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Looking at the future of AI in Film

In September 2024 Prof. Dr Marco Grimm and Martina Hentig took their expertise in artificial intelligence to Long Beach. At HAW Hamburg's strategic partner, CSULB, they gave lectures on the developments and ethical challenges of AI in the film industry. CSULB students were also able to create their own AI-generated clips in workshops. The creative process formed the basis for a critical discussion about the risks and opportunities as well as the impact of the new AI tools.

The strategic partnership with California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in the field of media technology has been running since 2013. The teaching exchange has been supported by ISAP funds from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the ‘HAW goes USA’ budget since 2017 and reflects the special expertise of both universities. In 2024, the focus of the HAW Hamburg guest lectures and workshops in Long Beach was on artificial intelligence and its role in the film industry at the request of CSULB. Prof Adam Moore, Chair of the Department of Cinematic Art in Long Beach, said in advance, ‘I think it will be an incredible tool for all creative people as we move into this new era, and we would love to learn from Hamburg's expertise.’

As part of two guest lectures to 160 CSULB film students, Professor Marco Grimm and Martina Hentig spoke about ‘text-to-image’ and ‘image-to-video’ generation and discussed the opportunities and risks of AI in film with the students. They were surprised at how many students had reservations about AI in film. Prof Kent Hayward, Professor of Film Production at CSULB, confirms this attitude from his own conversations with students. ‘I have a number of students who are against AI and that kind of surprised me. They say I don't want to contribute to that technology. I don't want to help that Large Language Model to learn. I didn't expect that. I thought they would like to use it for their projects.’

But there were also CSULB students who weren't so sceptical towards AI and twenty of them had the opportunity to look more closely at the topic in workshops. The students were able to try out various AI tools such as runway, Copilot Dall-E 3 and Magic Studio, which the HAW Hamburg lecturers had brought with them, and create their own AI-generated clips. Marco Grimm's impression after the joint work: 'The students were surprised at how easy it was to create a video from a generated image. But at the same time, they were surprised at how difficult it is to achieve exactly the desired result.' And this confirms his current opinion on AI: ‘I believe that we are a long way from generating a red button that you press and by writing a prompt, a complete film appears.'

I think it's incredibly important for film makers who are in school right now to learn the AI tools that are available. They are going to dominate the industry and my fear is that students who push back against it or refuse to do it are going to get left behind and they are not going to find their place in the industry.

Prof. Adam Moore, Department of Cinematic Arts, CSULB

The lecturers were accompanied by three HAW Hamburg students. Aleksa, Tilman and Nino were supported with funds from the HAW Hamburg-DAAD HAW.International project ‘RESI’. Their task on site, in addition to supporting the workshops, was to create a video documentary (see below) on the topic of generative AI, ethics and data protection in film for use in teaching and to compare the perspectives from Germany and the US.

In addition to interviews with lecturers from HAW Hamburg and CSULB, the video also features an interview with Franziska Hansel from Storybook Studios. In her role as ‘AI film maker, ethics and bias officer’, she has a clear position on her work with AI: ‘AI is a tool; a tool that you have to learn and the better you understand it, the better the results. There is no AI that works independently. We as a company are the creatives and use it, for example, to create a 3D character from a 2D image, which would otherwise have taken forever.’ At the same time, she addresses the problem of ‘bias’, a false representation or distortion in the data set. ‘This bias in the data set means that the distortion is reproduced in the results. It is therefore important to ensure that it is not reproduced again and again when using AI.’

At the end of the week, Professors Adam Moore and Kent Hayward were delighted with the input from Hamburg. For Moore, it confirms his opinion on AI. ‘I think it's incredibly important for film makers who are in school right now to learn the AI tools that are available. They are going to dominate the industry and my fear is that students who push back against it or refuse to do it are going to get left behind and they are not going to find their place in the industry. If creatives like us can learn the tools and in that way guide the evolution and development of AI tools, it's going to be better than if we say we are not going to have anything to do with AI and let other people take control of how these tools develop.’

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Contact

Prof. Dr. Marco Grimm
Department Media Technology
Project Lead ISAP-Project 2021-2025

Ingrid Weatherall
Strategy "HAW goes USA"
International Office

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