Both claim to generate cinema-quality video clips with just a few words of text. This has sparked a debate about the impact of artificial intelligence on the film and advertising industries, which are artistic in nature. However, their potentially magical abilities seem to produce a lukewarm response at best at first.
Three content creators, as well as three veterans of cinema and advertising Mint who I spoke to agreed on one point – while it’s too early to give any verdict as neither Veo nor Sora are currently in a position to even trial in India, the general consensus is that they may not constitute a basis for video production.
Instead, the footage that could be generated by such AI models could, at best, be used to easily visualize scripts in pre-production, or to create filler or B-roll content that will be used in the background in longer, more extensive videos and advertisements.
Other AI models
Surely Sora and Veo aren’t the only ones. On January 27, Google Research unveiled Lumiere, a up-to-date text-based AI model that was intended to “represent realistic, diverse, and consistent motion.”
Beyond Massive Tech, generative video tools have been available to the general public for over a year, from Synthesia to Runway.
They show the grave potential of generative video models. Both OpenAI and Google say that multimodality in their video generation models is a key capability, and given the power of Massive Tech and the enormous computational resources and data available at hand, it could represent a grave resource for inventive professionals to either tap into, or face it. .
For example, Bengaluru-based tech content creator Varun Mayya, who has a combined audience of nearly 2.2 million across his numerous Instagram and YouTube channels, uses AI to generate filler content as well as cut-to-camera videos for much of his content. While Mayya focuses on AI-powered educational video content for developers and engineers, it also uses AI to support with video production scheduling.
While Mayya uses artificial intelligence, many others stay away. Two other content creators who work closely with YouTube and requested anonymity to protect their brand partnerships said that generative video platforms may not be comprehensive and can lead to branding complications.
“Brands may not want to know that a particular video has been used with generative AI – there is a fear in the market that the employ of AI-powered videos could lead to copyright lawsuits, and no commercial entity wants such complications. This is currently a hurdle in India, at least until there is regulatory and legal clarity,” one of the developers told Mint.
However, each of these developers confirmed that generative AI is indeed being used in India at a more than experimental pace. While the early mood is predictable, it is also lukewarm, with some citing quality issues and others fearing intellectual property rights violations.
“Most content creators sign originality contracts with their clients. For them, if the material used to train a generative AI model belongs to a third party and this is reflected in the results, it could lead to an infringement of intellectual property rights,” said Shailendra Bhandare, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co.
“This is because the resulting product would be a derivative work of third-party material, and multiple customers may obtain the same results if they employ the same software. This may also lead to breach of contract and infringement of third party rights. party’s intellectual property,” said Shailendra Bhandare, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co.
Content oversaturation
Veteran creatives also have mixed opinions. Yash Kulshresth, inventive director at Mumbai-based inventive agency Atom Network, said most existing AI tools, based on initial screening and review, “lack the emotional depth and unique perspective that humans bring.”
“The positive side may be that visualizing storyboards and concepts will be more productive and cost-effective. This democratization of creativity could enable smaller agencies and independent creators to compete more effectively and usher in a up-to-date era of rapid prototyping and iterative feedback. It can also serve as a good alternative to the usual hygiene content that brands may post on social media,” Kulshresth said.
However, he added that content oversaturation is a significant risk. “The ease of generating visuals can lead to a lot of mediocre content. This can make it arduous to highlight truly inventive ideas. The key will be for creators to employ AI as a tool to enhance their work, focusing on originality, authenticity and emotional connection to maintain the uniqueness of human-powered creativity,” he said.
The death of creativity?
Still, all sides acknowledge that artificial intelligence is an evolving field, making its long-term effects arduous to predict. On April 22, Synthesia presented its latest artificial intelligence model – Express-1. The latter has demonstrated the ability to generate avatars that could mimic human speech, thus potentially replacing an anchor telling a story on screen. Synthesia also takes its work quite seriously – it is part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), which includes Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.
Fellow newcomer Runway unveiled its newest model, the Gen-2, last March. Since then, the company has showcased various video generation capabilities of its AI model and even hosted an “AI Film Festival” in Los Angeles, US, in partnership with Nvidia. On April 15, the company announced 10 winners of videos shot using its model and AI tool, offering nearly $35,000 in cash prizes.
This clearly reflects the potential of artificial intelligence. “We’ve never seen anything like this. It would be naive to think of our current response as set in stone. This is just the beginning of artificial intelligence and ultimately the future of our industry will be defined by the synergy between human creativity and technological progress, ensuring that the heart and soul of our work remains unmistakably human,” Kulshresth added.
However, the most inventive professionals believe that artificial intelligence does not mean the death of creativity.
“The basic thing to understand is that artificial intelligence has no imagination of its own,” said Chaitanya Chinchlikar, vice president and chief technology officer at Mumbai-based Whistling Woods International Film School.
“At the level of each pixel created by AI, it will be a synthesis of content that the algorithm has already seen or been trained on. Thanks to this, artificial intelligence will become, at best, an auxiliary tool for the visual creation industry, which is used by some segments of the industry, but it will certainly not take away jobs from inventive professionals.
