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Digital Social Hour
Guy Ronen: How Arcana Labs Is Using AI Without Killing Creativity | DSH #1652
00:21:38
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- [00:00]
A
Are you concerned with deepfakes at all?
- [00:02]
B
I'm concerned with deepfake, not about deepfake in Arkana. I'm concerned about where the tech could lead us and at some extent, not the deepfake itself. I'm concerned that people will not believe anyone because President Trump is talking right now and someone will say, hey, it's not real Trump, although it is real Trump. That's. That's the main issue that I'm concerned about right here in Arkana. We're safeguarding our users and our ecosystem totally from that. You cannot duplicate someone without the permission, specific permission, D2C side of Arcana. You can't even touch brands or faces. Not just like, you know, Brad Pitt or someone very famous, but anyone that is on the public domain. Our system will identify that the face is existing there and will not let you use that.
- [00:41]
A
Wow. All right, guys, we got guy from Arcana Labs here today at the AI4 conference. He is speaking tomorrow. You ready to get this thing going, man?
- [00:55]
B
Oh, yeah, born ready.
- [00:56]
A
What do you plan on talking about tomorrow?
- [00:58]
B
So we're going to talk about how is our way into the entertainment industry between the Gen AI domain and the industry that are quite kind of, you know, blocking a lot of those, you know, advancement tools. How we trying to get there and make it ethically and democratize the domain itself.
- [01:16]
A
Right. So when you say blocking, is that the Hollywood industry blocking or.
- [01:21]
B
There's a lot of. I don't know if it's a blocking per se, but there's a lot of people and industries and organizations that at some extent said, okay, this Geni, or generally the movement of Geni going to totally ruin the industry. No more creativity, no more like, you know, storytelling and things like that. That it's 100% wrong. And that's the main challenge here, mainly educate everyone.
- [01:46]
A
So, yeah, what do you think the concerns with Gen AI are from their.
- [01:50]
B
Point of view, like any, like any AI advancement in any industry, by the way, that it's going to eliminate the, you know, the people and you don't need any more people to work in this domain and it's going to do, you know, content by itself. And that's totally not the case.
- [02:06]
A
So it's somewhere in the middle, right, where there's still going to be people using it.
- [02:09]
B
I think it's way above the middle. I think the above the line positions will stay as they are right now. We're not trying to replace storytellers. We do need storytellers like AI definitely language models. Can't make me cry or laugh and tell me a story that will actually move something. And this is why storytellers, the way to produce, the way to direct everything that is art driven. Okay. I think will stay and definitely for the foreseeing future.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. You don't get that emotion out of AI yet, right?
- [02:44]
B
100%. At the end of the day, it's another tool. It's another set of lenses or cameras that cannot operate by themselves. Okay. People are, in this case, definitely not the weakest link. People are essential here if you want to tell a story. Okay. It's have to be, you know, initiated from storytellers and creative people.
- [03:05]
A
You guys have a lot of different customers, but filmmakers is a big customer base for you guys, right?
- [03:09]
B
Filmmakers, for sure. We, we build our platform basically. We started like three years ago, actually a bit more. We build our platform at the standard of filmmakers and we believe that any other use case will fall underneath that because that's the highest standard. So marketers and any creative needs can fall underneath filmmaking because that's the right flow to create something. This is basically how Arcana Labs, the platform itself built. Yeah, this is a bridge, basically. Not sure if I'm jumping ahead of myself, but this is a bridge between taking those tons of technologies and AI engines that actually changing and evolving and improving on a daily basis and bridge that to the audience that need to actually create something with that. Okay. There's a lot of. We're trying to ease the way into the industry and not just filmmakers, any industry, any creative industry. Sorry. To help them kind of translate between the clutter of tons of technologies and the use cases that they need to.
- [04:06]
A
And speaking of speaking of audience, audience engagement is being redefined right now too, right?
- [04:11]
B
Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. It starts way, way before AI, you know, revolution with real shorts and things like that. People consum consuming content over mobile much more than actually the traditional ways. Some of it, it's not even, you know, horizontal, and that's surprising. But definitely the consumers will change a lot of habits. They want to see something right now, short, enjoy, you know, keep. Keep adjusting to their schedule and timing. And not like, like we used to go to the theater and watch, you know, a film or sitting back home and, you know, binging a.
- [04:51]
A
A show I'd rather watch from home.
- [04:52]
B
99 of the time for me, 100, 100 same. And also big screen. Okay. Technology is moving forward. Like watching everything on a mobile screen, a small mobile screen, you're losing something. But hey, things are changing yeah.
- [05:08]
A
Did you see the UFC deal yesterday?
- [05:10]
B
No.
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A
Paramount bought ufc.
- [05:11]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- [05:12]
A
All the. All live fights will be $7.7 billion. So that just shows that PPV is kind of dying out, and now it's moving towards streaming. Streaming is a hot wave, right?
- [05:23]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it's not just streaming. It's like people want their content right now. Okay. And everything. Well, ufc, it's a different story, but, yeah, people want to consume everything at the minute. It's the right time for them.
- [05:37]
A
Yeah. Now it seems like the biggest shows and movies are coming out on streaming services like Netflix, things like that.
- [05:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. And Netflix is different than other streamers that actually Netflix providing. You can binge in Netflix, you know, all the episodes is in one place. Other streamers are still trying to kind of drip some episodes and kind of lure you into jumping again into the platform every week. Totally different than different mobile platform for Gen Y and Gen Z.
- [06:07]
A
But there's some consolidation too. I think Hulu and Disney just merged too, as well.
- [06:11]
B
Yeah. And Paramount and Skydance. There's a lot of, like, the industry is just moving into centralizing again. Everything.
- [06:18]
A
Yeah. Moving out of theaters towards streaming.
- [06:20]
B
Right.
- [06:20]
A
Because my generation just doesn't go to the theater. Every time I go now, there's like 10 people there. It's crazy. When I. When I was a kid, it was. You couldn't even get a ticket.
- [06:29]
B
Yeah. I just reviewed a AMC financial reports, and it's like, you know, everything is going down. People are just not watching, and they trying to encourage everyone. Like, you know, half of Tuesday, half of Wednesday, just like, just. Just come and buy.
- [06:44]
C
Yeah, right.
- [06:45]
A
I saw they have a monthly membership now too. Yeah, 20 bucks.
- [06:47]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I still love watching, you know, a film in a big screen, but, hey, that's crazy.
- [06:54]
A
I wonder if they're gonna have to move towards streaming theaters like amc.
- [06:58]
B
Oh, it's a good question. It's a good question for sure. The content and the duration of everything should go kind of. And reduce with the. With the time. Young generation doesn't have the, you know, attention towards like two and a half or maybe three hours feature right now. So definitely everything will go in and get shorter right now at this moment, as fast as I can.
- [07:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. For. For my generation, it's like seven seconds, I think.
- [07:26]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [07:27]
A
If we're not interested, I think the.
- [07:29]
B
Biggest platform, the real short, is like, you know, 50 to 60 seconds and. And just like lowering, you know, audience to, okay, click or buy the next episode and that's an amazing business.
- [07:39]
A
Yeah, it's crazy. So how are. How is this being integrated with movies right now and shows? Is it being utilized yet?
- [07:46]
B
So AI. So AI is moving gradually into being a great solution for specific things. We definitely. And it's very important to emphasize that we're definitely not 100% there. Okay. And. And Arcana, we also not kind of encouraging our clients and partners to do 100% AI or don't use AI. I think the blend and mix somewhere in a hybrid kind of approach is the best thing. And also depend on the genre. I think the 50, 50, 60, 40, 70, 30, call it whatever and depend on what you want to create. AI is an interesting tool to lower the barrier, creating, reduce the cost. Of course, getting great results at the right places. Now, don't get me wrong, like at the next 12 to 24 months, we definitely going to be there. But AI is still not 100% controllable. We're getting a lot of clients that trying to compare between what we're doing and cgi. Okay. And there's still kind of a gaps and again, not what we're doing. In Gen AI, there's still gaps of controlling the characters 100%. Now a lot of companies developing a lot of capabilities that you can control the movement in the frame, you can control the camera, and that's actually what's missing in the creative process. So we're getting there. Still, I think that emotion capturing and things like that in dialogue monologue is still better with real actors. And we're encouraging that.
- [09:12]
A
Why is the movement so hard to recreate, you think?
- [09:14]
B
I think it's not. The movement is controlling 100% control of the frame. Okay. Keep in mind you can control in a traditional way of filming, you can control the camera, you can control the characters, you can control the scene that the stage itself, soundstage. In AI, you're creating something out of scratch. Right. And now controlling camera does one thing, but still controlling all the elements inside a frame, it's still more sophisticated. I think we're literally going to be there really soon. The AI is moving forward so fast. So fast. And that's exactly going back to what I'm kind of mentioned. This is what we're trying to bridge you with Arcana. Okay. We're getting over 25 tools embedded in Arcana with a right workflow for filmmakers.
- [10:00]
C
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- [10:30]
A
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- [10:31]
C
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- [11:06]
B
Now we're updating those on a weekly basis because there's new capabilities. We're doing the diligence. We choosing the right tools for filmmakers. We have of course, tons of redundancy to give them different things. We not dictate what you need to use. But that's, that's what we saving for our users and audience. We're saving the diligence and understanding which model is better for what and embedding those in the platform. And now you just need to choose your creative like, you know, process and rest is history.
- [11:33]
A
You know, I think you're solving a really big problem because right now it's very expensive to create a film.
- [11:37]
B
Oh yeah.
- [11:38]
A
Most people can't afford it.
- [11:39]
B
Oh yeah, right.
- [11:39]
A
Millions of dollars on average.
- [11:41]
B
100%. And listen, take a look at Hollywood. 95% at least. 95. I'm trying to be conservative here. Will never be produced. Ever.
- [11:49]
A
Wow.
- [11:49]
B
Tons of scripts laying down somewhere, dusting themselves like, you know, and we're trying to dust off those capabilities. We're trying to lower the barrier. We're trying to bridge the gap or democratize the, the creative process. We do believe that the big, you know, the next Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino is, is somewhere here.
- [12:10]
A
Yeah.
- [12:11]
B
And. And most of it doesn't have the means to create something 100%. And this is a cruel industry. Cruel industry even for, you know, veterans in the industry. And that's exactly the movement that we're trying to create. And you'll be surprised how many people we're meeting on conferences and talking with clients that literally like with shining eyes and I could never afford a camera when I Was a kid. That was my dream. Now I can create something. And so many talented people from the industry that no one will let them direct anything because they're just the designers. They're just that. They just like now getting the opportunity to take the talent and that's beautiful. Do whatever they want to. Yeah. The freedom of creativity. I'm always saying that we're selling with freedom of creativity. And that's, I think, yeah, that's a major problem.
- [12:54]
A
Because right now Hollywood's gotten to the point where everything's so predictable with the movies. They all just want to make money, right?
- [12:59]
B
Oh, yeah. And you know what? Even those that predictable one and the big, you know, blockbusters, they're not making money, really. Take a look at like Mission Impossible, the new one.
- [13:08]
A
They didn't make money on that.
- [13:09]
B
Take a look at F1. Put aside just a huge budget to create this production to promote that. Okay. The marketing effort and to bring people, as we mentioned, to bring people in, into the theaters and watch that and buy a ticket. They just not, you know, they don't care. Those huge, huge studios. But it's not profitable.
- [13:31]
A
Wow, that's crazy. Because they generated hundreds of millions, I thought.
- [13:34]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it's still like hard to make them profitable. Now. The interesting thing, like any AI movement here is that we just trying to make this domain more efficient. Yes. It's also going to be faster. It's going to, you know, lower a lot of barriers, but it's also going to be much more lucrative for anyone that want to be involved. We're seeing examples on a weekly basis that we managed to reduce millions in a budget of production. Again, not with like a full AI, just with touches here and there. And that's amazing.
- [14:09]
A
That's incredible.
- [14:10]
B
This is, this is the difference between a production that will never be profitable into a profitable production. Simple as that.
- [14:17]
A
That's big time.
- [14:17]
B
Yeah.
- [14:18]
A
What's the percentage breakdown on average for these big Hollywood movies? Like, what do they spend on production? Is it a large percentage?
- [14:25]
B
Listen, it's the production cost. And usually also keep in mind not just salaries and everything, traveling to specific locations. With AI, you do not need to go to specific locations.
- [14:36]
A
Traveling is expensive.
- [14:37]
B
You can create any location. You know, Game of Thrones want to scene to shot one scene in somewhere in like in. In Scotland and bought the team with choppers just for like a few seconds. Think about that. So even if you can do this shot, how lucrative it's going to be, how like the profit going to look at the end of the day. That's the main question. So that's something that we can save. That being said, even getting results quite fast and analyze, you know, there's a lot of aspects about how moviemaking with AI going to look like in, in the near future. I don't think, as I mentioned, I don't think we need to do 100% AI movie, but think about a concept of creating everything in AI and then watching it for a second and said, okay, scene number 50, scene number 80 and scene number 95. We're going to replace them with real shooting and that's it. We're trying to do a reverse, reverse engineering to this industry. Trying to bring a different approach. You still need to go and shoot something that will make sense because it's going to look better with real shooting. But hey, make everything in AI and then decide what you want to do and not vice versa.
- [15:44]
A
Yeah, probably less risky if you do it that way too.
- [15:46]
B
Oh yeah. Cheaper for sure.
- [15:48]
A
Yeah, way cheaper. Wow, I really like this. Really cool. You guys also have Arcana Academy, right?
- [15:54]
B
Yeah. What's up? So as we started to discuss about the industry and not just like filmmakers generally the industry, there's a lot of fear from AI and there's a lot of, you know, I invited a few friends and I'm based in Hollywood and inviting a few friends for like, you know, premiere of a few AI movies that we made. And it cuts into two. The one that said super excited and want to watch that and the one that said, I can't support that. That's going to take my, you know, position and ruin my industry. We realized that we have to educate people into, into the process. Not just educate them by letting them know that they're still in control and the creative process is still there, but also letting them know how can they do it by themselves. So these two verticals about ease the way into the AI world as well as giving you the right tools to create yourself.
- [16:42]
A
Literally.
- [16:42]
B
My daughter, she's nine years old, she can jump on the platform in like she jumped on the platform in 10 minutes and start creating. Wow, right? It's so easy. It's so intuitive. The flow is make so, so much sense. You can choose any path that you want. Text to image, image to image, image to video, video to video, name it, and obviously sound, audio, things like that. Super simple. That's the point that we realize that we need to educate people. Now that being said, keep in mind, creative process with Gen AI is not just filmmaker. Okay. So you can make films of Course, you can do commercials, you can design, you can do specific storyboard into, you know, cut storyboard into real images and move them into motion. So think about the opportunity and the variety of things that you can do with Genai tools. And when we realize the use cases are so broad, we decided that that's going to be the best way to help people onboard AI.
- [17:43]
A
We'll include a link to that in the video. That's really cool. Are you concerned with Deepfakes at all?
- [17:48]
B
I'm concerned with deepfake, not about Deepfake in Arcana. I'm concerned about where the tech could, you know, lead us. And at some extent, not the deep fake itself. I'm concerned that people will not believe anyone. Okay, that's my, that's my main concern because if, if you know, President Trump is talking right now and someone will say, hey, it's not real Trump, although it is real Trump. That's, that's the main issue that I'm concerned about. Right here in Arkana, we're safeguarding our users and our like our ecosystem totally from that. You cannot duplicate someone without the permission, specific permission, the D2C side of Arcana. You can't even touch brands or faces that are not just like, you know, Brad Pitt or someone very famous, but anyone that is on a public domain, our system will identify that the face is existing there and will not let you use that.
- [18:38]
A
Wow.
- [18:39]
B
Right? Interesting. I got a few friends that are famous, not a lister, but famous. And I, I couldn't create anything with their, really with their pictures. I had to jump on the enterprise side of Arcana and then with the right license, you can actually duplicate it.
- [18:53]
A
Wow.
- [18:53]
B
Yeah. We're trying to, we're trying to safeguard everything.
- [18:56]
A
Respect.
- [18:57]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because hey, it could get crazy real quick. It's not just can get crazy, it's also can have a lot of better reputation for companies that, you know, you're not policing your users. They can do whatever they want to.
- [19:11]
A
And I'm getting some really believable ads lately about like fake Joe Rogan doing. Promoting products or stuff like that. It's really believable.
- [19:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. I, I think that in our stage, you can still identify if it's fake or not.
- [19:26]
A
It's getting close though. I'd say like you and I can identify, but our grandparents for sure.
- [19:32]
B
100%. 100%. And I think as the movement of AI is like keep shifting and evolving on a daily basis, I think the next, the next, the current startup that dealing with AI will Not deal with a new AI engine. They will deal with how to verify or give a stamp into an AI that that's genuine or AI. Okay, that's happening already in LLM that they, you know, recognize. If it's been written with AI, it's going to be the same.
- [19:57]
A
Yeah, same with social media platforms. They're making you disclose if you're AI.
- [20:00]
B
Now I have to put a stamp of watermark and I think those regulations with the executive act of AI what happened in the EU as well as here, I think it's, it's getting compliance and it's getting there.
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A
Yeah, the EU is pretty strict on AI laws. Must be tough to do stuff over there.
- [20:20]
B
It's not tough, it's just like, you know, you a bit more restricted on that aspect. I think the US is getting there as well and I think the industry is in a good place. Bad actors, always going to be bad. Any industry, yeah, name it and they're going to be there. You can see the pharmaceutical that, you know, copying like right. And selling you kind of, you know, products that never been under fda. You see that, you see that, you know, all over. We just need to be careful with that. And we in Arcana trying to put a lot of focus on that.
- [20:52]
A
Where can people watching this find Arcana and keep up with you?
- [20:55]
B
So Arcana, Arcana labs, AI for sure. There's a link there to the Arcana Academy as well. Jump. There's you know, top notch instructors and you can take any course, learn how to do starting from commercial up to design and definitely, you know, making a film. We also have like YouTube channel that have tons of free tutorials. Tons of free tutorials and yeah, perfect.
- [21:24]
A
We'll link it below. Thanks for coming on, man. Good luck tomorrow for sure. Thank you so much. See you guys.
- [21:32]
C
I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.
- [21:37]
A
Thank you.