OpenAI-backed, AI-created movie 'Critterz' looks to debut at Cannes
It's getting more and more difficult to navigate an internet ecosystem rife with AI-generated video — much of it slop — designed to flood the ephemeral attention marketplace online. Good news movie buffs: That experience could soon come to a theater near you!
The Wall Street Journal published an exclusive report on a project called Critterz that is backed by OpenAI and will look to make a feature-length movie largely created via generative artificial intelligence. The movie centers on woodland creatures going on an adventure. The exact process of how the movie will be made wasn't made totally clear. The report from the WSJ suggested the script was human-written and that human artists would feed images into AI tools to generate footage.
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The selling point of Critterz, at least as it seems in the WSJ article, was lowered costs and a faster turnaround. That is, by and large, the selling point for a lot of AI-generated "art" — you can get cheap output quickly. After all, human workers have a pesky habit of requiring money to purchase things such as food and shelter.
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While certainly an impressive technology, AI video in commercial settings has, at times, proven odd or uncanny-valley-esque. But it is cheap and quick. Forget a resonant message on the human experience, isn't maximized profitability what we all want out of our films?
In all seriousness, AI certainly threatens to upend the movie industry. Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Universal have all sued AI video generation tool Midjourney for copyright infringement, for instance. An Amazon-backed AI firm recently announced plans to recreate the lost minutes of an Orson Welles film, much to the chagrin of the great director's estate.
But OpenAI's Critterz is certainly the most ambitious, brazen even, attempt at replacing human filmmaking with AI to date. The WSJ reported the team hopes for the film to debut at Cannes Film Festival in May. We'll have a better look at the future of movies — for better or worse — in just a few short months.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
Topics Artificial Intelligence Film
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
