A softer image of AI? This Google-backed film aims to change the narrative

A person mourns the lack of his lifeless movie star mother, who unexpectedly seems earlier than him as a hologram in his childhood house, singing and strumming a guitar.

The touching scene is from a brand new quick movie known as “Sweetwater” that has an unlikely backer: Google.

Amid all of the hand-wringing over synthetic intelligence and the potential menace it poses to Hollywood and the artistic group, the tech big is seeking to reframe the narrative with a 21-minute movie that examines whether or not know-how can assist people course of grief on this new period of the digital age.

Google set the stage for that dialogue with a glitzy occasion on the Academy Museum of Movement Photos on Monday evening. Actors, filmmakers, producers and leisure employees packed a Los Angeles theater to observe “Sweetwater,” starring Michael Keaton and Kyra Sedgwick.

Google commissioned “Sweetwater” with Santa Monica-based expertise administration agency Vary Media Companions to discover the complicated relationship between AI and humanity.

The Mountain View firm has a vested curiosity in portray AI in a extra favorable mild. The YouTube proprietor is a significant investor and accomplice within the AI agency Anthropic, which itself has been the target of lawsuits over accusations of copyright infringement within the arts. Along with its partnership with Anthropic, Google is individually creating its personal AI instruments, together with Gemini and Undertaking Astra.

“The objective proper now’s to not particularly be promoting their product,” stated Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Heart for Tv and Widespread Tradition at Syracuse College. “The objective proper now’s to be making a world the place persons are snug supporting AI, utilizing it with no worry, with no important qualms in any way, like we dove into social media … I feel that’s been a more durable job with AI.”

Depictions of the digital afterlife in exhibits equivalent to “Black Mirror” can really feel bleak, foreshadowing a dystopian future the place individuals get resurrected from the grave as chatbots and robots.

In “Sweetwater,” a hologram of the deceased mother tugs on the heartstrings of viewers, hinting on the risk that AI could possibly be used to digitally protect a cherished one or present consolation to those that are grieving.

“It simply poses the query, I haven’t even actually resolved it for myself,” stated Sean Douglas, Keaton’s son and the movie’s author, in an interview. “If offered with this risk, would you need that — and what are the parameters of how actual an expertise like this may be?”

The rise of synthetic intelligence has prompted conversations and criticism concerning the influence of the know-how, together with the way it may change the way in which individuals expertise the world.

Hollywood is reckoning with comparable questions as storytellers convey up fears about copyright violations, compensation and the danger of AI competing with actors, writers and artists for work. Know-how has made it attainable to convey again actors, writers and musicians from the dead in digital form. Some individuals already use chatbots like therapists.

Tech corporations equivalent to Google that present AI assistants and merchandise to generate pictures, textual content and video market their instruments as a technique to help creative people, not change them.

Google’s AI merchandise don’t seem within the “Sweetwater” movie, though the corporate does have a holographic 3D communication know-how known as Google Beam that makes use of AI.

Customers are break up on whether or not AI will assist or hurt creativity, in accordance with a report from the Pew Analysis Heart. Roughly 53% suppose AI will worsen individuals’s capability to suppose creatively whereas 16% say elevated use of AI will make this higher. Others aren’t certain or thought it might be neither higher nor worse.

Neil Parris, head of strategic content material partnerships for Google’s movie and tv 100 Zeros initiative, stated as individuals see quite a lot of AI tales — some much less dystopian — it may increase how they give thought to the usage of know-how.

“It’s meant to empower human creativity,” stated Parris, who govt produced the quick movie. “It’s going to evolve and form the roles that individuals have within the artistic course of as any know-how has over the course of the historical past of filmmaking.”

“Sweetwater” first premiered in September in New York however its distribution hasn’t been finalized . The filmmakers stated they’re additionally open to creating it longer.

The panel dialogue concerning the movie additionally shined a highlight on the stress between people and machines.

“I used to be excited concerning the prospect of an actor taking part in AI as an alternative of AI taking part in an actor. I believed that was factor,” stated Sedgwick because the viewers applauded.

Earlier this yr, many Hollywood actors had been outraged when the creator behind an AI-generated character, Tilly Norwood, introduced Norwood would quickly be signed to a expertise company. The AI character could possibly be used to behave in movies and TV exhibits, roles that would immediately compete in opposition to human actors.

Keaton, who additionally directed the movie, stated that whereas he isn’t essentially the most tech savvy, curiosity and the chance to work together with his son led him to direct and star within the movie, however it’s not meant to be a industrial for AI.

The “Google of us” had been “nice,” he stated on stage Monday, however the actor additionally expressed issues concerning the influence of AI on jobs and fairness.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, additionally added AI instruments to its platform that practice on the work of its video creators. Some creators have expressed fear that this might make it simpler for others to repeat their work and artistic kinds.

“You don’t change anyone within the business. I’m very old style about individuals and employment and work and being protected,” Keaton stated in an interview. “And on the similar time, I discover these things actually fascinating and curious.”

Whereas the movie is about AI, the filmmakers deliberately didn’t use AI to create digital actors.

“We didn’t wish to make it murky the place, oh, we’re utilizing AI, and we’re speaking about it,” Douglas stated.

One advantage of working with Google, he stated, was the corporate gave entry to researchers and their tech employees to be taught extra concerning the digital afterlife.

Jed Brubaker, an affiliate professor on the College of Colorado Boulder who has researched the advantages and dangers of AI afterlives with Google DeepMind, labored with the filmmakers as they sorted out the design of the “generative ghost” of the mother. In “Sweetwater,” the mother’s hologram will get projected from an orb.

“These are all selections we get to make with generative ghosts as properly, they usually’ll have completely different impacts on how individuals expertise and work together with them,” Brubaker stated. “In the identical method that studying your grandfather’s journal is completely different than wanting by means of a photograph album of pictures of your grandfather.”

Already, Google stated after the screening, individuals within the leisure business expressed curiosity in working with the corporate on future movie tasks.

“Our worry of machines has been massively fanned by Hollywood over many a long time,” stated Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman College’s Dodge School of Movie and Media Arts. “You possibly can say Hollywood is choosing up societal fears.”