Lori McCreary, CEO and co-founder of Morgan Freeman’s production company Revelations Entertainment, shed light on her evolving role as a producer in the age of AI at an event in Italy on Tuesday.
“AI is going to re-shape our industry… the way sound reshaped silent films, only faster,” McCreary told a an AI focused panel at the Audiovisual Producers Summit in the northern Italian spa town of Merano on Tuesday.
“Two years ago, at this very conference, in Trieste, we were still calling AI this new technology, but it was really 15 years in the making. Then, the most common question was, ‘What is this AI thing and how is it going to affect us?’.
“Last year, the tone shifted a little bit, and it was, ‘You’re not using AI yet, are you?’ and then this year, the questions are, ‘Which models are you using, has it worked, have you had any problems, and how do we protect each other. The pace of change is dizzying, even for those who are partially in it and partially out of it.”
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McCreary addressed the question of protecting audiovisual IP in an age of generative ai software, suggesting one of her biggest challenges was protecting Freeman himself.
“When Morgan and I launched Revelations 28 years ago, our biggest question was, do we do digital dailies or film dailies. Now the question is, can someone else own your voice, your image, your likeness, and can a studio license Morgan’s performance from Shawshank without him having any say in it?” she said referring to the actor’s 1995 Oscar nominated role in The Shawshank Redemption.
“If you’ve ever worked with Morgan, you know that his voice is more than just intellectual property, it’s his identity and protecting it and protecting all our stories and our projects behind the scenes and in front of the camera. It’s not just an imperative now, it’s literally the new frontline of producing.”
McCreary noted she was also embracing the AI technology to support act of filmmaking from development to post-production, but it came with caveats.
“On the creative side, it can be incredible. AI is helping us visualize storyboards, localize scripts dubbed in multiple languages with actors who might not speak our language, and even simulate visual effects before we spend this time on post. For independent producers and I literally be a game changer,” she said.
“But on the legal and the human side, it’s also introducing enormous risk for us as producers, especially when likenesses our cloned without people’s permission or we don’t what data was used to train something we’re using to help our scripts… we’re no longer just the keeper of the story of our teams and of our budgets. We’re now really digital rights protectors and we’re the last line between talent and technology.”
McCreary suggested that the legal due diligence that needs to be done when a production used AI to support development and production, meant that the technology was not always a cost-cutter.
“With all of the legal advice we need and the vetting of the projects of the vendor, vetting the data set, licensing, the E&O insurance, we have to be really careful as producers because what looks fast and inexpensive to do can end up being risky and expensive,” she said.
“Producers are really at risk, and we still hold the liability if something goes wrong.
If that AI generated voice triggers a lawsuit in another jurisdiction, it’s not the tool or the buyer that’s going to get in trouble, it’s the producer. The job really hasn’t changed. It’s still about protecting the story and the talent and the truth. It’s just that now you really have to read that fine print or you say, I agree, you got to read all of that.”
McCreary also touched on the issue of copyrighting content that has been created using AI technology, focusing on a recent California Copyright Office ruling that content needs “significant creative human input” to copyrightable.
“In the US, if you didn’t creatively guide it or edit it, it’s not yours. This is different from all the places in the world,” she said, explaining that this meant producers had to be meticulous in documenting the human involvement in their projects.
“Producers today are constantly walking the tightrope between legal protection and creative ownership… For producers, documentation is going to be key. We need to log our prompts… We need to show human oversight, annotate all of our choices because because one day we might have to prove that our project was crafted by humans.”
The AVP Summit runs July 21 to 23 with other topics on the table including European tax credit regimes, Hollywood at a crossroads and the future of comedy on the big screen.