AI and Hollywood: How Universal Pictures Is Thinking About AI

Forbes

Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Universal Pictures Michael Wise spoke at Imagination In Action’s ‘Forging the Future of Business with AI’ Summit about how AI will impact Hollywood and how Universal is making AI a part of the creative process.  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00So, Mike, you had something you wanted to show to kind of kick this off?

00:05Yeah, thanks so much for having me, John.

00:08I work for a movie studio.

00:09I can't come to a conference without showing a little bit of footage, so let's go ahead

00:13and cue that up if we could.

00:14In 1891, an inventor in New Jersey devised a machine that displayed sequential images

00:18to a single viewer, pioneering motion picture technology.

00:22Four years later, two brothers projected moving images to a paying audience for the first

00:26time in history.

00:28These moments marked the birth of film, transforming entertainment forever.

00:33Since then, major breakthroughs have continued to rewrite the script of film history and

00:37entertainment.

00:38Sound, color, the internet, streaming.

00:41But today, we are facing a breakthrough so big, it may just be the beginning of an entirely

00:46new story.

00:50Movies are dreams that you never forget.

00:57You have a chance to write your own story.

01:00Hey, what kind of movie are we going to make?

01:10Here we go!

01:12Creation is an intershear wheel.

01:15It's going to change you.

01:18And now, here we are, with the opportunity to rewrite life at our fingertips.

01:23You coming or what?

01:26Action!

01:28Art is no game.

01:30Art is as dangerous as a lion's mouth.

01:35You clean up pretty good.

01:36Are you guys pumped for the movie?

01:38Let's go!

01:44Come back.

01:45I always come back.

01:46Boom!

01:49Enjoy it, if you dare.

01:53This shit right here is a moment.

01:55We're going to be best friends forever.

01:57Okay.

02:00It's showtime.

02:01Here we go!

02:24Pretty cool.

02:26Looking at that, and you had animation, and you had non-animation, and I do wonder if

02:30in our lifetime, or in the next five years, or 18 months, or next quarter when you guys

02:36have to do a report or something, if people are not going to be able to tell, was that

02:40animation or was that, like, there's going to be a blur, and there's not going to be

02:46two different characters.

02:47I'll bring, I'll come back to that idea later.

02:49Great question.

02:50All right.

02:51How do you make movies?

02:52Like, what's involved?

02:53You know, what do you know that these people don't know that you want to tell them?

02:58Like, is it easier than these people think?

03:01Is it harder?

03:02Is there dimensions that show, kind of, you know, reveal something about it that you want

03:07to share?

03:08You know, you're not entry-level.

03:09You're one of the C-suite of a major house.

03:14Well, I'll try and summarize a four-year degree at USC Film School in the next 40 seconds

03:21or so, but I'll say in brief, you know, what a movie studio does or industry does at the

03:28end of the day is we work with creative artists who are able to create artwork in the form

03:33of stories that is so compelling, spoken from the soul that speaks to human being souls

03:39that moves us in such a way that there's a lot of money to be made, that there's a business

03:45model that emerges, but at the forefront, it's all really fueled on artistry, pure artistry.

03:51In a way, a film comes together is someone has an idea, a filmmaker might have an idea,

03:56it might come from a book, it might come from a legend, it might come from a historical

04:02event or it might just be conjured from someone's creative mind, and that idea is pitched to

04:08a studio, not unlike the VC community here, and it's eventually green-lit to be made.

04:14And then once a film is funded, a project is funded, I should say, a whole cord of,

04:21a whole group of creative community come together and make a movie.

04:25You've got screenwriters who write the story, you have a director who's, think of almost

04:30like the CEO of a film, you have photographers, you have costume designers, you have obviously

04:36actors, actresses, you have musicians who create the score, you have hundreds and sometimes

04:42thousands of craftspeople who might design a costume, who might decorate a set, who might

04:47design a lighting, who will create the color or the look of a film and finish a film in

04:53post-production and eventually finish what is truly amazing works of art that at the

04:59end of the day, if it's a great film, millions and millions of people will sit in theaters

05:05in a collective environment or in their living rooms and enjoy it.

05:09So you went to the Annapolis or the Juilliard or the MIT of filmmaking, USC.

05:16I want to know about you, but just before I get to you...

05:19I'm actually a UC Santa Barbara grad, but yeah, yeah.

05:23Those state kids, you know, they wanted more, you know, right?

05:26Yeah.

05:27Okay, so I was just seeing if...

05:28See, he's not an AI, you know, I just, that was my thing.

05:31So you've had some experience, you went to school on the West Coast, so that means you

05:36know a little bit about filmmaking.

05:39I want to know about you, but you just said something that struck a chord.

05:43So Jeremy Wertheimer's out there, I was talking to him and he created ITA, sold it for 70

05:48million to Google, and he created a really disruptive travel business with AI.

05:52And I said to him, you know, today, if you were to build that same company, would you

05:55staff it the same way?

05:57And he said, no, because of AI, I could get these senior engineers, I wouldn't need this

06:00whole layer.

06:02And I would get these people and they would do 10X of what the people a generation ago

06:07would have done.

06:09And you just described a lot, like people who cast movies, they get a lot of credit.

06:12Oh, you know, you casted Tom Cruise.

06:14I mean, look, you know, I don't know, whatever.

06:16How hard was that?

06:17But maybe it was hard to get him.

06:18But in terms of all the hierarchy, all the staffing, like, is that going to change dramatically

06:24from where you sit as a CTO kind of thinking about things?

06:27Or is it going to be similar, but people are going to have tools and are going to be able

06:31to do things no one did before?

06:32And maybe you're not in the room that's thinking about that, that's like HR, and that's people

06:36who do the finance and think about how to pay salaries.

06:39But is that, do you see a seismic shift in that?

06:43Great, great, great question.

06:45I mean, it's certainly been a lot written and talked about, will our industry be dramatically

06:50disrupted where we don't need nearly as many human beings to create films or not?

06:56If we look back in history, at the very beginning, the reel that we showed, my studio is the

07:00oldest in existence, it goes back to 1912.

07:04And we're still here and standing and had arguably the most successful year in our company's

07:08history last year.

07:10Because of an outlier movie?

07:11Why was it most successful?

07:14The entire industry for us had a lot of tailwinds, a lot of great films, a lot of great filmmakers,

07:20a lot of great audiences, and a business model, importantly, that continues to work.

07:25But on the point of technological innovation, whether going back in time, it was adding

07:30sound to movies, whether color or this huge transition to digital that unleashed everything

07:37from digital photography to digital post-production, to CGI, visual effects, at each of those moments

07:43in time, there was broad concern in the industry at large.

07:47It's like, wow, is this the end of the industry?

07:50We have talkies now.

07:51What does that mean?

07:52Oh, no, digital cameras.

07:54What does that mean?

07:55CGI and visual effects?

07:56What happens to everyone who makes practical effects?

08:00And the way we look at it is technology evolves and new tools come to play.

08:05It just improves or widens the creative palette that filmmakers have to work with.

08:11And at the end of the day, my job as head of technology for the studio is to really

08:15work with our filmmakers, work with the creative community, and work in the technology community

08:20to really bring together that connection of art and science and technology to enable amazing

08:28stories to be told.

08:30So if we think about artificial intelligence, will it change the industry?

08:34Absolutely.

08:35Do we have a crystal ball to understand exactly how and where and when?

08:39Probably not.

08:40We can certainly debate the rest of the afternoon what it looks like.

08:45As we see tools emerge, whether tools and visual effects that can change someone's appearance,

08:52whether it's tools that we'll leverage in our research group to understand where culture

08:58is headed, where different culture in different parts of the world is headed, understanding

09:03emerging social trends that help us tap into society and understand what a cultural zeitgeist

09:08can be to help us enable storytelling.

09:11These technologies are all really amazing, and we're really, as a studio, really focused

09:17less on how do we leverage AI to decimate and cut costs of the thousands of people who

09:25make films.

09:26And we're really focused on how do we leverage this technology in new and innovative ways

09:30to, again, give filmmakers more choice of what they use.

09:36We had an amazing project with Chris Nolan in Oppenheimer, which is essentially entirely

09:42with practical effects and almost entirely shot with film cameras, old school film cameras.

09:49He told an amazing story that won eight Oscars.

09:54On the other hand, we had a clip of a Fast and Furious movie that had so much technology

09:59and CGI in it, you sort of wonder what's real and what's not.

10:02So, again, a wholly different palette of tools that filmmakers use to tell amazing

10:07stories, and the more, the better in that case.

10:10So, what does the CTO of Universal do?

10:12What do you do on a daily basis?

10:14What's your charge?

10:15If you don't do it well, how does your company suffer?

10:19Where are you trying to look over the horizon?

10:23What are you about?

10:24That's essentially what it is.

10:26My reason to be the studio is to look around the corner and understand where technology

10:30is headed, make sure we've got the right partnerships, the right visibility into technology,

10:35and bring that back to the studio to, again, enable our business and creative community.

10:40Looking back a few years ago, we had a big focus on launching 4K and high dynamic range

10:48in a home, and that project lasted several years.

10:51We brought together the consumer electronics industry, big companies like Sony and Panasonic

10:57and LG and others, to understand the state of the art of television technology, where

11:01it was headed.

11:02We brought in the room color scientists to understand where color is going, the capabilities

11:07of these devices.

11:09We worked across standards organizations to set some standards so filmmakers knew what

11:15they were working with and some predictability.

11:17We launched a new format in the home that is really pretty amazing.

11:21We've done some similar things with theatrical technology.

11:26You make me think there was sound, the talkie, but smell.

11:31Are we going to add other of our six senses, and can we use technology to add heightened

11:37reality, senses that we don't even realize that we have?

11:41That may be getting into some science fiction.

11:42Yeah, there's some examples of that.

11:44No, there's some examples.

11:45Some theatrical releases.

11:46I mean, a painful fact in the part of business I oversee, which is our supply chain operations,

11:53we'll create 700, 800, 900 different versions of a movie just for theatrical experience.

12:00Some of that involves things like haptic seats or sometimes smell, 4D experiences, it's called.

12:08It does happen in a way to enhance the experience.

12:11Tell us some things that we may not know about AI.

12:14Is there a Q department?

12:16The Q is not a, Bond is not a universal movie.

12:20Yeah, although we have worked with that team.

12:23They make great movies too.

12:24Is there a Q department that's kind of testing some things with AI or things that you've

12:31opened a Pandora's box or things you know that no one knows that you could tell us so

12:35we know?

12:36What's our deepest secrets in how we'll use AI?

12:41Like in Get Smart, you go down the elevator or wait in the basement.

12:44I came here to learn, but in all seriousness, we have a great research lab and we're closely

12:55with academia.

12:56USC is another great partner of ours.

12:59We understand where technology is headed.

13:03And then keep answering that, but my follow-up is how can this, we got half MIT people, got

13:09more PhDs than don't have PhDs.

13:11We got some really clever people.

13:13Be powerfully vulnerable.

13:14What could you use help with?

13:16Are there things that your staff would love to experiment with or would like some ideas

13:21on?

13:22Are there things you kind of know that you have to be relevant in, but you're just beginning

13:26and you want to get some advice on how to start?

13:29So first tell us things that we don't know that you're working on that we should know

13:32that we'll be like, oh, cool.

13:34And then how can we help you tell great movies?

13:38A couple areas of research that is, well, let me back up a little bit.

13:46A lot of focus on AI has been about how can AI technologies really replicate the creative

13:55process?

13:56People have talked about, is there a magic AI button that someone can push and out comes

14:03a Stanley Kubrick movie or push another button and out comes in whole form an Alfred Hitch

14:08Koch movie or pick your favorite filmmaker, Christopher Nolan movie.

14:13We're quite frankly don't believe that's an art of possible because we believe it takes

14:18humans to create soulful stories that connect with other human beings.

14:23Have you seen anything that scares you that that might be possible?

14:27No.

14:28No.

14:29No, I haven't.

14:32We're really looking at tools and technologies that really augment human creativeness, right?

14:39Whether it's a tool that helps storytellers ideate rapidly, help them, again, understand

14:44where culture is headed or where culture is today to test ideas, test stories, help our

14:50filmmakers and storytellers rapidly ideate, which is where some of these gen AI tools

14:55that can create amazing looking images or video or turn out to be great creative tools

15:01to help us understand the art of possible and understanding where a story and how a

15:08story can be told.

15:10A lot of great innovation in visual sciences, particularly in the visual effects space as

15:16these tools begin to understand physics in pretty interesting ways and changing people's

15:23appearance.

15:25You or I could look like each other with some of these technologies, which is pretty interesting

15:29in a storytelling way.

15:32But again, we're not interested in technologies that replace human beings, but rather, again,

15:38augment what we can do.

15:40I mean, AI, you can create characters that you can interact with from some of your favorite

15:46movies.

15:47And I know a lot of these movie shops, they make money on things that people can take

15:53hope and interact with.

15:54And I do wonder if that's going to be a whole dimension that is going to evolve, that through

16:00AIs, you'll be able to connect with these characters.

16:04And then there's all sorts of like, if you take a likeness of a certain actor and it's

16:10an AI, who owns that and who gets paid for that and does that scale or not?

16:16Are you guys on the side of let's experiment and throw this out there?

16:22Let's take it slow and figure out and make sure no one's upset.

16:28We're on one hand, really aggressive about how we use technology, you know, to make some

16:34of the, you know, what we saw in a real hopefully exemplifies some of that, but we're also extremely

16:40committed.

16:41And this is really a message I really want to hopefully land with everybody.

16:44We're at a moment, a moment in time with technology and artificial intelligence and the impact

16:51that's likely to make on humanity and in the industry that I'm in, which is fundamentally

16:56about storytelling and creating films that help inspire, in fact, do in some cases, inspire

17:02cultural moments broadly across the world.

17:06We're really thoughtful about, as we implement these technologies and leverage these technologies

17:12to do it responsibly, because a terrible outcome, I think for all of us in society were to be

17:19if some machine would happen where you push a button and a movie comes out that is wholly

17:24generated by AI, because not to say what that would do to jobs in a creative community,

17:30but sort of what it would mean for, you know, humanity if sort of people stopped telling

17:35stories, which is a paradigm that's been around for millennia, and we believe it will be.

17:41So our business model aside, we're really focused on, you know, again, how do we leverage

17:47these technologies responsibly to tell amazing stories that resonate and told by human beings

17:53for human beings in a way that resonates for society.

17:56So here's a few quick questions for you.

17:58So you're from Hollywood.

18:00That's known around the world.

18:03I know an actress in Bollywood who's gotten a lot of recognition, Madhu Dixit, I've stayed

18:09with her and her family.

18:11She's like the Meryl Streep of India.

18:13Do you think because of AI, there could be other centers for moviemaking that could pop

18:18up and give Hollywood a run for its money?

18:22Who saw Bollywood coming 100 years ago, but with this technology, is Hollywood in trouble,

18:27or is Hollywood going to have competition that it didn't have?

18:30That's not something you focus on because you're thinking about your studio.

18:33I think Hollywood's always had competition, and every morning we wake up, there's more

18:38and more content out there, and what AI I think is going to be good for is sort of democratizing

18:45access to filmmaking technology.

18:47Do you become easier?

18:49Tools and technologies make filmmaking, storytelling more accessible, and with that will be the

18:55emergence of more storytellers and more amazing stories.

18:59So I think it's good for everybody, including my business.

19:02So two quick other questions.

19:04Are movies going to be made faster as a result of AI?

19:07Is the turnaround?

19:08I sure hope so.

19:09There's nothing more painful than movies that deliver late in my supply chain world.

19:16Last question, we've heard some people say AI is going to make things more personalized.

19:22Are we going to have a movie that is different for each watcher because of AI, and you guys

19:28are kind of figuring out how to have that strategy in case that becomes a direction?

19:33I don't know.

19:35That could be really, really exciting, sort of personalized storytelling.

19:39Games are one sort of example of that.

19:43Life and how that emerges is really something we're thinking about and exciting.

19:49To paraphrase Chris Nolan, who we worked with recently, won eight Oscars, if nobody noticed,

19:55to sort of try and paraphrase him.

19:57Did you stuff the ballot or did you have to pay people off for that?

20:01I did cast my single vote, but it's the one that may be counted.

20:05I don't know.

20:06No, no, but I'll say we're barely 100 years into filmmaking, barely 100 years, right?

20:12A long way from the caves in France where people are drawing on the walls.

20:17Right.

20:18So think 100 years into art or into theater, we're just at the beginning.

20:25It's exciting to think about the art of possibility, especially with AI and where it all heads.

20:30So last question, who's clever or smart with AI in this room?

20:36Really clever or smart?

20:39So people are shy, but we've got a lot of hands.

20:42Raise your hand if you think you're clever and smart with AI.

20:48If you have skills.

20:49Okay.

20:50What do you want to tell these people?

20:52If you want to collaborate or you want some perspective so you could do your job more

20:56efficiently so you could beat out your other studios?

20:58Yeah.

20:59If you have some secret sauce or secret to tell me, you know where to find me.

21:06But you're not looking for X or you want to do...

21:11Is there something that on your whiteboard in your office, you don't have to tell us

21:14exactly what's on it, but what you're trying to plot or you're not going to tell us?

21:19Yeah.

21:20I mean, no.

21:21No.

21:22All right.

21:23All right.

21:24So what's your favorite universal movie?

21:26Oh, my favorite movie is, it'd have to be the birds at this moment in time.

21:32Hitchcock.

21:33Yeah, Hitchcock, the birds.

21:34Yeah.

21:35All right.

21:36Well, ladies and gentlemen, Hollywood.

21:37Thank you.

21:38Thank you.

21:39Thank you.

21:40Thank you.

21:41Thank you.

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