Last year, for our Managing Socio-Economic Dilemmas elective, we had to create a video which explained a current socio-economic issue in a creative way. My group was tasked with a topic which we found very intriguing: the rise of AI and how it could have an impact on jobs. However, we did not just want to talk about it – we wanted the AI to speak for itself. We decided to create a video which was created mostly by genAI, with only the script being contributed by us.
Up to that point, the only AI tool that I had ever used was ChatGPT, and I had no idea what could be used to create realistic voiceovers or visuals. After looking at different tools, we landed on RunwayML for the visuals and Murf.AI to generate the voiceover. Especially working with RunwayML was an eye-opening experience. It was incredible how it was able to create impressive videos with simple inputs. Of course, there were still some issues – it could not really imitate human movement very well and some things still looked very “AI-generated”. However, with a bit of tinkering, we ended up being very happy with the results. In the end, we created a video showcasing the potential issue of AI, while not even appearing in the video ourselves.
Fast-forward a year, and these technologies have improved exponentially. Recently, I saw the results of the second annual AI Film Festival, hosted by RunwayML. The festival challenges participants to create short films using only their generative AI model. The difference really is staggering compared to what we worked with only a year ago. Issues we faced such as unrealistic human movement have almost completely been solved. The AI created short films with much more realistic and dynamic characters and even managed to fix the infamous “hand problem” which was a problem in earlier versions. Sure, there can still be some issues if you look closely, but the overall progress is incredible.
Overall, I am blown away by how much GenAI has been improving in helping in the creative space. I can’t help but wonder: will we see entire movies or TV shows created by AI soon?
