It took only a 15-second clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duking it out on a crumbling rooftop at twilight to draw swift outrage, and sizable fear, from Hollywood over the last few days.
The widely circulated video was created by the Irish director Ruairi Robinson using Seedance 2.0, a powerful artificial intelligence video generation tool owned by the Chinese technology company ByteDance. It had plenty of the bells and whistles of a big-budget Hollywood film: sweeping camera angles, stunt choreography, crisp sound effects and haunting music.
With a two-sentence prompt and the click of a button, Seedance had produced a stunningly realistic result that was a drastic improvement over previously generated artificial intelligence videos, often shoddy clips known as A.I. slop. This video was so convincing that it drew near immediate condemnation from some of Hollywood’s top organizations and companies.
Rhett Reese, a scriptwriter known for his “Deadpool” films, said in an interview that the Cruise-Pitt video had sent a “cold shiver” up his spine.
“For all of us who work in the industry and devoted our careers and lives to it, I just think it’s nothing short of terrifying,” he said. “I could just see it costing jobs all over the place.”
ByteDance released Seedance 2.0 last week, nearly two months after a previous version had failed to prompt much anger. A news release from the company praised the updated tool’s “physical accuracy, realism and controllability,” which it said was suitable for the needs of “professional-grade creative scenarios.”
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Why an A.I. Video of Tom Cruise Battling Brad Pitt Spooked Hollywood
