‘The Creator’s VFX Supervisor Has an Unexpected Take on AI

The Creator is finally out in theaters as of today, and while the critical consensus has weakened a bit in the days since the reviews started rolling in, its arguable status as this year’s premiere IP-less sci-fi blockbuster is no easy title for anyone to carry. And all things considered, it seems to be doing a fine job of rising to that occasion.

Though its premise of militarized, AI-powered misanthropes is timely, The Creator isn’t quite the cautionary tale some may have first identified it as, given that the film challenges audiences to sympathize with the artificial intelligence just as much as it encourages us to fear it.

Apparently, this ethos surrounding the perception of AI isn’t a terribly far shout from that of the film’s VFX supervisor Jay Cooper, who revealed in a recent interview with Collider that he considers artificial intelligence an important asset in the toolkits of his artists, while also putting emphasis on the irreplaceability of human input.

It’s funny, it’s like the exosuit, right? It’s a way for us to be more impactful with human effort. So, it’s leaking into our layout world and pose estimation, for facial understanding, for image clean up, texture synthesis, and things of that nature, but it’s not going to be replacing humans. At the core of what we do are great artists making good decisions and receiving feedback. I mean, I’m in this space pretty deep; there’s very, very little way to influence these AI tools after you get an initial representation of whatever we’re asking for. So the thing that we bring to the table is understanding what the ask is, interpreting it, and then evolving as we’re giving feedback.

It’s perhaps difficult to get a read on how exactly AI is used behind these particular scenes without being steeped in the world of VFX, but there is something to be said about the dangers and principles surrounding the action of giving AI even an inch in any sort of creative industry. We’d be remiss to forget, for instance, how volatile of a talking point AI was and continues to be in the Hollywood strike discourse; the regulations negotiated by the WGA are a step in the right direction, but who’s to say what loopholes and leverages might emerge as AI continues to evolve (to say nothing of the possibility that these regulations won’t receive the proper attention and updates as the years go on)?

In any case, it’s a conversation that probably shouldn’t end any time soon, and we can rest assured that no matter what the popular conclusion drawn from The Creator is, it’s done its duty in keeping that train chugging along.

(featured image: 20th Century Studios)