OpenAI Aims to Take AI-Made Film to Cannes

OpenAI is reportedly getting into the movie business.

The artificial intelligence (AI) startup is lending its resources to help create a feature-length animated film made largely with AI that is expected to be released next year, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday (Sept. 8).

The movie is called “Critterz,” an adventure featuring a cast of woodland creatures, and comes from Chad Nelson, an OpenAI creative specialist.

He began developing the idea three years ago when attempting to make a short film using what was then OpenAI’s new DALL-E image-generation tool, and is now hoping to show a feature-length version of the film at the Cannes Film Festival next year.

“Critterz,” the WSJ added, has a budget of under $30 million, much lower than what an animated film would usually cost. The production plans to cast human actors to voice the characters and employ artists to draw sketches that are fed into OpenAI’s tools, such as GPT-5 and image-generating models.

“OpenAI can say what its tools do all day long, but it’s much more impactful if someone does it,” Nelson said. “That’s a much better case study than me building a demo.”

A recent report by Rolling Stone on the use of AI in moviemaking said the market for artificial intelligence tools in film is projected to jump tenfold by 2023, amid an ongoing debate about the technology.

“Felix Dobaire, a film director and critic, argues that films generated entirely by AI seem empty, and cinema needs human vision,” that report said.

“Another film critic, Lukasz Mankowski, sees a threat to creativity for filmmakers if they stop challenging themselves and use AI as a shortcut. On the other hand, AI has the potential to simplify repetitive and tedious filmmaking tasks, enhancing artistic work.”

At the same time, the WSJ notes, there’s a lot of uneasiness in the film industry about outright embracing AI, out of fears of upsetting actors and writers, whose unions have fought for safeguards against AI tools.

There’s also the issue of entertainment companies seeking to protect copyrighted characters and works. Disney, Universal and Warner Bros Discovery have all sued AI provider Midjourney, alleging that the company had made copies of their copyrighted properties. Midjourney has disputed those claims in legal filings.

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