Black technology: a super empire spanning two worlds

Chapter 376 [Major Film and Television Companies Hold Emergency Meetings Overnight to Discuss Issues]

AI-generated images and videos have been around for a couple of years, but the content produced is generally very poor, lasting only a few seconds or even a minute. The generated videos are also very unnatural, even extremely abstract. For example, the generated video of a person eating is bizarrely abstract.

The video released by Lingjing Technology is about half an hour long, which is shocking in itself. What's even more impressive is that its visual effects are on par with top Hollywood special effects blockbusters.

"This is impossible. A continuous narrative of half an hour requires multi-threaded emotional and logical processing. How could AI possibly do that?" A director in the film industry watched the sci-fi short film and was not only amazed by its top-notch special effects, but also by the coherence of its narrative logic.

The video productivity tool released by Lingjing Technology showcases the core architecture of its disruptive system, which deeply integrates four major modules: text semantic parsing, 3D dynamic modeling, physics engine simulation, and emotion rendering algorithm.

Multimodal fusion capabilities enable true collaborative creation of text, images, and audio.

AI Xiaojing is equipped with Lingjing Technology's proprietary "dynamic memory caching" technology, which can optimize lighting and shadow effects in real time during the generation process, making the details of each frame more than three times that of traditional rendering.

According to data released by Lingjing Technology, the tool has been trained on more than 500 million hours of top-notch special effects footage from around the world, and has built a knowledge base containing 50000 material parameters and 8000 camera motion trajectories.

Its generation process completely overturns tradition. Users only need to input a text description, and the system will automatically complete the entire process from script generation to final rendering.

The sci-fi short film released by Lingjing Technology, which is about half an hour long, took only 65 hours to produce.

To create a similar-scale special effects shot, a traditional production team would need at least 50 people working for more than three months, and the production cost would be hundreds of millions of yuan.

What amazed industry insiders the most was the detail in the short film of the translucent bodies of creatures made of dark matter traversing the folds of spacetime, including particle flow, light refraction, and energy fluctuations. These details were generated in real time by AI through quantum physics models.

After watching the short film, a senior visual effects director at Industrial Light & Magic said frankly: "Our team would need at least 1000 hours of rendering time for this level of fluid dynamics simulation, but AI Xiaojing completed it in 3 hours."

On that day, film production companies and special effects companies both at home and abroad held emergency meetings to discuss the powerful AI video productivity tool released by Lingjing Technology.

A top visual effects production team initially assessed that if they integrated this AI productivity tool, even if they laid off 80% of their existing visual effects production team, they could not only maintain their current business operations, but also increase their efficiency by more than three times.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, a prominent screenwriter, after watching the news and the sci-fi short film, published a column in The New York Times:
When AI can generate three different endings in three minutes, does human creativity still have value?

Not only screenwriters are beginning to feel immense anxiety, but star actors are no exception, and are even more anxious. AI has developed so rapidly that it means actors can already be replaced, and actors are even more anxious.

For production companies, the salary paid to actors constitutes a very high percentage of the budget for a film or television series.

The situation is even more pronounced in the domestic film and television industry, where actors' salaries can account for up to two-thirds of the production cost of a series.

Just hours later, a well-known domestic film and television production company held an emergency technical seminar overnight.

One of the senior producers at the meeting said, "I think that the acting profession, if not disappearing from the historical stage, is at least dispensable in terms of importance to a drama. Under the new business model, the acting profession will basically be marginalized in the future."

"I suggest that we deploy AI Xiaojing as soon as possible, and at the same time, the special effects department and the technical department should quickly create a batch of virtual actor character models. Then, we can create a batch of virtual idols through IP operation. We can use big data analysis to see which virtual characters the audience likes, and then focus our resources on them."

He looked around at the attendees and continued, “The benefits of virtual actors are numerous. The detailed modeling is reusable, and the intellectual property rights belong entirely to and are controlled by the company. There is no longer a need to pay huge salaries to human actors, and production costs have been greatly reduced.”

"Another key point is that with virtual actors, you never have to worry about them collapsing. There won't be a situation where the lead actor's performance is so bad that it drags down the entire movie. The collapse of the 'Fengshen' series during this year's Lunar New Year season is a prime example of this." The attendees couldn't help but nod in agreement. There are far too many cases of movies or TV series collapsing at the box office or in terms of viewership ratings due to actors' personal issues just before their release. There are countless such cases in the film and television industry, both domestically and internationally.

Moreover, these kinds of things are often unpredictable, and they usually happen suddenly, catching people off guard.

A moment later, a senior director at the meeting said, "While these advantages exist, virtual actors can never replace human actors in a series of offline activities."

Upon hearing this, the producer immediately replied, "Why can't we hold offline events?"

Everyone looked at him with a puzzled expression. He smiled and said, "Have you all forgotten about the Flowing Star Language lifelike robot? The level of technology now is incomparable to that of ten years ago. If we want to create a virtual actor IP, of course we also need to create a one-to-one replica based on the virtual image. We can use the Flowing Star Language lifelike robot to solve the problem of offline interaction with fans, right?"

These words startled everyone present, but they quickly realized that they had almost forgotten about the Flowing Star Language simulation robot.

Humanoid robot technology has advanced to such an advanced level that virtual actors can step out of the screen and interact with fans "offline".

Isn't the "Flowing Star Language" humanoid robot supposed to be unique to each individual? It could be completely customized based on the image models of popular IP virtual actors, allowing them to step out of the screen, break the so-called "fourth wall," and interact with fans and moviegoers offline.

This means that even the advantages of human actors offline are gone. Virtual actors can do everything that human actors can do, and there is absolutely no need to worry about annoying accidents such as a collapse of a persona or an actor's career.

"But now there's a major problem: the meeting between Likang Technology and eight departments hasn't been resolved yet, and they're still ordering us to rectify things. We might not be able to use the Liuguang Xingyu simulation robot." One attendee mentioned this, immediately dampening everyone's spirits.

The company president present thought for a moment and said in a deep voice, "I have also followed up on this matter and understand it. Judging from the current situation, it is very likely that it will not be completely cut off."

He then looked around at everyone and added, "There won't be a huge demand for creating core IP virtual actors. The biggest reason why Likang Technology was summoned for talks is because the Flowing Star Language robot may cause a large-scale unemployment impact, while the number of artists who are the core lead actors is only so large?"

He then laughed and said, "Moreover, actors have long been criticized by the public for their high income. The salary of a core lead actor in a drama is an amount that most people cannot earn in a lifetime. Therefore, it is unlikely that the public will sympathize with actors who lose their jobs."

"What does this mean? It means there will be less resistance to pushing this forward. If we continue to drive public opinion around the issue of high actor salaries, the public will definitely support AI replacing actors."

It's not just the public who have long been dissatisfied with actors' high salaries; production companies are perhaps the ones most willing to lower actors' pay.

In today's film and television industry ecosystem, actors are an indispensable and crucial element, determining the success or failure of a film, and production companies must also acknowledge this.

Especially some heavyweight actors with strong box office appeal, if you want to get these big-name actors to join, they will ask for 5000 million yuan in salary as soon as they are asked, and they will not take the role if you don't get that amount.

However, if there is a suitable alternative, the production company will definitely not hesitate to accept it.

Imagine a movie with a budget of 2 million. The salaries paid to the main actors alone would amount to 1 million or even 1.5 million. With an alternative, this expense could be saved. As the capital holder, the production company would have no difficulty in making a choice and would definitely vote with its feet.

……

(End of this chapter)