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AI in Creative Industries: Challenges and Promise
At its heart, producing corporate video is creative work. Especially in the current age of high-quality deliverables and ample competition, it’s clearer than ever that brand filmmakers can draw inspiration directly from fields like Hollywood moviemaking and TV production.
This also means brand content creators are facing the same opportunities and challenges as their counterparts in the arts. Therefore, the debate about the appropriate use of artificial intelligence (AI), specifically generative AI, in creative industries, a hot-button issue among artists, also applies to corporate video.
Major issues worth considering include the proper division of labor between human creators and generative AI models, as well as legal concerns around the use of real people’s likenesses in content creation and the intellectual property complications of training large language models on copyrighted works. Answering the related questions is an important step toward the productive use of generative AI technology in video workflows.
How Can Creative Professionals Make AI Work for Them?
Generative AI currently occupies a fascinating place in the creative sector. Its most splashy and publicized use cases, such as turning a text description into a finished video, are in their early stages, more the stuff of tech demos than everyday creative applications.
Actual, hands-on experience with generative AI video tools tends to reveal limitations. For instance, it remains difficult to produce convincing videos where the subjects move like their real-world inspiration. Consistency is also an issue. If objects don’t look the same from one frame to the next, it’s hard to sustain the illusion of reality, or even to distract viewers from the fact that the content is AI-generated.
Some of the toughest barriers to generative AI use don’t come from technology, but from public reaction. When audiences see AI-generated content, it’s natural to worry that the company responsible is cutting its creative team, deemphasizing human effort and creativity.
This perception forced Marvel Studios to issue denials that it had downsized its visual art department when it employed generative AI to make the opening credits for the miniseries Secret Invasion. The negative fan reaction and press made it clear: Large companies using AI as a primary creative tool are liable to receive backlash.
So, with these limitations in mind, what can generative AI do in the creative sector? The technology can act as a time-saving device for creatives, allowing human artists to automate repetitive tasks around animation, editing, captioning, descriptive audio and more.
Brands that don’t have a use case for AI art may have ample uses for AI as a booster of creative output. A generative AI algorithm can be an effective time-saving tool at multiple stages of the creative process, from brainstorming and ideation through post-production, with new updates and advancements constantly rolling out.
Learn some realistic use cases for AI throughout the creative process.
What Has Hollywood Learned from AI?
One of the key issues in the recent writer’s strike affecting film and TV studios was the acceptable use of AI in the creative process. With new rules now clarified and codified, companies in the entertainment sector have been exploring what generative AI can do for them, and these lessons can apply to ambitious corporate video creators as well.
For example, writers quickly discovered that while it’s possible for Generative AI chatbots to produce short, coherent ideas, they are limited when it comes to length and style. An algorithm cannot produce a script from a single line of instructions, due to hard limits on processing power.
Furthermore, large language models tend to struggle with issues of originality and bias. Generative AI may seem to produce content whole-cloth, but it bases its output on training data sets. Prejudiced ideas embedded in that data may come through, and the algorithm may also plagiarize copyrighted works, leading to intellectual property liability.
Dealing with these issues, studios have found that AI in its present state is a situational support technology. While this might seem disappointing in light of headlines promising LLMs will change the world overnight, it does imply real, tangible value that brands can harness when producing creative work.
See where AI can make contributions to the video production workflow.
Creative Use of AI: An Evolving Relationship
How can your brand make effective use of AI in the here and now while also preparing for the more powerful use cases coming down the pipeline? The most direct way is to work with a creative team that makes a habit of integrating new technology into their workflows.
These human creators, armed with the latest in digital systems, are ideally positioned to seize on the creative applications of generative AI, as well as its behind-the-scenes power. When you work with a Crews Control team, it’s a way to immediately add advanced know-how to your existing capabilities.
Read our eBook to take a closer look at the challenges and promise of AI.
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