Runway CEO Says AI Could Replace Human Actors

JAKARTA — Cristobal Valenzuela, chief executive of artificial intelligence (AI) research company Runway, says AI could replace human actors, and that the process has already begun.

Valenzuela made the remarks during a discussion entitled “Every Pixel Will Be Generated” at the View Conference in Turin, Italy. Asked whether AI might eventually replace human actors, he said: “Yes, of course. I think that, in some ways, it is already happening. AI is a new medium of expression and a new medium of suffering.”

Richard Kerris of Nvidia took a more cautious view. The company’s vice-president of developer relations and general manager for media and entertainment said human skills in the creative process retain a value that is difficult to replace.

Kerris said AI could never replicate the spontaneity and improvisation of human actors. He cited Marlon Brando improvising with a cat on the set of The Godfather.

“That skill is an extraordinary thing to witness, and I just think that something like that will never truly disappear,” Kerris said.

Valenzuela did not entirely agree. He predicted that AI models would continue to develop and could eventually improvise in a way similar to human actors.

“Not right now, but I think models will probably evolve to the point where you can direct them in a way that is very similar to an actor,” he said.

Valenzuela’s views on the future of the film industry also feature in his essay, “It’s All About the Pixel Economy”. He predicts that the cost of generating images with AI will continue to fall, approaching zero.

He said that one day the time taken to produce content could match the time audiences spend watching it. A film can take months to make, while viewers may need only around two hours to watch it. Valenzuela imagines that audiences will be able to create entertainment tailored to their tastes, as quickly as they consume it.

In another essay, “The Cost of a Frame”, Valenzuela discusses the expense of producing high-quality images for the media industry. He says such production has traditionally been costly.

According to Valenzuela, AI is beginning to reduce those costs. If the technology continues to advance, making films with high-quality visuals could become far cheaper than it is today.

Whether AI can replace human actors has become a hot topic in Hollywood. British actor Tom Holland previously argued that AI cannot understand human experience and emotion, and therefore cannot displace human creativity.

“Creativity is safe from AI because creativity is about human experience. It is about emotion; it is about understanding one another,” he said.