The AI Creative Summit 2024 at the BFI
Last week, the AI Creative Summit was held at the BFI Southbank.
It was curated by Broadcast, Broadcast Tech, MPTS and Screen International, a part of Media Business Insight (MBI).
The AI Creative Summit brings together industry leaders, technologists, filmmakers, and policy experts to explore the transformative role of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry.
The world of AI is changing rapidly, so Jump was in attendance to see what we could learn.
Russell Mann – Technical Director at Jump:
“The summit was a discussion of the possibilities of AI and an exploration of how it is already affecting and revolutionising creativity and media. What is happening now and how it can empower creativity of the future. Also, how can we manage it responsibly and ethically?
Although AI or machine learning, whatever you want to call it, has been around for a while, this felt like the first time there were real tangible examples to discuss. Also there has been an explosion of new AI tools being released over the last 12 months.
The panels were made up from people across all aspects of the media and broadcast industry, from Channel 4, BBC, ITN, Hat Trick Lab, and Aardman to name just a few. There was a film writer / maker Peter Luisi who got AI to write an entire film from a single prompt. You can find it on Youtube (The Last Screenwriter), but not in a theatre! Was he worried about his job as a screenwriter? In short, no. AI is much more powerful as a tool to aid rather than replace creativity. This was very much the sentiment echoed by all other sectors. If anything, AI was empowering people to create projects that would not have been possible through all sorts or restraints, that usually all boil down to cost.
Overall, things were positive and perhaps a bit more relaxed about using AI. There were of course concerns about people’s jobs being lost to AI, in particular the lower end entry level jobs into the industry. It was discussed that these jobs would not so much disappear, but evolve, losing their more mundane aspects, and thus allowing a more interesting involvement at that level with projects. Being able to do things more thoroughly was another aspect of using AI. From being able to consider every shot filmed for a documentary or to be able to summarise hundreds of journalist reports on a single news story, and in the tone of that particular news company.
In the VFX world, AI has been present under many other names for a while. From face tracking, to basic de-noising, volumetric rendering, rotoscoping and more. These tools continue to be developed and new AI tools are being integrated into the software that artists are already using.
On the technical side, there was a feeling that there were still gaps to close. Jon Roberts, from ITN said that integrating the new AI into already established kit and systems was still a challenge, without starting again.
Ethics and the Law are other very vast and complex areas which are still coming to grips with the new AI implications. From creating AI presenters, to using voice recordings to create AI voices. Where are the different models drawing their data from? AI can be biassed by the data it is trained on. Should it be censored? We do not censor other creative tools even though we know they are not always used for culturally healthy applications. Who owns the data? How are artists’ works protected?
Kelsey Farish, a lawyer for media entertainment and AI, gave an example that when photography was first invented, it could not be copyrighted as it was said the image was made by a machine, not the photographer. We are in a similar place with AI generated images.
The conclusion is that AI tools are developing and will affect, revolutionise or disrupt, all aspects of the creative and media industry. For the most part it seems to be positive and even exciting. It’s definitely not avoidable. I wish I had recorded all my notes using an AI app. This article would have been much quicker to write. Curse my old fashioned ways!”
You can register your interest for the 2025 AI Creative Summit here – imagine where we’ll be in another 12 months!
