AI will transform every aspect of Hollywood storytelling
人工智能將改變好萊塢敘事的方方面面
But it will also cause more friction
但也會造成更多的摩擦
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.
重聚提供了一個機會，讓人們反思發生了多大的變化。明年好萊塢的一次機會是【這裏】（Here）的首映，【阿甘正傳】的演員、導演和編劇在40年後將齊聚一堂，打造一部不相關的新電影。【這裏】的故事發生在一個房間裏，時間跨度長達數十年，基本上就是一部「此時此地」的電影。主演湯姆·漢克斯和羅賓·懷特將使用新的人工智能（AI）工具來「減齡」，使他們在某些場景中變得更加年輕，並讓電影制作人能夠在拍攝過程中即時看到容顏轉變。
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」.
現在，生成式AI意味著可以在幾秒鐘內生成影像。歌曲可以按照已故或在世歌手的風格來創作。亞馬遜上有超過3000本書將ChatGPT列為作者或共同作者，這為「捉刀人」或「影子寫手」一詞賦予了新的含義。
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.
現在也許還為時過早，但2024年將是未來的預演。有三件事值得關註。首先是如何利用AI講述新型故事，因為講故事會變得更加個人化和互動化。電影會改變，遊戲也會改變——在遊戲裏，人們比電影觀眾更容易選擇自己的冒險經歷。可提供的娛樂的數量也將激增。
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.
就像互聯網的到來導致社交媒體和YouTube上釋出的「使用者生成內容」激增一樣，生成式AI也將促使影片和其他資料在網上激增。有人預測，到2025年，多達90%的網絡內容將由AI生成。內容管理和良好的搜尋工具將至關重要，而關於是否以及如何標記AI生成內容的問題也將引起爭論。
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.
沒有人確切知道敘事的性質會發生怎樣的變化，但它肯定會變化。電影歷史學家大衛·湯姆森（David Thomson）將生成式AI比作有聲電影的出現。當電影不再無聲時，它改變了情節轉折點的表現方式，也改變了觀眾與角色的共情深度。克里斯托巴爾·巴倫蘇埃拉（Cristóbal Valenzuela）經營的RunwayML公司為創意人士提供AI增強軟件工具。他表示AI更像是一種「新型攝影機」，提供了全新的「重新想象故事的機會」。這兩位說的都是對的。
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.
好萊塢編劇的罷工讓AI是否會開始制作劇本成為人們關註的焦點。目前，電影公司已同意做出讓步，不會繞過編劇室而改用ChatGPT。要完全由AI制作一部長篇大片，可能還需要幾年的時間。
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.
真正應關註的第二個重大發展是如何將AI用作節省時間的工具。生成式AI將自動化和簡化配音、剪輯、特效和背景設計等復雜任務。要想一窺未來，請看看2023年獲得奧斯卡最佳影片獎的【瞬息全宇宙】吧。其中有一個場景使用了RunwayML提供的「動態遮罩」工具來剪掉綠幕背景，讓一塊會說話的石頭更加真實可信。它將原本可能需要數天時間的影片剪輯壓縮到幾個小時。
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.
第三件值得關註的事，是創作者（也稱版權所有者）與AI平台營運者之間的沖突變得更激烈。未來一年，作家、音樂家、演員和藝術家很可能會提起大量訴訟，控告他們的文字、音樂和影像在未經同意或未支付報酬的情況下被用於訓練AI系統。也許他們可以達成某種特許安排，讓AI公司開始向版權所有者就用於訓練模型的內容付費。但是，不經過激烈的法律鬥爭，這種情況是不會發生的。
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也帶來了關於故事的未來和集體敘事的性質的更大問題。例如，生成式AI會不會只是簡單地模仿以前的熱門作品，從而產生更多缺乏深度的衍生大片和山寨版流行歌曲，而不是原創故事和藝術形式？當娛樂變得更加個人化時，是否還會有故事成為人類集體意識的一部份，感動大批人，成為他們共同的談資？
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. ■
隨著創作者努力應付AI的崛起，他們會把對技術的焦慮輸出到他們的作品中。等著看更多的人類與機器之間發生「終結者」式沖突的故事吧。生活模仿藝術——藝術也模仿生活。
The Economist
ALEXANDRA SUICH BASS：文化編輯
Nov 13th 2023丨790words
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