Artificial intelligence is changing the way we interact with the world—and that includes the arts. Last month, the University of Southern California announced its new Center for Generative AI and Society. The $10 million project will focus on the impact of the evolving technology across our culture, with an emphasis on innovation and ethics.
According to USC president Carol L. Folt, the center will work “across disciplines” at the school, including film.
Elizabeth Daley, the dean of the School of Cinematic Arts, said that “it would be wrong not to bring [our] incredible expertise to one of our current moment’s most significant topics, and to do so with an emphasis on the powers of creativity, imagination, inquiry, and criticality.”
Associate professor of cinematic practice Eric Hanson is concerned about fairness when it comes to the realities of the classroom. He teaches animation, a field in which filmmakers could benefit from the technology by using AI to perform “menial but essential tasks” like “tweening,” which usually falls to junior assistants. But this could become a problem in a group project if one student uses AI to reduce their workload—and by extension, their overall contribution.
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“We will now need to redefine our standards,” Hanson explained. “My thought is that I don’t want one student to do one-tenth of the work for the same grade; so there must be equitability as an assumed standard in a group setting.”
According to USC associate professor of cinematic practice Michael Bodie, AI is already having an impact on the film program—and the art form at large. “Our students are already beginning to play with it in their work, and the faculty and staff at the School of Cinematic Arts are having many conversations about how to best incorporate AI throughout our programs,” he said.
That said, the rise of artificial intelligence is an ongoing topic of controversy. Practice of cinematic arts professor Marientina Gotsis told us that she’s concerned with the “facts, accuracy, and accountability” of material produced by AI. “Our human biases are passed on to our AI tools, with a great possibility for magnifying biases and spreading them like wildfire,” she explained. She added that students and artists using AI tools “without tweaks or control can produce shallow or superficial results across a number of aesthetic factors, but also in terms of substance.”
USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Director of Student Services on the Most Common Mistakes He Sees Despite these misgivings, Gotsis said she finds the topic intriguing. “This center will push us to think deeper about what creativity, originality, and intellectual property look like in the future and about [the impact of] diversity and inclusion on AI tools. And most certainly, the center will stimulate our moral imagination across a number of application areas and industries.”
According to professor of cinematic arts Irving Belateche, the center could have a bumpy road ahead. “Will AI eventually replace some jobs in our industry? Yes,” he said. “But it will also create other jobs, just as the advent of sound, special effects, and any other number of technological advances did.”
But he believes that humans will continue to remain in charge. “AI won’t change the vision of my students, and it won’t change the stories they want to tell,” he said. “Just as my students are inspired and influenced by the storytellers who came before them, they might be inspired and influenced by what they learn from AI. But just as the storytellers they’re influenced by can’t give them the heart and soul of what makes their own stories unique, neither can AI.”
It remains to be seen whether other universities will follow USC’s lead. “We have to be ready for it all as it comes and know what to welcome and what to push back on,” said Gotsis. “In some cases, AI will come like rain to put out a fire; and at other times, AI may be the fire that we cannot put out.”
This story originally appeared in the Apr. 6 issue of Backstage Magazine.