How will AI reshape new Media and Entertainment? I don’t have all the answers to that question but I know more people will create entertaining art, animation, games, stories because of how easy it is to do so with the help of AI. Think of it like this, before printing press was invented, there were 30,000 books published in all of Europe but today 2 million books are published worldwide every year and there are over 150 million unique titles published. Why go that far, take the more recent phenomenon of photographs, before cameras were part of your mobile phone, there were 3 trillion photos taken over the 150 years since photography became a thing. After the camera was added to the mobile phone, we take 3 trillion photos in a year!! Is that 150x? I don’t know, something like that, but you get the point.
Making art better, easier, faster, cheaper with technology has worked for the past 150 years, it will work with AI. More people will create art, animation, games, movies than ever before because AI lowers the bar for entry, remember technology can only lower the bar for entry but that does not mean it will raise the bar for creative output instantly, just as a muscle gets stronger as we do more reps, better art will be created by the society over longer period of time. In the near term, there will be slop, it’s inevitable because we haven’t built the muscle, we have more people making stuff with “weak muscles”, but as someone said “To have a great idea, you must have a lot of bad ideas”, with a lot of bad art comes good art. I’m using the word art in the broadest sense possible, everything is art, painting, storytelling, visual effects, moviemaking, using technology to be more creative than ever before.
What are the entertainment companies doing here at the crossroads of AI and Entertainment? Who are the startups that are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible? Who are the pioneering technologists and artists? Here are a few notable products in the space that are pioneering new ways to create art, animation, games and movies. Not an exhaustive list by any means, in fact, these are names you would here in the news; there are amazing companies, people and products moving this conversation forward and I’m deeply interested in finding out who they are and writing about them.
Midjourney – We’re a lab of 60 people known for building the most beautiful AI models in the world.
Stable Diffusion – Stable Diffusion is a latent text-to-image diffusion model capable of generating photo-realistic images given any text input, cultivates autonomous freedom to produce incredible imagery, empowers billions of people to create stunning art within seconds.
Google Omni – Create anything from anything, starting with video.
See Dance – Experience true multi-modal AI video creation. Combine images, videos, audio, and text to generate cinematic content with precise reference capabilities, seamless video extension, and natural language control.
RunwayML – Every model you need to make anything you want. A new kind of creative toolkit with everything you need to generate any video, image or piece of content you want.
Nano Banana – Create and edit images/art.
Higgsfield AI – Turn ideas, images, and prompts into cinematic AI videos with more control.
Kling.AI – turn images into videos instantly.