Using AI in film making today

[FWN Adm]

As the use of Artificial intelligence (AI) in some form is becoming commonplace across the creative industries, filmmakers and content creators have described approaching its application with a mix of necessary caution and growing optimism.

AI is mostly being used to increase efficiencies in content creation – whether that be subject matter research, pre and post-production workflow fixes or generating subtitles and dubbing voices – said practitioners at the Geneva Digital Market this week.

"We use AI for the pre-production phase or the post production phase of our projects," explained Margot Wilwertz, who is the lead innovation project manager at France's TFI-owned Newen Studios.

She added: "We have been using AI in production extremely rarely, and only in cases which have been discussed with our legal teams. We're really, really careful with that."

One exception was taken during the Covid pandemic when two actresses in TF1's long-running soap opera Plus Belle La Vie (More Beautiful Life) became unwell and were unable to work.

"We either had to reshoot everything we had already shot with the actresses, or ask for permission to use their faces for deep fakes and use another actress to do this," Wilwertz told the gathered delegates. The actors were asked and signed legal agreements approving the move.

Wilwertz described using AI in production in a TFI documentary about a choreographer for TF1. As part of the film, the choreographer wanted to have a dancer in front of a murmuration of birds. But when it came to the shoot, no flock appeared.  "Our solution was to generate the birds and the unique movement using AI," she said.