Meta Partners with Blumhouse to Test AI-Powered Movie Generation Tool

Meta partners with Hollywood's Blumhouse to test out its AI movie generation model

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook owner Meta said on Thursday it had teamed up with Blumhouse Productions, the Hollywood company behind popular horror films such as "The Purge" and "Get Out," to put its new generative AI video model Movie Gen to the test. The announcement comes after Meta unveiled Movie Gen, which it said can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips in response to user prompts, earlier this month. Meta claimed the tool could rival offerings from leading media generation startups such as OpenAI and ElevenLabs. In a blog post, the social media company said Blumhouse had selected filmmakers Aneesh Chaganty, The Spurlock Sisters and Casey Affleck to try out Movie Gen and use clips generated by the tool in their short films. Chaganty's film would appear on Meta's Movie Gen website, while films from Affleck and The Spurlock Sisters were forthcoming, Meta said. Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum said in a statement that artists remain the lifeblood of the industry and innovative technology can aid in their storytelling. "We welcomed the chance for some of them to test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it's still in development," Blum said. "These are going to be powerful tools for directors, and it's important to engage the creative industry in their development to make sure they're best suited for the job." With the partnership, Meta is signaling how it aims to collaborate with creative industries, whose members have largely recoiled in response to the arrival of generative AI technologies over concerns around copyright and consent. Several groups of copyright owners have sued major tech companies, including Meta, over the unauthorized use of their works to train generative AI systems. Meta has argued its AI training is protected by the copyright doctrine of fair use. However, Meta and other tech companies have shown they are willing to pay for certain types of content for AI. Aside from the Movie Gen partnership, Meta said last month it had struck deals with actors including Judi Dench, Kristen Bell and John Cena to give voice to its Meta AI chatbot. Similarly, Microsoft-backed OpenAI has been meeting with Hollywood executives and agents this year to discuss possible partnerships involving its video generation tool Sora, which it first showed off in February. No deals have been reported to have come out of those talks yet, though Lions Gate Entertainment said in September that it had struck a deal with another AI startup, Runway. (Reporting by Katie Paul in New York with additional reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Meta partners with Hollywood's Blumhouse to test out its AI movie generation model

NEW YORK, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Facebook owner Meta (META.O), opens new tab said on Thursday it had teamed up with Blumhouse Productions, the Hollywood company behind popular horror films such as "The Purge" and "Get Out," to put its new generative AI video model Movie Gen to the test. The announcement comes after Meta unveiled Movie Gen, which it said can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips in response to user prompts, earlier this month. Meta claimed the tool could rival offerings from leading media generation startups such as OpenAI and ElevenLabs. Advertisement · Scroll to continue In a blog post, the social media company said Blumhouse had selected filmmakers Aneesh Chaganty, The Spurlock Sisters and Casey Affleck to try out Movie Gen and use clips generated by the tool in their short films. Chaganty's film would appear on Meta's Movie Gen website, while films from Affleck and The Spurlock Sisters were forthcoming, Meta said. Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum said in a statement that artists remain the lifeblood of the industry and innovative technology can aid in their storytelling. Advertisement · Scroll to continue "We welcomed the chance for some of them to test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it's still in development," Blum said. "These are going to be powerful tools for directors, and it's important to engage the creative industry in their development to make sure they're best suited for the job." With the partnership, Meta is signaling how it aims to collaborate with creative industries, whose members have largely recoiled in response to the arrival of generative AI technologies over concerns around copyright and consent. Several groups of copyright owners have sued major tech companies, including Meta, over the unauthorized use of their works to train generative AI systems. Meta has argued its AI training is protected by the copyright doctrine of fair use. However, Meta and other tech companies have shown they are willing to pay for certain types of content for AI. Aside from the Movie Gen partnership, Meta said last month it had struck deals with actors including Judi Dench, Kristen Bell and John Cena to give voice to its Meta AI chatbot. Similarly, Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O), opens new tab OpenAI has been meeting with Hollywood executives and agents this year to discuss possible partnerships involving its video generation tool Sora, which it first showed off in February. No deals have been reported to have come out of those talks yet, though Lions Gate Entertainment (LGFa.N), opens new tab said in September that it had struck a deal with another AI startup, Runway. Reporting by Katie Paul in New York with additional reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Blumhouse Tests AI With Meta Partnership on Short Films

Nicholas Podany Watched 'When Harry Met Sally' for First Time Before 'Saturday Night' Audition for Billy Crystal As Hollywood tests the waters with artificial intelligence, Blumhouse has partnered with Meta on a series of short films that use the recently announced Meta Movie Gen, the tech giant's AI tools that create video and corresponding audio. Blumhouse produced three short films that were made with the help of Meta Movie Gen from filmmakers Casey Affleck, Aneesh Chaganty (Searching), and the Spurlock Sisters. The short films were part of a pilot program run by Meta that is meant to garner feedback from the creative community about their text-to-video tools. Blumhouse was approached by Meta to work with filmmakers to help test the generative AI tools. The company says they will continue to test Meta Movie Gen, which is not yet available publicly, with creatives in to 2025. "While we're not planning to incorporate Movie Gen models into any public products until next year, Meta feels it's important to have an open and early dialogue with the creative community about how it can be the most useful tool for creativity and ensure its responsible use," said Connor Hayes, VP of GenAI at Meta, in a blog post on Meta AI's website where the partnership and Blumhouse-produced short films were announced. Jason Blum added in a statement: "Artists are and forever will be the lifeblood of our industry. Innovation and tools that can help those artists better tell their stories is something we are always keen to explore, and we welcomed the chance for some of them to test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it's still in development. These are going to be powerful tools for directors, and it's important to engage the creative industry in their development to make sure they're best suited for the job." The first of the short films to be released was Chaganty's i h8 ai, with the short films from Affleck and the Spurlocks due out later today. Meta says that the filmmakers collaborated with the company's generative AI researchers working on Meta Movie Gen and offered feedback based on their experience with the AI tool. Meta isn't the first company to put its AI video generation tools in front of Hollywood. As Bloomberg reported in March, OpenAI met with studios and media executives about its product, Sora. Earlier this week Adobe announced that its Firefly Video Model, the company's answer to image-and-text-to-video generation, would be launching several tools in beta for limited public use. AI research company Runway has been releasing generative AI video tools, most recently its Gen-3 Alpha in June. In September, Lionsgate inked a deal that will see Runway train a new generative AI model on Lionsgate film and TV library.

Partnering with Blumhouse, creators, and the entertainment industry as we develop Meta Movie Gen

We recently introduced Meta Movie Gen -- a suite of AI models that show how you can use simple text inputs to produce custom videos and sounds, edit existing videos, and transform your personal image into a unique video. Movie Gen models generate high-quality, 1080p HD video with corresponding audio tracks. At launch, we shared our plans to work closely with filmmakers and creators to integrate their feedback as we continue working on these models. Today, we're excited to share some initial results from our work with award-winning production company Blumhouse and select creators, which is part of a pilot program focused on creative industry feedback. We'll continue to expand this program in 2025. "While we're not planning to incorporate Movie Gen models into any public products until next year, Meta feels it's important to have an open and early dialogue with the creative community about how it can be the most useful tool for creativity and ensure its responsible use," says Connor Hayes, VP of GenAI at Meta. For the pilot, Blumhouse -- a driving force in horror -- selected a group of filmmakers to test out the technology and provide feedback before its public debut. Those filmmakers -- Aneesh Chaganty (Searching, Run), The Spurlock Sisters (The Breakline and participants in Blumhouse's first annual Screamwriting Fellowship), and Casey Affleck (I'm Still Here, Light of My Life) -- collaborated with our generative AI researchers to try out the tools and then used generated video clips as part of larger pieces. Chaganty's short film and experimental videos from creators such as artist Paige Piskin and travel photographer Eric Rubens are available on Meta's Movie Gen page. The short films from Affleck and The Spurlock Sisters are forthcoming. "Artists are and forever will be the lifeblood of our industry. Innovation and tools that can help those artists better tell their stories is something we are always keen to explore, and we welcomed the chance for some of them to test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it's still in development," notes Jason Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse. "These are going to be powerful tools for directors, and it's important to engage the creative industry in their development to make sure they're best suited for the job." Through this pilot, we've received invaluable feedback so far from the directors involved. While there's no replacement for hands-on filmmaking experience, Movie Gen models were able to help them more quickly express their creative ideas and explore visual direction, tone, and mood. We heard that filmmakers see potential for Movie Gen as a collaborator and thought partner, with its unexpected response to text prompts inspiring new ideas. Movie Gen's audio capabilities allowed the directors to explore possibilities for background audio and generate sound effects. And the longer the directors used Movie Gen -- to play with the tooling, learn its nuances, and find inspiration from the models -- the more they saw its potential as a creative tool. We want to empower people to express themselves and their ideas. In the future with Movie Gen models in Meta products, you'll be able to tap into your inherent creativity and unlock new possibilities. But we can't do it alone. That's why we're extending our pilot into 2025. The pilot already gave members of our internal creative and technical teams the opportunity to work alongside directors and learn more about their creative process and needs, which resulted in actionable, concrete feedback we can now focus on implementing before these tools are released to the public -- and we're excited to continue that work. Participants will generate and edit videos using Movie Gen and give their candid, practical feedback about what works and what doesn't as we continue to develop the models and user interfaces. In addition to our entertainment industry partners, we'll also be partnering with digital-first content creators. By giving creatives a new suite of tools to bring their stories to life, our hope is that Movie Gen helps even more people share their unique visions with the world.