Amazon plans to use AI to speed up TV and film production

Amazon plans to use artificial intelligence to speed up the process of making movies and TV shows, while Hollywood fears AI will cut jobs and permanently reshape the industry.

At Amazon MGM Studios, veteran entertainment executive Albert Cheng is leading a team developing new AI tools he says will cut costs and streamline the creative process. Amazon plans to launch a closed beta program in March, inviting industry partners to test its AI tools. The company hopes that the results will be out by May.

Cheng described the AI ​​studio as a “startup” operating under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s “two pizza team” philosophy – keeping the group small enough to eat from two pizzas. The team consists primarily of product engineers and scientists, as well as a small creative and business team. Amazon is publicly embracing AI in response to rising production budgets that limit the number of shows and movies that companies can finance. The technology will fast-track certain processes to make more movies and TV shows more efficiently.

“The cost of making is so high that it’s really hard to make more and take bigger risks,” Cheng said in an interview. “We fundamentally believe that AI can accelerate, but it will not replace the innovation and unique aspects that (humans) bring to creating work.”

The move to embrace artificial intelligence comes as A-list actors like Emily Blunt have expressed fears the rise of AI – and actress Tilly Norwood in particular – will make their jobs obsolete.

Amazon emphasized that writers, directors, actors, and character designers will be involved in every stage of production, using AI as a tool to enhance creativity. Like many other tech companies, Amazon has also been pushing nearly every division to find uses for AI and has pointed to technology breakthroughs as among the reasons for cutting nearly 30,000 corporate jobs since October, its largest layoff ever. This includes cutting several jobs at Prime Video.

Cheng said AI could help Prime Video tackle some of the inherent challenges of large-scale film and television production. The AI ​​studio is building tools that bridge the “last mile” described by Cheng — perhaps a cheeky reference to Amazon’s delivery operations — between existing consumer AI offerings and the nuanced control directors need for cinematic content. This includes improving character uniformity across all shots and integration with industry-standard creative tools.

Amazon is relying on its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, for help and plans to work with several large language model providers to give creators a wide range of options for pre- and post-production filmmaking. Cheng said that protecting intellectual property and ensuring that AI-generated content will not be incorporated into other AI models is essential for AI studios to function. AI Studios is working with producers Robert Stromberg (“Maleficent”) and his company Secret City, Kunal Nayyar (“The Big Bang Theory”) and his company Good Karma Productions; and former Pixar ⁠and ILM animator Colin Brady, as it explores new tools and how to best implement them.

The studio, which launched last August, points to its hit series, “House of David,” as an example of how AI could be used in the future.

For the second season of the biblical epic, director John Irwin used AI along with live-action footage to create battle scenes, editing the two together to expand the scope of the scenes at a lower cost.