google is calling their AI video workspace)

So if the AI is sufficiently good to 10x the productivity of the creators, a team of about 5 could probably get something that's Netflix-Worthy (derogatory way to put it, granted) done inside of a year, if they share a vision and have maniacal but competent leadership.