Exclusive-Amazon plans to use AI to speed up TV and film production

By Dawn Chmielewski and Greg Bensinger LOS ANGELES, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Amazon plans to use artificial intelligence to speed up the process for making movies and TV shows even as Hollywood fears that AI will cut jobs and permanently reshape the industry. At the Amazon MGM Studio, veteran entertainment executive Albert Cheng is leading a team charged with developing new AI tools that he said will cut costs and streamline the creative process. Amazon plans to launch a closed beta program in March, inviting industry partners to test its AI tools. The company expects to have results to share by May.  Cheng described AI Studio as a "startup" operating under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's "two pizza team" philosophy — keeping the group small enough to be fed by two pizzas. The team consists primarily of product engineers and scientists, with a smaller creative and business contingent. Amazon is publicly embracing AI in response to spiraling production budgets that limit the number of shows and films companies can finance. The technology will fast-track certain processes to make more movies and TV shows more efficiently. "The cost of creating is so high that it really is hard to make more and it really is hard to take great risk," Cheng said in an interview. "We fundamentally believe that AI can accelerate, but it won't replace, the innovation and the unique aspects that (humans) bring to create the work." The move to adopt artificial intelligence comes as A-list actors like Emily Blunt have expressed fears about the rise of AI — and particularly AI actress Tilly Norwood would make their jobs obsolete. Amazon emphasized writers, directors, actors, and character designers will be involved at every stage of production, using AI as a tool to enhance creativity.  Like many other tech companies, Amazon is also pushing nearly every division to find uses for AI and pointed to the successes of the technology as among the reasons it cut about 30,000 corporate jobs since October, its largest layoff ever. That included a number of job cuts at Prime Video. Cheng said AI could help Prime Video overcome some of the inherent challenges of large scale film and television production. The AI Studio is building tools that bridge what Cheng described as  "the last mile" — perhaps a cheeky reference to Amazon's delivery operation — between existing consumer AI offerings and the granular control directors need for cinematic content. That includes improving character consistency across shots, and integrating with industry-standard creative tools. Amazon is leaning on its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, for help and plans to work with multiple large language model providers to give creators a wider array of options for pre- and post-production filmmaking. Cheng said protecting intellectual property and ensuring AI-created content won't be absorbed into other AI models are essential to making the AI Studio work. The AI Studio is working with producers Robert Stromberg (“Maleficent”) and his company Secret City, Kunal Nayyar (“The Big Bang Theory”) and his company Good Karma Productions; and former Pixar and ILM animator Colin Brady, as it explores new tools and how best to implement them. The Studio, which launched last August, points to its hit series, "House of David," as an example of how AI could be used in the future. For the second season of the biblical epic, director Jon Erwin used AI combined with live-action footage to create battle scenes, seamlessly editing the two together to expand the scope of sequences at lower cost. (Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles and Greg Bensinger in San FranciscoEditing by Nick Zieminski)

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