The World We Were Born Into No Longer Exists

AI isn’t science fiction; it’s science fact. It’s part of the fabric of our lives, reshaping industries and the world around us. The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed. 

Sure, the Generative AI Hype bubble burst, and Nvidia’s stock is down from all-time highs, but the technology isn't going away. Maybe the New York Times or Getty will win their copyright cases, but like the shift from LimeWire to Spotify, there’s no putting the technology genie back in the bottle.

So why do people seem less bothered about AI, given that many of the more hectic prophesies are coming true? Well, because we’re humans, it’s what we do. We adapt, evolve and move on. It's in our nature.

Humans love tools; they are our special skill, and we excel at mastering them as vectors for our creativity. Tools are just a lever to innovate, encompass and execute an idea. 

Consider painters when photography emerged. People at the time felt it was a cheat – just pressing a button? There’s no artistry, skill or humanity in just capturing a cold slice of reality, right? Wrong. We evolved, we adapted and without the camera, we wouldn’t have filmmaking or many of the creative careers that make our industry so vibrant today. 

This scepticism met Photoshop and 3D software, dismissed initially as soulless and uninspired. Yet these tools have become essential, helping artists and creators push boundaries and discover new ways of making art. Same with Pro Tools, 5D’s, vertical aspect ratio… almost anything ‘new’. We don’t like it, then we engage with it and then it’s business as usual. 

Humans love tools; they are our special skill, and we excel at mastering them as vectors for our creativity. Tools are just a lever to innovate, encompass and execute an idea. 

A neural network is more complex than a big stick, but it doesn’t stop the same rule from applying. I’m reminded of the Pixar mantra; “The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art”. Toy Story isn’t great because of its revolutionary 3D animation but because they pushed their tools to tell the story exactly as they wanted. 

Teaser for Private Island's new short film, Meme Myself and AI, which uses a blend of new tools and technologies to explore the human condition as seen by AI.

In this context, it’s important to remember that AI’s ‘creativity’ is just a remix of everything – it’s the ultimate copycat artist, an all-knowing autocomplete. Our job is to very much challenge these new technologies and not be led by it. 

Relying solely on AI or, conversely, dismissing those working with it isn’t the solution either, as much as fast fashion represents our creativity or Luddites smashing looms solved industrialisation.  

We’re in the foothills of this new way of filmmaking – building the plane as we try to fly it.

The answer, of course, lies in an annoying grey area in between, and the opportunity to create something new with this unwieldy and unexplored technology is there for the taking. We just have to take the lead and figure out what exactly that is. 

I’ve always learned by doing non-client work, which is both liberating and hard. No brief, no budget, but infinite freedom. This freedom to learn, experiment, fail and fuck stuff up is crucial because it lets take risks you otherwise couldn’t in client work.

At PI, we’ve built this exploration into how we run the company, from mocap to photogrammetry, gaussian splatting, and machine learning. We’re starting to understand how we can work with these new tools and technologies while figuring out what new visual aesthetics might look like. 

David Beckham pontificates on existentialism in a liminal void for EA SPORTS official launch trailer for FIFA 22, directed by Chris Boyle.

We’re currently just finishing up a short film Meme, Myself and AI, which fuses live-action with AI-generated characters alongside VFX and animation. It explores the reductive nature of creativity and how AI might grapple with the human condition. 

Of course, we’re in the foothills of this new way of filmmaking – building the plane as we try to fly it – but that makes this kind of collaborative experimentation, this challenging of the technology, all the more exciting. 

We need to get on with it and start using AI creatively or we will just get used by it. This opinion is not a super popular one because AI  is built on stolen work- which sucks. But honestly, I’m done sitting on panels where everyone is pretending a huge shift might happen. It’s already happened.

A good piece of work isn’t just the combination of the mood references in the brief; it’s more than the sum of its parts.

AI works by just aggregating references – in the same way as a brief or pitch has references – but the best work doesn't just recycle those references; it builds upon them to become more than the sum of their parts. So, originality isn’t going anywhere – it’s just getting a tech upgrade and creativity is getting a bigger lever.

As a mixed-media company, we know there’s never the right tool for the job; there’s just the best tool to bring an idea to life. This is as true of stop-motion as it is of Kling. Undoubtedly,  AI will increasingly handle grunt work but the human spark - the ability to connect emotionally, collaborate and see things from fresh perspectives, will continue to define creativity.