Jodie Foster arrived in Colorado to spend time with media executive and former Sony CEO Michael Lynton, to discuss who owns the future of Hollywood during a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
As part of their conversation Tuesday, they talked about the forces reshaping the film industry and how the pandemic, labor strikes and audience habits have also had an impact. They also studied the most pressing topic that almost everyone in town is talking about these days: artificial intelligence.
“If we can control AI consistently over time, then yes, we will make things that reflect us and we can make things better,” Foster told Linton in front of a live audience. “Are we going to be able to control technology? That particular technology for longer than two years? I don’t know.”
Linton then said he wasn’t sure either before asking Foster if she thought AI could actually replace writers or actors. “We already do that,” Foster said of the cast. “Face swapping and all the things you can do on your iPhone, we can do better with real, great people.”
Foster, an Oscar-winning actress who has also worked as a film director and producer, then continued the theme by explaining how she often thinks about “movies that already exist” and how those titles seem to have been crafted by artificial intelligence. I used Joseph Kosinski F1 Starring Brad Pitt as an example.
“I’m not saying this lightly, how could I? This movie made millions of dollars but look at a movie like F1. I’m like, F1 “It was made by artificial intelligence,” she said. “Right?” The structure was exactly the structure you would learn in school. The actors say the lines exactly the way they would be written if the computer were writing exactly what would be the right thing at the time. And they were able to control the technology to make something big and beautiful, and perhaps, a lot of the information comes from other places.
Foster seems to be using F1 As an example rather than claiming that it was actually created by artificial intelligence, it feels strange nonetheless, as the film has an impressive pedigree. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won the Academy Award for Best Sound. Kosinski wrote the screenplay alongside Academy Award-nominated writer Ehren Kruger, and the film was produced by an A-list roster that included Jerry Bruckheimer, Kosinski, Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Lewis Hamilton and Chad Uman.
In narrative film making, THR Beatrice Verhoeven stated that Koskinski and his team “relyed as much as possible on practical effects” while relying on digital magic for certain sequences. “We had two or three of our APXGP cars on the track, so in visual effects, we would replace them and add other cars in the background to make it look like they were inside the race,” said visual effects supervisor Ryan Tudhope. Other times, they replaced cars on the tracks to avoid major accidents. “Some of the damage was very risky,” Tudhope said. “So we used a smaller vehicle, an F3 car, and the stunt driver will do the job and we will later replace it with our APXGP car.”
Watch Foster’s appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival below.
