Lionsgate Ventures Into AI With Runway Partnership

TV & Film

Sep 24

Image Source: AVID

Lionsgate, an entertainment company known for works such as the Saw and Hunger Games franchises, has made an interesting move regarding Artificial Intelligence: the company has entered a deal with Runway, a New York-based AI research group. Details surrounding this deal are slim at the moment, but Runway will have permission to train their new algorithm on Lionsgate pieces. In return, the entertainment company will be able to use this technology in their future productions. The extent of its use has not been stated yet.

Michael Burns, Vice Chair at Lionsgate, discussed the partnership and their goals (via The Hollywood Reporter), “Runway is a visionary, best-in-class partner who will help us utilize AI to develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities. Several of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications to their preproduction and postproduction process.” Burns wrapped up his comments with a word on its application, “We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing and supplementing our current operations.”

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Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela also spoke about the partnership, implying support for artists as the future goal, “We’re committed to giving artists, creators and studios the best and most powerful tools to augment their workflows and enable new ways of bringing their stories to life. The history of art is the history of technology and these new models are part of our continuous efforts to build transformative mediums for artistic and creative expression.”

Lionsgate wouldn’t be the first major entertainment corporation to employ AI in the creation of its content. The most prominent example of this technology would be Marvel Studios’ employment of AI to generate the intro of the 2023 miniseries Secret Invasion. As the first to do so, their expressed goal was to play on the show’s themes and employed Method Studios to create something disconcerting. In this instance, Method claimed that no artist’s jobs were cut or otherwise negatively impacted during the process and that AI was just a tool their artists used; this did not lighten the backlash triggered by the move, as there are many ongoing concerns surrounding AI and its negative impact on creatives in the job market. Legality varies as time goes on, and ethics have been called into question since its inception. This partnership has the capacity to set the tone for AI use in the future, one way or another.

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