James Cameron has reportedly revealed an anti-AI title card will open up Avatar 3, officially titled Avatar: Fire and Ash. The Oscar-winning director shared the news in a Q&A session in New Zealand attended by Twitter user Josh Harding.
Sharing a picture of Cameron at the event, they wrote: “Such an incredible talk. Also, James Cameron revealed that Avatar: Fire and Ash will begin with a title card after the 20th Century and Lightstorm logos that ‘no generative A.I. was used in the making of this movie’.”
Cameron has been vocal in the past abo6ut his feelings on artificial intelligence, speaking to CTV news in 2023 about AI-written scripts. “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said – about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality – and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it,” he told the publication. “I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the 4K transfers of Aliens, True Lies, and The Abyss.
But I applaud the efforts nonetheless.
AI upscaling isn’t the same thing as generative AI.
One makes the image a larger resolution just shifting pixels around. The other can create entirely new scenes.
AI or “algorithm” upscaling fundamentally creates something out of nothing. That’s what upscaling is, so it is generative because its quite literally generating “guesses” at what should be there, pixel by pixel.
Its literally the trope in movies where they’re reviewing grainy security can footage and someone says “enhance” and its magically a crystal clear image. Its just that we have technology to do that now.
I’d agree there’s a semantics argument that using AI for upscaling is different than creating new, but its just that semantics.
I think those semantics are really important during this time when creatives are at war with ai, so the public is aware of what is what, everything is lumped in together. There is a very big leap between blurry images on CSI TV shows figuring out license plates and taking something from let’s say 1080p and making it 4k. I use upscaling quite often in my line of work and we really do draw a line between something like Topaz and something like Adobe Firefly. Upscalers have also been around since maybe 2015, but they weren’t as advanced or popular to use back then.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the AI upscales mentioned, but AI did a lot more than just “making it a larger resolution”. It fundamentally altered and degraded certain visual aspects of the films.
They used a shitty upscaler and got shitty results. Color me not surprised.
Nerrel mentioned 🌚🌚