AI will transform every aspect of Hollywood storytelling
人工智能将改变好莱坞叙事的方方面面
But it will also cause more friction
但也会造成更多的摩擦
REUNIONS OFFER a chance to reflect on how much has changed. One will happen during the coming year in Hollywood when 「Here」 premieres, bringing together the actors, director and writer behind 「Forrest Gump」 40 years later for a new, unrelated film. Set in a single room over decades, 「Here」 is very much a film of the here and now. The stars, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, will be 「de-aged」 using new AI tools, rendering them more youthful in some scenes and enabling the film-makers to see the transformation in real time while shooting.
重聚提供了一个机会，让人们反思发生了多大的变化。明年好莱坞的一次机会是【这里】（Here）的首映，【阿甘正传】的演员、导演和编剧在40年后将齐聚一堂，打造一部不相关的新电影。【这里】的故事发生在一个房间里，时间跨度长达数十年，基本上就是一部「此时此地」的电影。主演汤姆·汉克斯和罗宾·怀特将使用新的人工智能（AI）工具来「减龄」，使他们在某些场景中变得更加年轻，并让电影制作人能够在拍摄过程中实时看到容颜转变。
Generative AI now means images can be produced in seconds. Songs can be created in the style of singers dead or alive. More than 3,000 books on Amazon name ChatGPT as the author or co-author, lending new meaning to the term 「ghostwriter」.
现在，生成式AI意味着可以在几秒钟内生成图像。歌曲可以按照已故或在世歌手的风格来创作。亚马逊上有超过3000本书将ChatGPT列为作者或共同作者，这为「捉刀人」或「影子写手」一词赋予了新的含义。
It is still early days, but 2024 will be a preview of what is to come. Three things are worth watching. The first is how AI will be used to tell new types of stories, as storytelling becomes more personalised and interactive. Films will change and so will gaming, an industry where people can choose their own adventures more easily than moviegoers can. The amount of entertainment available will also balloon.
现在也许还为时过早，但2024年将是未来的预演。有三件事值得关注。首先是如何利用AI讲述新型故事，因为讲故事会变得更加个性化和互动化。电影会改变，游戏也会改变——在游戏里，人们比电影观众更容易选择自己的冒险经历。可提供的娱乐的数量也将激增。
Like the arrival of the internet, which led to an explosion of 「user-generated content」 being posted to social media and YouTube, generative AI will contribute to reams of videos and other material proliferating online. Some predict that as much as 90% of online content will be AI-generated by 2025. Curation and good search tools will be vital, and there will be debates about whether, and how, to label AI-generated content.
就像互联网的到来导致社交媒体和YouTube上发布的「用户生成内容」激增一样，生成式AI也将促使视频和其他资料在网上激增。有人预测，到2025年，多达90%的网络内容将由AI生成。内容管理和良好的搜索工具将至关重要，而关于是否以及如何标记AI生成内容的问题也将引起争论。
No one is quite sure how the nature of storytelling will change, but it is sure to. David Thomson, a film historian, compares generative AI to the advent of sound. When movies were no longer silent, it altered the way plot points were rendered and how deeply viewers could connect with characters. Cristóbal Valenzuela, who runs a company called RunwayML, which offers AI-enhanced software tools to creative types, says AI is more like a 「new kind of camera」, offering a fresh 「opportunity to reimagine what stories are like」. Both are right.
没有人确切知道叙事的性质会发生怎样的变化，但它肯定会变化。电影历史学家大卫·汤姆森（David Thomson）将生成式AI比作有声电影的出现。当电影不再无声时，它改变了情节转折点的表现方式，也改变了观众与角色的共情深度。克里斯托巴尔·巴伦苏埃拉（Cristóbal Valenzuela）经营的RunwayML公司为创意人士提供AI增强软件工具。他表示AI更像是一种「新型摄影机」，提供了全新的「重新想象故事的机会」。这两位说的都是对的。
The Hollywood writers’ strike shone a spotlight on the question of whether AI would start producing scripts. For now, studios have agreed to concessions and will not bypass writers’ rooms to employ ChatGPT instead. It will probably be a few years before a full-length blockbuster is produced entirely by AI.
好莱坞编剧的罢工让AI是否会开始制作剧本成为人们关注的焦点。目前，电影公司已同意做出让步，不会绕过编剧室而改用ChatGPT。要完全由AI制作一部长篇大片，可能还需要几年的时间。
Instead, the second big development to watch is how AI will be used as a time-saving tool. Generative AI will automate and simplify complex tasks like dubbing, film-editing, special effects and background design. For a glimpse of the future, watch 「Everything Everywhere All at Once」, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2023. It featured a scene that used a 「rotoscoping」 tool offered by RunwayML to edit out the green-screen background and make a talking rock more believable. It compressed into hours what might have otherwise taken days of video-editing.
真正应关注的第二个重大发展是如何将AI用作节省时间的工具。生成式AI将自动化和简化配音、剪辑、特效和背景设计等复杂任务。要想一窥未来，请看看2023年获得奥斯卡最佳影片奖的【瞬息全宇宙】吧。其中有一个场景使用了RunwayML提供的「动态遮罩」工具来剪掉绿幕背景，让一块会说话的石头更加真实可信。它将原本可能需要数天时间的视频剪辑压缩到几个小时。
The third thing to watch for is more dramatic clashes between creators (otherwise known as copyright-owners) and those who run AI platforms. The coming year is likely to bring a deluge of lawsuits from authors, musicians, actors and artists about how their words, music and images have been used to train AI systems without consent or payment. Perhaps they can agree on some sort of licensing arrangement, in which AI companies start paying copyright-holders for content to train their models. But that will not happen without an intense legal brawl.
第三件值得关注的事，是创作者（也称版权所有者）与AI平台运营者之间的冲突变得更激烈。未来一年，作家、音乐家、演员和艺术家很可能会提起大量诉讼，控告他们的文字、音乐和图像在未经同意或未支付报酬的情况下被用于训练AI系统。也许他们可以达成某种许可安排，让AI公司开始向版权所有者就用于训练模型的内容付费。但是，不经过激烈的法律斗争，这种情况是不会发生的。
AI presents bigger questions about the future of stories and the nature of collective storytelling. For example, will generative AI simply imitate previous hits, resulting in more derivative blockbuster films and copycat interpretations of pop songs that lack depth, rather than original stories and art forms? And as entertainment becomes more personalised, will there still be stories that become part of humanity’s collective consciousness and move large numbers of people, who can talk about them together?
AI也带来了关于故事的未来和集体叙事的性质的更大问题。例如，生成式AI会不会只是简单地模仿以前的热门作品，从而产生更多缺乏深度的衍生大片和山寨版流行歌曲，而不是原创故事和艺术形式？当娱乐变得更加个性化时，是否还会有故事成为人类集体意识的一部分，感动大批人，成为他们共同的谈资？
As creators grapple with AI’s rise, they will channel their anxieties about technology into their work. Look out for more 「Terminator」- style clashes between man and machine. Life imitates art—and art life. ■
随着创作者努力应付AI的崛起，他们会把对技术的焦虑输出到他们的作品中。等着看更多的人类与机器之间发生「终结者」式冲突的故事吧。生活模仿艺术——艺术也模仿生活。
The Economist
ALEXANDRA SUICH BASS：文化编辑
Nov 13th 2023丨790words
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