Demis Hassavis and Darren Aronofsky met in 1999 when they were invited to speak on the future of storytelling at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. At the time, Hassavis was a video game developer. Today he is CEO of Google’s Deepmind AI Lab and a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. Aronofsky released his debut feature PI in 1998 and continued to oversee Oscar-winning Black Swan and the Whale. Now, his new film company, Primordial Soup, is working together with Hassabis and Deepmind to create short story films using AI. Three are already in work.
Demis, why are you using AI to make films?
Demis Hassabis: It comes from my game background. I started by designing and programming games. That’s how I actually got into AI. I love that this fusion of technology allows for creativity. During the golden age of gaming in the 1990s, we were exploring a whole new art form. We were not only making games, but also inventing whole new genres, such as the bestselling simulation game theme parks that we co-designed and programmed in 1994. I’m 17 years old. We look at the work we’re doing now and these AI tools that are built (used) for creativity.
Darren, what’s the idea behind your new film company, Primordial Soup?
Darren Aronofsky: “Make soup, work rather than slops” is currently a working model. We’ve all seen things we’ve never seen before (generated by AI), but for some reason they go into your head and then they just dissipate and you don’t remember them much. I was wondering why, and I think what I’m missing is the feeling of storytelling, that is, slop. And that’s why I started thinking about how to use this incredibly powerful technology to help with storytelling. If I was 27 now, I’m about to make my first film, it would be five friends in the room that me and five friends try to figure out how this works and what kind of story it can tell.
Demis, in addition to your video game background, are you a movie fan too?
DH: On a large scale. This is why Darren and I joined so well. Science fiction was a huge inspiration from the start, including perhaps my favorite film Blade Runner. I loved music and aesthetics, but I also loved the deep exploration of artificial consciousness and the meaning of being human. I have a lot of friends who are in the film business and my whole family is on the creative side. My father is about to perform an opera he is written in retirement. My sister is a composer and pianist. My whole family is in the arts. I’m a black sheep working in science and games.
Darren has released a trailer for the short film “Ancestra,” directed by Eliza McNitt. What part did AI play, and where do humans come?
DA: Human performances are still amazing and I wanted to capture for this work. But Eliza’s film was “inspired by the day she was born” – her vision had a lot of things that were completely impossible to photograph and purely imaginative. AI models also need to be pushed to imagine, creating things that never actually existed.
The “Ancestra” press material mentions input from members of the Screen Actors Guild. AI was a major concern during the 2023 Hollywood strike. Have you told the union about what you’re doing?
DA: We have a producer who spoke to them. But all unions are leaning towards how they work with this technology. An incredible amount of workers, a variety of craftsmen and engineers gather together to tackle “Ancestra.” I should probably count, but I’m sure the crewlist is huge and the tools and technology are brand new, so it’s quite similar to the size of a normal feature film in a short film.
Many people in Hollywood are getting crazy about AI. Should they be?
DA: In the case of storytelling, technology that replaces human involvement is in the realm of science fiction. Stay on the set and see how it’s necessary to bring together hundreds of different types of artists and crafters to create a moment.
Demis, what’s in there for DeepMind and Google?
DH: The creative process will change dramatically in a few years, and it’s exciting. Therefore, we want to provide creators with the right tools. You can type in from musicians and filmmakers like Darren (other Deepmind collaborations include Donald Glover and Jacob Collier) and tell them what they can do with the model and what they want to do.
For the average user, this will somehow turn out to be YouTube-like. But what’s exciting from a research perspective is that if you want AI systems to understand the world around you, you need to understand the physical world. What does the model know about the intuitive physics of liquids, lighting and gravity, and material behavior? That’s the kind of understanding you need.
DA: That was kind of like the early days of hip hop and sampling, and there was a huge chance that music would suddenly look like.
Demis, do you think in 10 or 15 years, AI can develop a certain vision or visual style in the way filmmakers do?
DH: Currently these tools cannot create new start. They are more extrapolation of what is already known. Can these systems not only solve existing guesses, but can actually come up with new ones? The answer is no now. So it is clear that these systems still do not have the idea of the box, the true invention, the true invention. Whether they are scientists or artists like Einstein or Picasso, they can do it.
DA: What do you call that? Intuition?
DH: I call it a “real invention.” Humans have similar reasoning – it’s like, oh, I have all this knowledge, and I’ve found some underlying patterns in this other area where this can be mapped. Our AI systems still can’t do that. But one day, they may be.
Many people study these things: Can you codify curiosity? I think that such a ready-to-use invention requires some additional skills beyond just pattern matching. It requires a good judgement, a good taste. That separates great scientists from great scientists, and I am sure I am a good artist with great artists. If you’re lucky in science, if I know well, they always say I can smell this idea. And these AI systems don’t have that yet.
DA: The last time Demis and I hang out, I asked: How far are we from the Martin Scorsese masterpiece (comparable to one) coming out of the AI prompt? He wasn’t sure if that would happen, but there’s something going on happening in these images. Someone is going to understand how to tell the story in a new way with this.
“Ancestra” will premiere at Tribeca Film Festival in New York on June 13th at TribeCafilm.com
