AI in art has made enormous progress in the past year. With brand new tools to improve the animation, VFX that uses AI. This has significantly changed the content created. Instead of using a body double, deepfakes are used to create the desired effect. There is incredible progress in AR/VR technologies that drives the concept of immersive experiences. “When we talk of design and media, more than what it looks like, it is about what the end result feels like. The images need to evoke a feeling in you.” begins Biren Ghose in his talk on the first day of Cypher. 

Biren Ghose, the country head for Technicolor Studios spoke on the first day of Cypher. He began the session, “AI for Simulation and Design”, mentioning how far we’ve come in making movies. “When I was young we didn’t even have audio in our movies. And today many of the innovations that you see are dreams that were first portrayed to you in movies,” he said. 

Instead of explaining further with a presentation, he played videos of the simulations created by Technicolor creative studios. He showed movies and advertisements created by the company. A unique project he shared was experimenting with a collaboration of beatboxing and AI.  Using machine learning, a convolutional neural network interprets Reef’s voice, beats, and sounds, improvising on his contribution by adding on elements that complement his music. 

Technicolor Studios which has now been rebranded to Vantiva last year, has four operating units creating VFX, animations, and visualisations for gaming, movies, shows and advertising. Biren mentioned that the studio has made “over 20 movies, 32+ large TV series, 3500 ad commercials so far”. 

The future of animation with AI 

“I’ve been with technicolor for 14 years and in this time we’ve seen at least four or five revolutions in terms of tech.” This is seen in the series of movies made by the studio. The first Kung Fu Panda or Madagascar movie was dramatically different from the last one. “Same character, similar stories but very different technologies.”

Ghose said this is to be expected in 2024 as well. The software next year will be clunky and won’t work without a massive latency in a machine more than two years old, he explained. To emphasise this point he played an advertisement created for MasterCard which involves a younger AI version of a football player. 

The advertisement which didn’t involve any CGI was created using synthetic renders. Thousands of pictures were taken to generate the AI images of the footballer. “AI is an enabler and not necessarily a competitive tool for what we need to do in all of our industries,” he said. 

Another startling example he explained was the comparison between how Jungle Book 2 which is in the works compared to the first one released seven years ago. While the first one was live-action and CGI, the second one is using AI to make the whole process easier and better. 

Ghose said, “Our team and Disney travelled to the jungles, across three corners of India, across four seasons, and took hundreds and 1000s of photographs.” These photographs he said have been replicated as in ‘photogrammetry’ using various methods in order to actually create images of the real environments. 

The Mill, one of the factions of Technicolor studios that creates advertisements, brought ‘DracARys’ home to all the House of the Dragon fans. The highly personalised dragon comes alive using augmented reality through an app. “We wanted to create a very personal, sophisticated, responsive virtual creature that fans could own and customise. Such immersive experiences will become more popular in the future,” he says. 

AI and Art

“If AI is the Wild West, who is the sheriff around here?” he asked, referring to another advertisement created by Technicolor studio. But the question was not rhetorical, instead an important one to address. Ghose said, “We need more governance to come in. As in my role as the chairman of the CII’s National AVGC Committee, we are looking at what kind of regulation we can bring in.”

In the meanwhile the industry is self regulating. “So that we don’t really need a sheriff to tell us, ‘Hey, you should do this or that’, we can make that happen ourselves,” he explained. 

This is possible with making contracts. The kind of contract the artist engages with determines how their ‘avatar’ or their digital persona is used. “The AI avatar will be licensed by the artist’s manager for a particular advertisement or movie. The other way is to write off your IP to a company so that everything they create is the IP of a particular company,” he explained. 

There is also a huge opportunity to bring more women to the industry. In the production industry for visual effects, animation and games only 2% of the workforce are women in India. He said, “We were happy at our company to reach 11.5 Just before the pandemic and we have to make further efforts there. But there’s a whole opportunity now with new technology to bring more women into the game.” he concludes.