Lionsgate Partners with AI Company Runway for Custom AI Models

Lionsgate Is Trading Its Movies and TV Shows for Custom AI

Katelyn is a writer with CNET covering social media, AI and online services. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can often find her with a novel and an iced coffee during her time off. You might not recognize Lionsgate by name, but you've certainly seen some of its biggest hits, which include movies like the John Wick franchise, The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga and TV shows like Mad Men. All of these shows and movies are going to be made available to an AI start-up, according to a new deal announced this week. Runway is an AI video start-up -- if you're a Canva user, you can test out its text-to-video capabilities -- and this deal is the first of its kind for the AI company. Runway will build a custom AI model for the studio using Lionsgate's content catalog. Lionsgate Studio's vice chair Michael Burns told The WSJ, who first reported the deal, that the studio plans to use the AI tool in the editing and production processes -- and save the company "millions and millions of dollars," said Burns. AI was one of the central concerns in summer 2023's Hollywood trade union strikes, including The Writers Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Directors Guild of America. The new deals the unions eventually ratified set a foundation for protections surrounding AI. But AI continues to be a concern for Hollywood, as SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said in a speech at the guild's 2024 award show, "AI will entrap us in a matrix where none of us know what's real." Some of these artists' concerns have led to legal action. Earlier this year, Runway AI and Stable Diffusion, which makes the models behind image generators like Midjourney, were sued by a group of visual artists alleging that their AI models infringe on their copyrights. The case is ongoing. Runway's tools aren't ready yet to produce images and video for TV and movies, its CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said to The WSJ. The company hopes to have "refined" creator tools ready in the next 12 months.

Lionsgate's AI Deal Sounds a Lot Like It Wants to Replace the Jobs of Storyboard and VFX Artists

The goal is to save "millions and millions of dollars," the studio says. Lionsgate, the studio behind hit franchises ranging from "John Wick" to "The Hunger Games" to cult classics like "American Psycho," is entering into a major partnership with the AI firm Runway, The Wall Street Journal reports. As part of the deal, announced Wednesday, Runway receives access to Lionsgate's treasure trove of movies and TV shows -- which in return the startup will use to develop a new AI model exclusively for the Hollywood studio. Runway claims that the AI model will be capable of generating "cinematic video." And Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns says the tech will save the company "millions and millions of dollars," per the WSJ -- remarks that suggest an aim of slashing jobs if the project is successful, with Burns saying the goal is to use the tool for roles that have traditionally been done by humans, like storyboarding and the creation of visual effects. "We do a lot of action movies, so we blow a lot of things up and that is one of the things Runway does," Burns told the paper. This is the first deal of its kind that Runway has signed with a major Hollywood studio. Though for Lionsgate, the timing could be better: it was only last month that it came under fire for using totally made up, AI-generated quotes purporting to be the words of famous movie critics in a trailer for "Megalopolis," Francis Ford Coppola's forthcoming sci-fi epic. Runway also enters this relationship with some baggage: along with several other generative AI companies like Midjourney, it was sued by artists for committing copyright infringement by using their artwork to train its AI models without permission. In signing this deal with Lionsgate, Runway avoids those copyright hurdles, which could pave the way to a more legally scrupulous expansion of the technology into the industry down the road. It's this aspect of the deal that makes Runway's unique among partnerships between other studios and AI companies, because they usually don't involve allowing AI firms to access their film and TV libraries to train their models on, Jeff Katzin, a partner at the firm Bain & Co which worked with Lionsgate on its AI strategy, told the WSJ. As the significance of this deal shows, the movie industry is at an AI crossroads. Major studios are increasingly experimenting with the tech, even though it remains controversial among creatives. These tensions came to a head last year, when actors and screenwriters joined forces in a major strike that, among other concessions, successfully sought landmark AI protections. This week, California expanded on those AI safeguards with two new pieces of legislation that make it illegal to use AI to replicate an actor's likeness and voice without explicit permission. For now, Runway's AI tools aren't capable of generating images of a high enough quality to be used in movie and TV productions, the WSJ notes. But now that the startup has access to Lionsgate's extensive library, maybe it eventually will.

What a major movie studio's AI deal could mean for the future of Hollywood

Generative AI might save studios 'millions and millions of dollars,' but at what cost? When Hollywood's actors took to the streets last year for a 118 day strike, many wielded signs reading "no digital clones," "AI is soulless," and "AI is not art." These ticked-off thespians were expressing a sentiment shared by a growing share of writers, video games voice actors, and many other creatives: generative AI tools, trained off their work, may threaten their jobs and shrink the entertainment industry. When the strike ended, actors were awarded new, hard-won protections against AI-generated clones. Since then, California has passed several landmark laws limiting Hollywood's use of certain generatrice AI use cases. But none of those efforts will outright stop major studios from using generative AI to try and cut costs around new movies and shows. Lionsgate, the studio behind popular films series' like The Hunger Games and John Wick, recently announced it's letting a startup mine its catalog works with the goal of creating an AI model capable of creating storyboards and other pre- and post-production work. The deal represents the first of its kind between a studio and an AI maker but it's unlikely to be the last. As part of its new deal, Lionsgate will let New York-based AI research firm Runway AI create a generative model trained on its corpus of 20,000 titles spanning 27 years. The custom generative AI model will then create "cinematic video" which the companies say will initially be used as inspiration during storyboarding sessions or pre-production meetings. Lionsgate believes these tools will help filmmakers and other creatives "augment their work" to deliver "capital-efficient content creation opportunities." AI, in other words, could help cobble together more movies and shows with lower investment costs. Eventually, according to statements made by Lionsgate founder Vice Chairman Michael Burns during an interview with The Wall Street Journal, that same tools could be used to generate explosions or other background effects in films. "We do a lot of action movies, so we blow a lot of things up and that is one of the things Runway does," Burns said during an interview with the Journal. Burns went on to say he hoped the tool could save the studio "millions and millions of dollars." The announcement comes weeks after Lionsgate distanced itself from a trailer for its film Megalopolis, which reportedly featured inaccurate, AI-generated movie reviews. A Deadline report claims the marketing consultant in charge of the materials for the trailer has reportedly since been removed from the marketing team following public backlash. For now at least, it looks like this particular model will steer clear of generating AI "clones" or replicas of actors. A person with knowledge of the agreement told Popular Science Runway AI model won't be used to generate new AI characters or replicate existing actors. Instead, it will primarily be used as a tool to enhance and augment existing projects, the person said. But even if Lionsgate avoids using Generative AI to create digital actors there's no guarantee other studios will follow a similar approach. Critics of AI's impact on the film industry, including many background actors, worry studios could simply replace them with their AI doppelgangers, essentially making them redundant. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing Hollywood actors recently added language to its bargaining agreement requiring producers to explain to actors how a digital replica of them would be used, and to obtain their consent, before including the replica in a show or film. The union agreement was viewed widely as a win, but not all actors walked away satisfied. Some balked at their work ever being used to train an AI model. The Writers Guild of America (WGA), a separate union representing many Hollywood screenwriters, reached their own agreement clarifying that writing generated by cannot be considered "literary material." "We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing and supplementing our current operations," Burns said in a written statement. Runway, meanwhile, is currently fighting a class-action copyright lawsuit brought against it by multiple visual artists who alleged the company trained its models on their work without permission. Runway has field motions to dismiss that case. The Lionsgate agreement comes less than one day after California governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law setting guardrails in places over how Hollywood can use certain generative AI features. The first bill, AB2602, prevents employers from using digital replicas of a performer in a project instead of the real person, unless that person consents and knows how the replica will be used. AB1836, meanwhile, makes it clear studios and entertainment employers need to receive consent from a deceased performer's estate before they can use an AI replica of them. SAG-AFTRA sponsored both of the bills. None of the provisions in the new Hollywood AI laws, however, appear to prevent Lionsgate or other studies from letting other companies use their content to train models. So long as the companies steer clear of using the models to generate AI versions of actors, existing laws don't prevent studios from using AI-generated videos to shape ideas or even appear as effects or backgrounds for a production. The agreement between Lionsgate and Runway could serve as a template for others to follow. Disney has reportedly set up a taskforce to study how generative AI can be used across its entertainment offerings. Paramount, according to the Journal, has also reportedly been in discussion with generative AI companies. By training new models exclusively on a studio's catalog AI companies like Runway can potentially avoid opening themselves up to more copyright lawsuits creators who say their works were scrapped against their will. Other, less tailored generative AI models that scrape large swaths of the open internet, like those offered by OpenAI and Stable Diffusion, are currently operating in legal gray areas as related copyright suits wind their way through the courts. Studios and AI-makers mostly sidestep those headaches by simply limiting an AI's training set to material the studio already owns. And while protections are now in place regarding AI replicas, little is stopping future movie-makers from creating entirely new-looking "Synthetic Performers" pieced together from training data. In this case, an AI could compile data from a studio's catalog (including actors' performance) and use that as the foundation to generate an AI character film. Some, like prominent actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, argue they should be compensated when their work is included in training data used to build a synthetic performer. "AI can't do our jobs yet, but it might be able to soon," Gordon-Levitt wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "And people whose jobs are threatened by AI will be the same people who produced the data used to train it."

What Runway and Lionsgate Partnership Tells Us About Hollywood

Snippet: Runway's very own AI Film Festival, similar to the one in Cannes, is an exclusive celebration of artists who use emerging AI techniques in their short films. History is in the making. Runway, an AI video startup, collaborated with Lionsgate, the maker of Hunger Games, to bring AI to film. Runway's goal is to help the artistic community with state-of-the art tools to bring their stories to life, and now with this deal, perhaps even on the big crean as well. Interestingly, the Oscar winning movie "Everything Everywhere all at Once" employed Runaway's tools for special effects for its famous rock scene, which saved a lot of time, costs, and manual effort. Lionsgate Entertainment is a Hollywood heavyweight which has previously produced award-winning movies and shows like Twilight, John Wick, and Hunger Games. Under this deal, Lionsgate would be able to use Runway's AI tools, exclusively, to create content. Runaway was launched by NYU alumni in 2018. The founders - Cristóbal Valenzuela, Anastasis Germanidis, and Alejandro Matamala - were in the talks for a whopping $4 Billion valuation for their startup earlier this year. Runway also released Gen-3 Alpha, which is trained on both videos and images, and enables Runway's text-to-video, image-to-video, and text-to-image tools. This model is publicly available to everyone. "The history of art is the history of technology and these new models are part of our continuous efforts to build transformative mediums for artistic and creative expression; the best stories are yet to be told." said Cristóbal Valenzuela, one of the founders at Runway. The future of cinema is AI, but not how you might think. Tangibly, AI can be meaningfully employed in films during the pre production and post production processes, and even for generating characters. But in a larger sense, it lowers the barrier of entry and allows many to venture into this otherwise difficult, and legacy driven space. Runway's very own AI Film Festival, similar to the one in Cannes, is an effort to exclusively celebrate artists who use emerging AI techniques in their short films. Started two years ago, the festival is a bid to open dialogue on the (inevitable) role of AI tools in the film community, and engage with creators from all backgrounds to understand their perspectives. "If we had the kind of deepfake face swapping technology back in the day, a movie like The Irishman would look different than it did, and would not have taken ten years to make. While we were waiting for finances to complete the movie, we were also waiting for a newer technology to come," said Jane Rosenthal, a leading American film producer, in an interview with Cristóbal Valenzuela. She is also a member of the dean council at NYU Tisch, one of the world's best film schools, and is enthusiastic about AI's defining role in today's zeitgeist, especially newer filmmakers. For context, The Irishman, directed by Martin Scorsese, and produced by Rosenthal, is an interesting case study of how cinematic experience can be improved (when AI is employed responsibly), while also saving a lot of time and resources in the process. "Experimentation with AI is fantastic. Speaking of speed, you know how things work, for instance if an actor was injured or cut themselves during shaving, there is no makeup for it and you have to stop shooting. But now, with AI tools, you can just continue shooting and fix it. You can fix anything," she added on how AI is not new, but the variety and speed of it is what is new. Apple's 'Shot on iPhone' campaign was a cultural reset, and showed how moving forward with technology could foster artistic expression, and not curtail it. The fulcrum of any movie or piece of art still remains an artist's vision, and embracing AI in the process is a logical progression in today's world. Despite the very visible upside, last year, the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America protested against the growing use of AI in the creative space, fearing the loss of jobs and artistic freedom. This protest culminated into certain checks and balances to ensure AI is used as a complement and not replacement for the industry. The wounds from the SacrJo's controversy with OpenAI still remain fresh in memory. Nonetheless, the general sentiment remains to find ways to collaborate with these AI startups. As more models emerge and the race to AGI seems to be tightening up, it's likely that AI models will start training themselves, if Hollywood studios don't come forward and voluntarily collaborate. Lionsgate has a first mover advantage here. As for consumers, these AI tools could usher in a new paradigm of filmmaking by leveling the playing field, allowing low-budget films to compete with high-budget ones without compromising on its quality. OpenAI's dominance in this space is still coveted, despite never making Sora, its text-to-video generator, available to the larger public. While privately available to some, it is unknown why OpenAI hasn't released a ChatGPT-like subscription model of Sora yet. Sora's capabilities are wild. OpenAI even teased more of Sora, with videos earlier this month, leaving people wanting for more. Sam Altman reportedly attended Hollywood parties in Los Angeles earlier this year, possibly to make inroads before Sora's official launch. Altman is obsessed with sci-fi movies in the industry, and hopes to see more of it in the future. He has repeatedly spoken about favourite movie, Her, directed by Spike Jonze, and its influence on him. Post the launch of Sora, OpenAI's lobbying in Hollywood has been quite fruitful, with many studios and artists, including the famous Ashton Kutcher, endorsing the AI video generator. Yet, Runway's attempt to score a massive deal of this scale, is undoubtedly a notch ahead. Sora's announcement was one of the first, and most sought after breakthroughs early this year, which led to a bevy of launches by its competitors. "It's very easy to copy something once it works, so I think the two ways you can succeed are: say we're going to be a great fast follower or we're going to move the frontier," said Altman in a recent interview hinting at the impending rollouts of OpenAI.