Dey. All right, everyone, let's get started. We have a clip to show you. Check out the monitors all over the screen. Ernest, whenever you're ready, play it, and let's bring up the sound. So, Claire, what's your stuff? The City of Lights? I'm hoping it's a new start.
I don't think we have to pray.
Maybe you're the dark, mysterious kind of man who never shows this vulnerability.
Gotta scene the way it is. Maybe you're the kind of woman who's never sure of what you want, even if it's right in front of you.
Shit and know that that way was hit.
God.
This is what it in life's journey.
Sometimes the heart is too fast, now we don't go.
It sometimes too slow.
But if a few time it just cripes, that's when love arrives.
Claire, I thought you gave.
Up on me.
I'm not going to let you go.
When that one minute and one second clip you just saw premiered on YouTube this past spring from TCL, one of the top TV set makers in the world, the reaction was humongous and if you remember the John Lando quote about Bruce Springsteen, a paraphrase it now. It went from I have seen the future of television and it is absolutely amazing. Two. On the other end, I have seen the future of television and boy I don't want to be involved with it. It's anyway that is from
a movie, a made for TV movie. The TCL was going to run this summer called Nexstop Paris. They haven't run it yet. However, they did put on YouTube a short film, an animated movie called Message in a Bot and two nights ago at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles with they own TCL announced that next month they are going to put out five short films on their multi channel bundle, TCLTV Plus, made by independent filmmakers, and we'll be running starting on December twelfth. And that's not all.
In addition, a company called Promise Studios launched on Tuesday with major funding from Peter Chernan, the former head of Showtime in Fox has his own company North Road and major funding from Anison Horowitz major equity firm. And the idea that Promise has we're going to use Jenner AI to produce television series, movies and other media. So the question on the table is are we beginning an AI TV content connection. You get the chance to decide over
the next half hour. Hello everyone, I'm Simon Applebaum, coming to you from TV of Tomorrow show at the hard Rock Cafe. This just in tomorrow will be televised. Thank you all for being here. Please welcome our panel, and we're gonna do with this like mcneilair Report of a long time ago. We're gonna have individual conversations with each one and guess what, sleeper alert. I'm sorry, spoiler alert.
This is not gonna be a panel where you wait until two seconds before it's over to get your thoughts in. We want to hear from you. So if your question will comment at any time over the course of the conversation, raise your hand. I'll recognize you and we'll go from there. Rob Rebber, you are involved in a venture called dream Flair. It is, you might say, a Netflix like platform that involves generative AI content made programming with a very important catch,
it's interactive. Why are you doing it?
Thank you, Simon as a son, Yeah, you're on. Well, we like interactive for a lot of reasons. One is, if it's not interactive, there isn't really a need for another platform because you can watch videos anywhere. So looking to get into this space and figure out what this technology enables, which is a completely different type of media
that you couldn't do before. While there has been interactive stuff like the easiest comp is band or snatch an episode of Black Mirror, if anyone looked at that, where there's sort of ten different narrative paths that you could go down and you click different options and can see the same movie ten different ways. It was extremely successful, to the point where they launched a whole category to try and keep replicating that success. That was fairly successful.
The problem is it's really expensive and hard to make one movie, and it's even more expensive and hard to make ten movies that overlap and have options. So with AI, because of the speed and the costs coming down solow, you can make interactive content with a variety of different outcomes, things that can change even from user to user, completely unique experiences at a pace that's simply been impossible before.
So you can't really iterate if you're filming, you know, not to the same extent, and you can do this in infinite varieties potentially.
So let's show you what Dreamflare has up at sleeve. This is a clip from a series which has the interactive capability that you will see, Ernest, let's play this world is mine. Welcome, young Master, calibrating Celestial Experiment. Hold on, let wind it. Let's rewind it. Because we don't see the screen, so make sure we have the screen. So take a look at the screens. Everybody and Ernest, when you're ready with the rewind play it. Take two. Welcome, young master, calibrating Celestial Experiment.
Your assigned world is almost.
Ready cosmocraft complete.
There we go.
Oh it's pretty, isn't it.
It sure is verdant.
Forests, majestic rivers, snow capped mountains, the works. It is properly teeming with primitive life awaiting your divine guidance. Language, are you prepared to rain over it all? Oh, Exalted One, this world is now yours? Will you guide it to greatness? Or to its doom?
Ah?
Keep watching? Here comes that adorable religious for her detective.
Yes, would you look at that? They have begun a cult just for you. I believe that is you, Holy One. Your monkeys seem to have fallen upon hard times.
I fear.
Perhaps you could consider guiding them with your benevolent hand.
Warning cosmic decision window closing imminently.
Seriously, you must choose.
Now very well the mammoths.
Then what kind of feedback ROBI you're getting from people who are seeing this and using this.
Well, I can tell you one that's funny.
You touched on.
That was one of our first pieces of content, and we now know that it's important to have the first interaction be in the first thirty seconds. So getting to it quicker so you know that it's a game is one thing, But we've learned a lot of stuff now for.
Those who don't know, over ninety percent of all US households have smart TV sets and smart devices. The majority of those sets, whether it's from Samsong or Visio or LG or Telly or devices like Amazon Fire, TV, Roku, etc.
They have artificial intelligence embedded in them. And every TV set and device now being made also has artificial intelligence in them, so you can do everything from play video games on your television set without having to use a PlayStation or a Xbox on your set as a console. You use your voice, your voice remote gestures, etc. That's why some sets now offer video art galleries where you can put art on the screen, classic contemporary works and even create your own video art and put it on
the screen. That's why we're now getting the shop blads and all sorts of other things. So when is the public going to have the chance to interact with your content on their smart TV sets or devices.
So you can do it now with screencasts just to have the easiest, fastest version, but in terms of an actual app on the TV that you download and use, that way mid to late next year probably.
So not too far down the road. Now. You know some of the people who are involved with this new project called Promise Studios, and I want to read you an open letter that is on their website Promise Studios dot Com from the people who are involved. This is what they say, in part, this new era of creativity holds extraordinary promise, but it takes more than advanced technology to succeed. We have to bring to bring great stories
to life. We need great storytellers, writers, actors, producers, directors, visual effects artists and so many others who bring their creativity and vision to every project. For Promise, technology is the backbone. Is not the backbone, excuse me, but the creative community is. Sorry, I'll say that again. I want to make sure we get this right. For promise. Technology is the backbone, but the creative community is the heart and soul. Why do you think these folks can make it?
Well, they have a lot of funding, so that helps. But I think their thesis is correct though. You know, we have the very similar view that these are tools. And the closest thing that's it's similar to, and many people have said and written this before, is just the going from film to digital. You know, that's really what
it's most like. You go from something that had some tens of thousands of people maybe worldwide employed cutting with scissors and tape and shooting with film, and suddenly millions and millions of people can do that and have a different kind of career, not necessarily in Hollywood, but making some kind of career for themselves filming and editing and being a producer that just would never have existed before.
So this is really the same thing, but by an exponential scale larger, and you can make Lord of the Rings or Star Wars and not just have to, you know, take a selfie.
So before we get to Alejandra, I want you to know that there was another project that has the same kind of quality, the interactive quality as this one. Dream Flare. It's called Showrunners from a company called Flare Studios in California. They have a website. You can see their work at show runner dot com. We invited Edward Sacci, the head of Fable Studios and Showing, to be with us today.
Unfortunately he never responded to our inquiry to have them on. So, Alejandro Manamar or teacher with Runway and you made some news a few weeks ago by doing a deal with Lionsgate to help them make AI content. What's it all about.
Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me here. So yes, we announced for context, we announced partnership with lions maybe a couple of weeks ago. That has two different types of components. On one side, it is one of one first of first of this kind type of partnership with an AI company. I guess the two components are. One component is to better understand how our tools, our models, our technology can better feed their workflows either for pre storyboard,
previousalization and production. And the other side is to access their catalog or the library of content movies or films to fine tune or train models that can suit this kind of like workflow for them.
Why is lions Gate a believer not just in what you're doing, but this idea of artificial intelligence is going to help us creatively make better TV shows, make better movies.
Yeh, robse Head. I think just by the cost going down for different kinds of processes from either pre production to post production, I guess for them they're seeing as an alternative to not perhaps more, but also to enhance what they already are doing at this time. So what we're seeing is that this is another extra tool that they would have in hand for them to be able to do the things that we're doing currently, but most rapidly cost effectively than than before.
Now, there's another part of the Runway story, and you may not have heard about it, but we're going to show about it now, which is you're also involved in a product told one hundred Film Fund, and the idea is you want one hundred filmmakers to put together AI generated content, and I believe you're going to pay them up to one million dollars to do that. Explain that project.
You know, we have a fund that five million dollar fans that users can apply to for a project that have in mind that can fund up to one million dollars different projects. We have been doing this for long time. We run AI Film Festival. This next year we're running the third version, and it's because we truly believe that this is a tool that we allow people from different places, from different backgrounds to tell the stories that they want
to they want at all. You don't need to be in different hubs like Hollywood or different parts in Europe where filmmaking is like kind of like easy or more easy to do in other places. We believe that the best stories yet have not we haven't seen yet. The best stories and best stories can come from any place in the world. And I think by democratizing access to being able to create eighties stories using this technology is something that we truly believe and we want to support
the creators who are thinking in telling these stories. We are a company that creates software, that creates a technology, but our main purpose is to is We're going to We're gonna make it. We're going to succeed if we see more stories being developed.
Are there any TV pilot makers or series makers that are coming to you that they want to be part of this.
Yeah.
Today we're talking to everyone. We're talking to all of the major studios from Hollywood were talking to different TV channels from everywhere. I was just talking yesterday to a Columbian TV channel that they're piloting different type of series shows that they want to test with users before they actually committed product producing them.
JOHNA. Tart, You're with a company called show Dog Studios around for a couple of years out of Nashville, Tennessee, Music City, USA, and you've got some TV projects you want to do, and AI is going to be part of that.
Across the board, I mean that the I've been in the industry since nineteen ninety six and very much in the technological side of the business.
First of all, I don't like the term AI.
It's machine learning, and it's a tool within the process we currently are developing. We're currently developing a sixteen different projects. All of those projects to some degree are using AI, everything from assisting us in the writer's room all the way to generating content within our workflow. And I think one of the things you were talking about earlier, it's
very important. A big part of my career has been building workflows for very very large projects for you know, companies like Marvel et cetera.
And using the AI.
First of all, the genies out of the bottle is not will AI be involved in television in the future, it's how it will be, Because it will be. It'll be involved in every part of everything that we're doing. What we're with the technologies that we're developing in house to develop our own content. What we're doing is we're building tools that assist our team in what we you know, what is referred to as the mixture of experts model.
So rather than trying to build a large model that can do everything, we build specific models and specific tools for a development executive or a storyboard artist or whoever it is and wherever they are in the process, along with other tools that we build for image manipulation for things that we filmed. We film, for example, so in the compositing stage and that the final beautification of what we're doing, we built a whole series of tools for that.
One of the projects that.
We're creating is a and we'll be releasing next year is a ninety minute animated feature which would have been financially impossible without the use of AI, but it isn't in the generative in the generative video part of it it because we're actually going to be rendering most of
that using real time technologies. It has been in the iterative process, in the design process, and in in optimizing all of the various different parts of all of the hundreds of people that are involved in creating a project to that type.
When you talk to a TV series maker or a TV's pilot maker and they see something like what TCL showcased back in aprils, a trailer for Nextstop Paris, and they come to you and say, I don't want to do that. I look at the embarrassment I'm going to have if I put something like that out to the public. What do you tell them?
Yeah, Well, I mean the biggest issue is control. The problem with AI is kind of at the moment it's you know, you get whatever it gives you. But if you combine that with other tools in the workflow, as we do, you can get extremely extremely precise control over what you're doing. So I think the idea of using these machine learning tools as this magic box that will do everything for you and then eventually take over the earth, that's not That's not the way to go, is to
use these tools where they make sense. I mean, I've been involved in I was involved for with the with the Dawn of Digital Technology digital filming. I literally helped Vulnerablethers write the book on that technology. And you have all of these things that change but don't destroy the marketplace.
At the end of the day, story is king right. So what you want to.
Be doing is enabling and giving all of the people in the process better tools to do what they do. I think the idea that AI is going to replace anything is is not really correct. You know, it's it's it's going to be another tool that we add to what we're doing. I think the danger of I think the danger of misunderstanding what AI is is that we start to think, well, this is a This is problematic because we're going to get a derivative of a derivative of a derivative.
That's true if you misuse it, But if you use.
AI as a false multiplier for your team, then well, in my case, I have a small production company that is developing sixteen shows. If this had been within a traditional pipeline, we'd be overboard and overburdened with four projects.
So it really helps you do more.
And the last thing that I want to get in is one of the key things that we see is it enables people to communicate in a way that they couldn't communicate before. So when I'm working with if I'm working currently, I'm working with a director who does not have artistic ability, but with AI and the tools that we've given him, he can give us a very clear vision of what he wants to see in this animated film. For everybody else in the pipeline, just that is an enormous saving.
So I think when we're looking at AI.
We should look at it holistically, and we should look at it as part of a workflow.
As opposed to looking at as a panacea like this is going to make everything great, every content great, and so on and so forth. Who's got a question? Raise your hand, let's hear you. I know there's a lot you've digested already, but I wanna make sure that we get Who's I got a question? Okay, who's that person? Could you just stand up and just come a little bit over so I see you, and uh, who's that person? Okay? Hi there? Uh tell everybody who your name is and where you're.
From and.
Whenever it might be, what do you guys to making.
How personal?
Can this get it's it's a great question, definitely something we think about the way that we're going to approach it. It won't be true of you know, every piece of content, but in general we see the personalization as moments within a story, not the entirety of the story. So, for example, you saw like these interactive videos where you tap a
different path. We have another thing, which are really like video comics where like web comics, you scroll through a comic on your phone, but now they can come to life because of AI and be like sort of like a movie flip book in a sense, and.
This on the TV set, seen on TV, and you can interact with a comic strip character.
Yeah, exactly, And so what's coming is conversational AI. You're gonna start seeing some stuff made with that really soon.
And imagine being able to swipe through a comic where you know ninety percent of the comic is the same thing for everybody, but there's a handful of panels throughout that you can tap to talk and speak to the character on your phone or on your TV and actually have like a live, no latency conversation because the character has been loaded with all of the lore and their backstory and anything that you could like plot secrets or something like that, and that conversation will be unique to everyone.
It'll have the same base of knowledge, so you'll be getting similar ish responses, but everything you say will be what you think to ask it. So you can have little parts of a story that are just for you, and then those are actually fun to talk about and be like, what did your character say? You know, what was my conversation? So stuff like that great question?
Who else have got a question? Raise your hand, let me see it right here? What's your name? Where you from? Speak up a little bit and stand up? There you go, Thanks for being here. Go ahead.
See synthetic measurement of creation. That with any And so when you think about kind of creative production rights, and I think artists and just generally creative in general, is you're trying to break barriers and do new things.
So can you talk a little bit about.
The limitations of AI machine learning and perhaps creating and generating new content and things and ideas that we haven't seen before.
If it's just being.
I can take that one.
If go ahead, John, I completely agree with you. It's you know, the it's the multiplicity thing. It's the photocopy of a photocopy, although fairly, it's not like we haven't been watching a lot of derivative content already being made by everybody else. But but that's this is the point I was making earlier. It's it's a tool.
What you're talking.
About is a scenario where the tool is making the content. The content is being used by somebody to help them make content. So if you become reliant on the tool, then you'll fall into the trap that you're talking about. And that's one of the issues I was talking about earlier about control. You need to be able to control it.
What it does allow you to do is I was in visual effects for a very very long time.
So I was having a conversation in Venice at the Venice Film Festival where I was talking to a lot of producers and they posed a question and I said to them, Look, if we went across the street and we were making a spy movie and I needed to do an opening shot of this plaza, and I had all of the crew, and I had everybody sitting here right now, it would cost me fifty or one hundred thousand dollars to get the unions to get everybody from one side of the bridge to the other side of
the bridge, right, or I consider my computer and I can create fifty different iterations of it.
In twenty minutes.
So it's depending on the application storytelling and innovating with storytelling and writing the story. I don't if you've written a story, but you're going to go through a lot of different iterations. How we use it is in our writer's room. It is another voice in the writer's room. And then we talk about that it's not the voice. It is a voice. It comes up with different iterations, it comes up with things that may not necessarily think about, and you know what, most of the time we disagree.
But it's a tool just like anything else. So I agree. I think the things that we remember. If you got a film school and you study things, you study films that innovated and changed the way that we look at this medium or changed the way we told the story. A derivative of a derivative isn't going to do that. But I don't think that's what AI represents or machine learning represents.
Let's conclude on this note. Now a Handre'll start with you. We all talk about takeaways. Takeaways, takeaways, what do we want to take away from events like this? What do you want the people in this room and the people in the TV industry to take away from what you're doing.
Yeah, I just want to mention that we're still very early in this phase. There's still a lot of like unknowns I guess industry wise, we're trying to figure out. I think for us as a toolmaker's controllability is the key piece of it. We design, create and cheap these tools for an audience of creators, people who are thinking in telling stories, in creating projects, and we understand that granularity control is key for what they have in mind.
Today.
There is a lot of options out there that promise like great videos that you can prom something and then you get a really nice video, but if you cannot control that video is a useless videos for many of us who are planning to work on this, So my imitation will be to start exploring it. It takes a little bit of time and and we have seen in different industries, not just in media, that those who start
incorporating little pieces of their work in their workflows. Every time there is a new upgrade, a new model that can comes up with better fidelity, better quality. The gap between those who start exploring implementing it early and trying to get into production has been significantly bigger than the ones who are trying to jump very late into rob You.
Sure, yep.
So I think for us it would just be that if you're watching this space and interested in what's happening, A lot is on the tooling side, and I'll vote for Alejandro. The runway is like really the best one. So on the tool side, you know, there's a lot What we think about is not how it's being made, because there's a lot of that going on. This is about how it's experienced and consumed by audiences now and how can that change right at the other end of
the spectrum. And so I think, you know, if you're interested in seeing the new ways that this unlocks something more between games, comics and movies that can all kind of blur together where you can do things with your favorite stories that you never could before. We hope you'll come check that out and you know, put things in the feedback box if you think there's stuff that you would like to do.
So and John, you get the last word for now out thirty seconds.
So I own a business that makes content. Whenever we do a swat analysis, which we do regularly, AI is in every single one of those categories. It's a strength, it's a weakness, it's an opportunity, and it's a threat. And that is really based on how you approach it. So I think that AI is here. It all has an enormous amount of promise, and as has been said, I think you need to get in to it now before it's too late. I think it's moving at such an exponential pace. It's going to change the way that
we do things. But like so many things before it, and I think that the sooner we get great creatives who created great content in the past using this tool, that's when.
Machine learning is going to really shine.
And that's I think the most exciting thing about what you're doing with the lines Gate is real filmmakers.
Using the tool.
Instantly you've missed the opening panel. Dallas Lawrence, who is from Telly, the what I call the iPhone of television, announced that they are now doing a daily AI series called Telly Today, another opportunity for this very fast changing situation. By the way, this will not be the last word about the subject, because coming up in about an hour we will have another panel call, but what AI can do for you, including an executive from Warner Bros. Discovery
on the panel. I think you will be very very surprised, and all of our panelists will be invited to be on my program Tomorrowie Tell Ofviyes on the next week or two. You can catch the program by the way on YouTube, on Facebook and on talk show three pm E soon right here and also on a favorite podcast site near you. For our panelists and for everyone at the TV of tomorrow show, I'm Simon Applebaum reminding you
there are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them, and it's just getting started until the next time. Stay well and stay tuned.
Thank you word to say where you're doing.
I mean I was a wonderful town.
Thank you, Bill.
And you're to have you on our show.
You yell.
You just have the d t get here out for sure.
If you're a wanting for you, we've been building on the drip Alhandra.
Thank you very very much. Less to have you and add Poble have you on our show and tomorrow Tells next week in the week after and John will be on our show on Tuesday, Thanks again dep