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- [00:00]
Devendra Hardwar
I think for some people, they just want the slop. They want the slop and they're happy with it. And that makes me sad as somebody who's been reviewing movies and, you know, games and art for so long.
- [00:13]
Podcast Host
Hello and welcome to the four four Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. Four4Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to Four4Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments and they get early access to our interview series too. Gain access to that content at 44 Media co. This week we're joined by Devendra Hardwar. Devendra is a senior editor at an Engadget and a co host of the Filmcast, a podcast about film I've been listening to for about 15 years. How's that possible? We've covered the intersection of the movie industry and AI here, but Devendra lives at the intersection of AI and film, so I'm very excited to have him on. Devendra, thanks for coming on the show.
- [01:08]
Devendra Hardwar
Hello. So happy to be here. Been a 404 supporter forever and have loved you guys since Motherboard. So this is great. Awesome to chat.
- [01:15]
Podcast Host
Thank you. Thank you. Really appreciate it. And again, as I said, a big, big fan of your work.
- [01:22]
Devendra Hardwar
Thank you.
- [01:22]
Podcast Host
I'm a recovering film student, or I was at least studying film for two years before I realized that I don't have what it takes and decided to go and hide behind a keyboard and go go into writing, but really love movies. Try to keep up with it. Can't as much as I used to. But like one way I keep up with it is listening to the film cast, picking my, my shots based on your guys recommendations.
- [01:48]
Devendra Hardwar
We try. That's like why we exist, right? Because there's just so much stuff to watch and we do try to like narrow down to stuff.
- [01:54]
Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah, and we'll. And we'll get to that. But I want to start with the AI stuff first and I want to do that by focusing on a couple of specific examples. The first of them is this series of short. I don't know what you would even call them, like historical fiction type AI generated videos from Darren Arnofsky.
- [02:20]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah, yeah.
- [02:21]
Podcast Host
If you were to go back to Emmanuel in film school and you were to ask him like, who are the most important new directors of our time? I would definitely put Arnofsky in there.
- [02:34]
Devendra Hardwar
He's my guy. I've loved him Forever. Yeah.
- [02:36]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [02:36]
Sponsor Voice
Yeah.
- [02:37]
Podcast Host
I think recommend for a Dream, obviously, like, hugely influential movie that hit film lovers, like, really hard at the time. And then for me, even more than that pie, which is like tech adjacent science fiction stuff that I was really interested in.
- [02:52]
Devendra Hardwar
PI is such a miracle. Everybody needs to see PI. I love PI so much. It just had a 4K re release. Yeah.
- [02:58]
Podcast Host
Very worth watching still. But I want to start by what's your take on him before we get into the AI project, what's your take on him as a filmmaker? Where do you think he fits into the film canon given the whole span of his career, not just this early period that we're talking about?
- [03:17]
Devendra Hardwar
I mean, he, like, PI came out. Was it 99. So, like, that was like. I was a teenager really into movies. The whammy of like, PI and Requiem for a Dream, which is a movie I've grown not to like that much. Like, it's very impressive, but I will not rewatch that movie. It's just a miserable experience. But the filmmaking on display there is undeniable. And then he made the Fountain, which is, I think, an incredible film. Just like an incredible, really unique science fiction epic with visuals that are just. It's like organic stuff in there. It's just a beautiful film. I thought, you know, coming up, he was one of the more important directors of the 90s and the 2000s, and he's had some misses and now he's doing the AI stuff. And it's just kind of. It's just kind of messy. You know, I remember the run up to Noah, which was his first big budget studio film, and that was a complete flop, but I still found that movie kind of interesting. Mother, the Jennifer Lawrence movie, I think, is astounding. So he's hit or miss for me. But then he also did the Whale, which was just like, I don't know what you're doing here, buddy, but it's not good, it's not interesting. And that felt really disappointing. And then the AI stuff is just like the icing on the cake of disappointment right now for me.
- [04:38]
Podcast Host
Yeah. I guess the only thing I would add there is like, there's this trajectory where we have like a young director, he does a couple of, like, really original, striking films. He gets a bigger budget. He gets a bigger budget. He kind of gets like an Oscar run with. Is it the Wrestler, right?
- [04:56]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah.
- [04:56]
Podcast Host
And that seems to be the peak. And then there's like, you know, you do two or three flops and you get shuffled into, like, this, you know, cage in Hollywood, where you don't get to work with the biggest stars or have the biggest budget or whatever. And I feel like it's on this down slope that he does this AI project.
- [05:17]
Devendra Hardwar
He also did Caught Stealing, which is like a B level crime movie set in New York. Like, why the hell are you doing this? You are above this. And yet it's a perfectly fine crime movie. But it felt beneath him.
- [05:30]
Podcast Host
It seems like an attempt to gain momentum again. Right. It's like, maybe you can make something, a few stars in it, wide appeal
- [05:36]
Devendra Hardwar
potential, potentially low budget. Potentially, yeah.
- [05:39]
Podcast Host
Right. And then it's like, oh, maybe it's a hit. Maybe he gets a shot at a bigger thing. And the AI thing, it's like, I think it fits into that in a sense that it is like a business decision, it seems, or I guess. What do you make? Have you seen it?
- [05:53]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah, I've seen. It's called on this Day and it's a series of like historical AI films. But he's also done like a whole bunch of projects with Google DeepMind and it seems like he's been paid by Google DeepMind to have his film studio. His Primordial Soup is what it's called, to produce a bunch of shorts. It just feels like Google DeepMind paid them a lot of money to do stuff with AI and this is what
- [06:18]
Podcast Host
we're getting as a short film. What's your critique of it? What's your read of it as a short film?
- [06:25]
Devendra Hardwar
It is unwatchable. It is pure AI garbage. It is literally the stuff that you would expect if you type something into Sora or any of the video journal generation tools. It is a bunch of random scenes cut together to sort of create a semblance of a historical epic. But it's also the sort of thing you can see if you just flip on TikTok right now and see people like create AI slop. My daughter likes to watch stuff around fiction, mythology stuff. So we look up stories around Greek mythology and Egyptian mythology and TikTok and YouTube are just filled with like AI slop. Depicting all these stories on the stage is not really any different than that.
- [07:04]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I think the, the Washington stuff is indistinguishable from the stuff you're describing that we see every day on Instagram. And, you know, I can't get in his head, but I find it hard to believe that someone with such a strong visual esthetic would look at that and be like, yes, I feel good about this. Like this. This is a good project that I put my name On.
- [07:28]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah.
- [07:28]
Podcast Host
And frankly, I mean, I don't know. I always hope that people will make good movies even after they make bad ones. So it's not like I'm condemning him to some jail where he's not allowed to make movies again. But it is, I find, to be, like, a pretty shameful episode for him personally, and I guess, just like the industry more broadly. But this brings me to the other example. He's not the only person who is doing this. It's like, we've seen some of Marvel uses of AI there's some stuff that is probably happening that we don't even know about at Visual Effects Studios and so on. But the other example that caught my eye is Steven Soderbergh, a very prolific director, works in a lot of genres, is kind of able to do comedies, thrillers, horror.
- [08:18]
Devendra Hardwar
Another one of those exciting directors out of the 90s, too, right? He's a generation before Aronofsky. He's more like the Tarantino timeline, but he's a hero. Like, he is a hero of mine. He has made some of the best films ever. And he's always, like, an inventive and creative director. He's always trying new things. He's one of those guys, one of the first people to make a film with an iPhone. And it didn't always look good, but he did it. He accomplished it, and it was an interesting experiment.
- [08:44]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So prolific, right? It's like one of his defining features is that he does so many things in so many different ways, and he's willing to experiment and try. And he's not precious, right? You say he's from the Terran Tarantino era, and he's, like, the polar opposite of Tarantino, where he's very, very precious about, like, I'm only gonna make 10 movies. This is it. They each have to be perfect. He's like, whatever, dude. I'm an artist. I'm doing stuff. It's like we're gonna discover things while we're making it. And I think it's, like, arguably in this spirit, right, that he has spoken recently about Generative AI and using it in his project. So he has a documentary about John Lennon coming out, which he said includes generative AI in it. I believe people probably have already seen cuts of this. It's not like he came away from that experience saying, oh, this was. This was terrible, and never use it again. He also talked about he's making a movie, I believe, about the Spanish Civil War, and he intends to use generative AI and that, I guess, Knowing him, seeing the Darren Arnofsky example, how are you approaching projects like that? Are you coming to it with an open mind? Are you skeptical? I think it's morally reprehensible. And I'm not going to engage with movies that use this technology.
- [10:09]
Devendra Hardwar
I mean, it's tough. And I feel like we just kind of have to take this on a case by case basis right now. The Aronofsky stuff definitely felt like a paycheck. It felt like he got a lot of money as a big name. And he's also a producer on all sorts of stuff. He's a producer on National Geographic shows. He makes money putting his name on a lot of different things. It felt like his heart was not in experimenting with AI. Soderbergh sounds like, hey, this is another tool. Just like the way I use the iPhone, just like the way I run and gun and do a lot of guerrilla cinematography. He's interested in AI as a tool, I believe, around the Lennon documentary. He said it was specifically for, like, trippy imagery, that he wanted to use it for which, okay, if anybody earned. Has earned the right to experiment with new technologies and new things, it's Steven Soderbergh. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there. I don't know if that's. If, like, maybe he needs to try to see. Like, maybe it's not the best, best tool that you could use. Because that seems like such a weak argument, you know, like, you can make trippy imagery in all sorts of ways. Jim Jarmusch does it with practically no budget. You know, Soderbergh himself did it. I'm thinking of, like, Solaris, which is, I think, a great film, and the imagery of that planet, that is an artistic decision that was rendered by somebody, that was created by somebody. And you feel something from that. And I do feel like from what we've seen, when you watch AI created imagery, it feels so substanceless. I don't know. It's like eating cotton candy. It's like something is sweet here, but I'm not being nourished by it. It doesn't feel good. So I wonder what that's gonna look like and. And how he's going to use it moving forward. He strikes me as somebody who would dabble with it and not really lean too much into it, because he's very much about being hands on and doing stuff. He's often editing his own stuff. He's often being his own cinematographer. He's not somebody who wants to just give up and let AI take The wheel, which is what I think a lot of creatives want to do, and certainly a lot of what the technology people want to do in the AI industry or studio executives, they're like, oh, yeah, this stuff can make producing movies or doing certain scenes so much easier. And for them, it's because they are so far removed from the creative process. They just want the product. They want the product done quicker. They don't really care how it's done. Whereas that's not Soderbergh's, like, point of view at all. So I haven't seen this thing yet. I haven't seen what the AI footage is. It's not great. It's not a great thing, but I'll have to see it to fully judge it.
- [12:33]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So it sounds like you're open to the possibility of it being good. It's not like you have some ideological position where you're like, well, it used AI, therefore it's bad.
- [12:41]
Devendra Hardwar
It really depends. Like, I think there's usefulness for AI as a tool. Right. Like, as a journalist. Like, I don't use generative AI for. There are all those pieces about, like, the tech journalist using Gen AI for, like, ideation and stuff. And I'm not into any of that. But sometimes I need help with transcription, and the AI models right now can do that, and that helps. That helps with my reporting. But that's a specific tool for that. One thing. I am very wary of letting Genai take over our work and our thinking. And to me, that's a major thing moving forward. It's like human centered art. Human created art, I think, is going to be a really important thing. So it's great that Soderbergh is getting pushback for this because I think maybe he has not fully thought about what it means to use generative AI in something like this. He could do that imagery in so many other ways. This feels like a really easy experiment for him. He's not leaning fully into it. I'm more worried about stuff like Natasha Leone and some of her colleagues talking about making something around AI, making a fully AI project where AI is the centerpiece of why you're making it. To me, that seems inherently soulless, rather than just being a tool used in a broader project.
- [13:57]
Podcast Host
Yeah. I have a quote here from Soderbergh in front of me. He says, my job is to deliver a good movie, period. And this tool showed up at a moment when I needed it. And then he goes on to be like, you know, it's not the solution to everything. I Don't think it's the death of everything. It might be a fun phase, quote unquote, which sounds reasonable and I think reflects what you're saying. The part that I'm hung up on is I look at a ton of generative AI for my job. You know what I mean? I'm sure you do as well. When I'm scrolling social media and it's like I'm very familiar and have a sense for what is AI generated. And that is because it has an aesthetic. And I think that aesthetic is very bad. That's the part that I'm hung up on, and I'm dying to see the movie in order to figure out what he thought the tool did that showed up at the right time for him. And again, I'm open to it being good, but it's just hard to imagine. And then again, it's also sad, I think, for what you said. It reminds me of like in Oppenheimer, there's all these abstract visual scenes where he's imagining, like, quantum physics. And I forgot how they did it exactly, But I read a story about how they did it, and it was kind of like a physical process. They actually shot stuff and then manipulated. And it's such a cool, ethereal thing, and it's hard to imagine beating that.
- [15:20]
Devendra Hardwar
There's so many ways to do it. I mean, the silent filmmakers were doing all. All sorts of creative things to create trippy visuals. But I'm thinking back to even Aronofsky's the Fountain, where that is a movie where it's depicting images in deep space, it's depicting supernovas, and they use imagery of liquids and chemical reactions to kind of sort of make that spatial imagery seem more trippy. Going down to something at a microscopic level to make something at a macroscopic level look interesting. That's a fascinating creative choice. And that's partially why that movie looks so good and so interesting. It's timeless. I imagine if they did that with. With AI today, it would just look like slop. It would just look like an overly gloss CG thing where you don't feel the sort of organic nature of how they originally made those special effects. So I think it's going to require some flops, some mistakes, for these directors to learn. Soderbergh is just like a kid in a candy store. He wants to try everything, I think,
- [16:15]
Podcast Host
to pick up on one of the things that he's saying there about it just being, like, convenient. I suppose. This issue has come up for us in video game development where as you know, video game development is at least the, like, big budget end of things, requires so much labor and so much of it is. I don't know if I would call it rote, but it just, like, repetitive in the sense that, like, generating massive amounts of 3D assets. And we haven't seen this happen yet, but one could imagine using generative AI, other AI technologies to streamline their work, make that work cheaper, less grueling. It's just like video game development. Notoriously difficult job. And a lot of that is also true for special effects studios. Very similar work, a lot of, like, 3D asset creation. And I'm wondering, what do you think about that implementation of AI? Do you think there's, like, a good and ethical way to do it?
- [17:33]
Devendra Hardwar
I mean, the criticism. The main criticism I have against generative AI is that it is a technology that's based on stolen works. Like, that's inherently what it is. It is OpenAI and all these companies sucking up anything that they can find, copyrighted works, whatever. If you produce something online, you are likely in that. And they have created this black box that is now spitting content back out at us. And to me, that seems like the ultimate form of, like, big tech hubris, right? Like, they're reselling stuff that they stole from us. At this point, if you can take the idea of an AI model or a transformer model and then build it on stuff you are personally building, like, if ILM built a model based on its own work, then you're starting to erase some of those ethical considerations. And then you can start having that conversation about, like, how can we use this AI as a tool to help us work better. But it involves building that model and making sure that you're only using your content or licensed content and stuff like that. I do think we're kind of getting there. That is more of a conversation a lot of these companies are talking about right now. But just because you can do it easier does not make that content inherently better. We've seen a lot of games get in trouble for having, like, AI voices in there, right? And it's in there until people start noticing. They're like, oh, oh, sorry, that was a stopgap. Arc Raiders had that. A whole bunch of games recently had that. I'm looking at that game Crimson Desert, and I'm like, the conversation around that game is like, it literally is just content. There's, like, no narrative. It's just, like an enormous world that just seems like it's a bunch of stuff put together. There's Already been traces of AI stuff in there. I feel like that's a game that's so big, they probably did some more AI things which we haven't fully discovered yet. We'll probably see more games like that that just kind of sell themselves on how big they are and how massive they are. No Man's sky kind of had a bit of that effect too. But selling themselves on the breadth of content that they have rather than the quality of it. And for some people that may be enough. What is funny is that no Man's sky was a game not built using AI, but it was built on a procedural formula that essentially gave it an infinite, a very large universe. It was only when the developers were able to spend time with it and years with it and build actual content, not just send it to an AI magic box. The developers did the work to make that game better. Now, no Man's sky is one of the best space experiences you can have right now. That took human work and human effort though.
- [20:01]
Podcast Host
Yeah. A common refrain I see on social media. Tell me if you've seen this kind of post. But it's like mostly on Twitter because that is like the more AI boostery social platform. But it'll be someone who gets their hands on seed dance or Cling AI or something like that. And they'll post a video of like an action scene.
- [20:26]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah.
- [20:27]
Podcast Host
And they'll say it's over for Hollywood.
- [20:29]
Devendra Hardwar
Like the Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt thing. Yeah.
- [20:31]
Podcast Host
Perfect example. Yeah. And I think that one is good, especially because there was some sort of reaction from the industry. Right. It wasn't just like the AI people and the AI boosters and people on Twitter being like, wow, this is so cool. Like there was some sort of ripples in the industry, I guess. What do you think about like, it's over for Hollywood perspective?
- [20:49]
Devendra Hardwar
I am. My bullshit meter has recently like, I'm just like less afraid to call bullshit on this stuff right now. And I saw that clip and I saw people inherently freaking. I. First of all, that was just a bad action clip. It was not shot well, it was not edited well, it was not choreographed well. And the people saying it's over for Hollywood was like, okay, based on what, a 12 second clip? That looks kind of shitty to me. That's not over for Hollywood. And then it came out later that that was essentially just a scene that was actually shot and choreographed by humans and they just like mapped the actors faces on it. So it wasn't even purely AI there. I don't know what's going on in the AI booster's mind, where they're like, this is all over for you. Look at what this, a generative AI search engine can build for me. Look at what this machine can do for me. And maybe that is what people want. I don't, I don't quite know. Like, I don't even know what people do with generative AI images. Do you send it to a friend and just laugh at it and be like, isn't that funny? You spend all these resources to create these images and these movies which have real environmental impacts. To just create a thing that you can laugh at with somebody for five seconds and then. And you immediately forget about is just so, so stupid. But I also don't know what audiences want. Right. Like the Super Mario Galaxy movie came out. I called it a black hole of entertainment. It is like a nothing movie that tells a nothing story. And very little effort went into that. And I got a lot of hate from people just saying, man, you must not love Mario. You must not understand Mario. I'm like, no, I want a good movie. I just want. I want a movie that tries to tell a story and not just literally give you all the slop you want from Nintendo. And I think for some people, they just want the slop. They want the slop and they're happy with it. And that makes me sad. As somebody who's been reviewing movies and games and art for so long.
- [22:32]
Podcast Host
As bad as you think the Mario Galaxy movie is, you were in a theater. I assume you watched it in a theater.
- [22:38]
Devendra Hardwar
I was in a theater.
- [22:39]
Podcast Host
You were in a theater. You sat there. How long is it? Is it 90 minutes or is it like a grueling.
- [22:43]
Devendra Hardwar
It's about 90 minutes.
- [22:44]
Podcast Host
Yeah, 90 minutes. You sat there, your eyes were open, you absorbed the images, you were able to enjoy the audio visual stimulation, and then you walked away and you were like, that was nothing. And it was very low brow and lowest common denominator and all that. I don't think that AI can produce anything comparable to that experience as negative as it was for you. I think you would. I don't know if you would be able to bear two hours of. Right. So that's just to give cred to like Illumination Studios or something where it's just like, at least they're making something, right?
- [23:19]
Devendra Hardwar
At least it's an ethos, which is something we like to say. Yeah, there are bad movies. I would watch a bad movie over AI slop repeated for two hours or something. And the AI boosters keep saying, oh, yeah, movies are Dead. You're going to watch this stuff. You can barely create a 30 second AI clip. That is interesting to me. How are you going to turn this into an experience where people actually sit down and think about it? A good opposite reaction to the Mario Galaxy movie. The adaptation of Exit 8 just came out and that was an indie game where you're just walking through a Japanese subway and there's a Japanese film adaptation that just came out. It's incredible. It is a great. Reminds me of old school Aronofsky. Reminds me of Vincenzo Natali's Cube. It reminds me of creepy independent movies that have a lot of really interesting ideas and it builds on the ideals from the game. So that is an artist. Genki Kawamura is an artist who was able to synthesize what he loved about the game and bring in other things and turn create this new form of art based on the game. And that feels so heartening because I saw that the week after the Mario Galaxy movie. I'm like, yeah, we can do good things. We can make a good game adaptation. Good art is still possible. I hope people actually go watch those things.
- [24:35]
Podcast Host
Yeah. I mean, to that last point, I think something I love about Filmcast is that it is hard to keep in front of mind that people are making good things and in fact they are making so many good things that it's hard to watch at all. You just have to look a little bit out of the mainstream maybe in order to find it. But one reason I would recommend the show is that if you think like movies are boring or they're not making movies for you, I guarantee that they are. You just have to like look a little bit for them.
- [25:03]
Devendra Hardwar
And good shows too. Like I think people, a lot of people looked at something like DTF St. Louis and like this is just another white people in suburbia murder mystery thing. And no, it is like a special unique creation because Steven Conrad is a really interesting writer and a director. So DTF St. Louis, if you're looking for something else good to watch, that's great.
- [25:32]
Sponsor Voice
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- [29:11]
Podcast Host
To the it's over for Hollywood mindset. Most often that comes from people who are already invested in AI, either literally in a business sense, financially, or, I don't know, ideologically. They're just big supporters of AI And I think that's the way. And you can see the kind of the tunnel vision that would make them say that. But there is pickup. And it's like, I think about Runway, which is a company that we covered that is an AI video generator. They partnered with Lionsgate, I believe. Sorry, a bit of a tangent here is you just mentioned that it would be better or more ethical if these AI video generators were working off their own training data and not stealing it from other people. And Runway, the story that we did is that they massively, like, we proved that they massively stole training data from just like nobody. YouTubers that have like 100 followers, they're using them in the training data. And I believe there was some sort of story where Lionsgate was like, okay, well, we need to not do that. We need to work with our own library of movies. And they realized they don't have enough in their library to provide them with good training data in order to generate videos. So it's not clear how sustainable that business model is unless they determine legally that it's okay to steal from the Internet. The point is Lionsgate, which is a real company that makes real movies, they made a deal, right? It's just like they think that there's something there. Do you think that is just placing a bet that they know that might not work out? Are the executive disconnected from like the actual movie market in terms of what people want to see? What do you make of the fact that it's like people are making deals? It's like we could talk about how much we think this is garbage, but it's happening.
- [31:06]
Devendra Hardwar
I mean, I don't think they know what those deals actually mean. Right. Like the entire thing around the AI industry right now, it's pure fomo. It's all fomo. And especially it's rich people being like, am I missing out? Am I losing because I'm not investing in AI? It feels similar to the whole web3 and crypto boom and NFT boom from several years ago where Matt Damon was out there selling NFTs, like selling crypto stuff. I don't know how much they care about that right now. They got paid for it, you know. But we saw game studios and even I think some movie studios, like consider the idea of crypto stuff and what they could do there. And it just felt like fomo. Right. None of that led to anything useful for society or their art. It was just a thing they kind of explored, I think. Have you seen the movie the Congress is something I keep coming back to.
- [31:53]
Podcast Host
Isn't that the Israeli director? Yes, I have not seen that, but I'm a big fan of his, like earlier work.
- [32:00]
Devendra Hardwar
So. Yeah, the Congress 2013 movie by Ari Follman. And it's a really interesting film because it's like a weird partially sci fi thing that becomes partially animated because it's what he does. But it's about this world where artists, actors essentially sell their faces to this sort of AI company. And once they license their likeness away, they cannot act anymore. It's illegal for them to act. And something happens in this, leads to a whole dystopian society. But I keep thinking back to that movie and that idea because it seems like that's what we're building towards. Right. Like, we have seen actors sell their likenesses. James Earl Jones, like, licensed his voice to Disney to be used as Darth Vader Post, you know, after his death. We're gonna see more of that. Val Kilmer's likeness is gonna be in a fricking movie which was approved by his kids. We're gonna see more things like that. Yeah. I think these studios want to experiment with it because they're all afraid of missing out on whatever this is. And the whole thing with Disney and OpenAI was just because it's like that's the ultimate thing. That's where Disney of all companies is afraid of missing out on some sort of, on some aspect of the AI boom. That they'll sign a billion dollar deal with this company that is only a few years old. That just seems wild to me.
- [33:15]
Podcast Host
So this is a good segue because it's like the other thing I want to talk about what I think are the two biggest stories in AI and the film industry. One of them is definitely what you mentioned about the deal between OpenAI and Disney. To recap, OpenAI launches Sora. Sora is an AI video generator. It's a good one. Like, it's like the higher quality type of video generation. And then shortly thereafter, Disney announces that they made a deal with OpenAI. I believe the terms of the deal are like, Disney is going to give OpenAI a billion dollars, which OpenAI needs every dollar they can get. Because all this inference costs a ton of money that they have to keep raising money to support. And then the most baffling part of the deal to me was they out the gate, said, yeah, and we'll have Sora content in Disney, which is like the app that I opened to show something to my son, which is I found to be insane now. But we should say, since then, this whole thing fell apart. Sora is gone. OpenAI shut it down because Jason just published a story on the site about how the cost of compute is really reaching a point where the AI companies can't fuck around anymore with these little tools that don't generate any revenue. So it's like they shut down Sora because it costs so much to let people make videos that have no value. And the deal, I didn't even know you could do this. It's like the deal is gone. It's like they're not getting the billion dollars and they're not Disney. Just like the whole thing is over.
- [34:52]
Devendra Hardwar
It was a surprise to Disney too. Like, they were surprised.
- [34:55]
Podcast Host
It's a decision we should. Yeah, this is important. It's a decision from OpenAI. It's not as if Disney said, like, what are we doing? We need to walk away from this. OpenAI said, look, we actually can't afford this. This is a fool's errand to like make this video generation, profit generating thing for us. So to start with the craziest part, it's like AI generated video in the Disney app. I think there was also some allusion to the fact where it's like you would be able to use our characters Right. So it's like generate your own Marvel stuff. What is the mentality, do you think, at the biggest media company in the world, where they even entertain this as an idea?
- [35:34]
Devendra Hardwar
What came out of Sora and some of the other models is that people found, I think you guys had noticed some of this too. They could, they rendered licensed characters already. They were doing gross, disgusting things. So I think Disney is just like, hey, they already have our stuff, they have our characters. Let's at least have some economic tie to this usage. And maybe it could be a thing that boosts viewership in Disney or something. But something I've learned, having covered the technology industry for 16 years now full time, a lot of these people have no idea what they're doing, no clue what they're doing. And that goes doubly for anything around OpenAI, which was the company started from a sham idea. The sham idea of a nonprofit being created to stop evil AI from Elon Musk and a whole bunch of people. And they just kind of stumbled into this, right? Like it was the invention of Google's Transformer model that kind of spearheaded all of this, like launched all of these things. But before that, OpenAI was like nothing. They had nothing going on. But they were lucky enough to stumble into that idea of the Transformer former model. They had AI researchers, they were able to build a thing that became eventually ChatGPT and that became a really powerful use of this particular model. They have no idea how it works. It is a black box. And this whole thing of Microsoft and all these companies just throwing billions of dollars at OpenAI who has no idea really how their technology is working. They're still messing around with it. It's like when they released GPT5 and people were mad that it didn't do some things that the earlier models did. Yeah, they didn't know. They don't know what's actually changing. Even though they say some aspects of it are improved. I think we're going to see a reckoning for all these companies that have jumped on to OpenAI and all these other folks. So Disney probably got off scot free here, right? It's a deal that just ultimately died, didn't affect their business. They didn't have to deal with any weird content that appeared on the Disney app. Microsoft is fully in bed with OpenAI. Like their investment in OpenAI is like practically 50% of like whatever the for profit side of OpenAI was. Microsoft's partnership is like they're putting Copilot in everything they're doing. All this Satya Nadella is fully on board with it. My conversations with Microsoft executives have gotten really weird over the years where I'm like, you guys are making copilot and this AI stuff. The centerpiece of Windows 11, it's like a calculator that's wrong sometimes. If I had a calculator that was wrong, if I had an employee that just delivered bad answers, sometimes I wouldn't use it. It seems like a bad tool. And the executives just keep saying, oh, it'll get better. It'll just get better. And it's this weird thing where they're fully invested in something that they know is broken and they're starting to feel the pain from that right now. They just had to release that. They basically issued an apology for Windows to Windows users for what they've done with Copilot and everything. They're kind of playing back in copilot and Windows 11. They say they're going to be more thoughtful about getting those features out there. But yeah, Microsoft is just so desperate. Like, they missed out on so many big tech waves. They're like, we're going to be first AI, we're going to bump, we're going to be a partner with OpenAI. We're going to make it a big thing. And it worked out for them for a little while with the initial, like, Bing chat launch and all the Copilot stuff. But I think ultimately it's going to hurt them. Like, we're seeing in many ways, this over reliance in AI is not helping Microsoft at all. So that is my thing. Disney, Microsoft, all these companies, it's all fomo. They just want to get some AI partnership to feel like they're not actually missing out on this. But the reckoning is coming. Like, the fact that these tools often don't work well, cost a ton of resources are turning off users. There are so many reasons to tread more carefully here. Everyone's talking about Apple being slow to AI and being bad at AI. I feel like they have the perfect response here because they're just like, they stumbled into the fact that they were a little late to it. But also, maybe you shouldn't rush into this. Maybe you should be more thoughtful about how you implement these things because it matters. The minor errors Apple encountered, like around notification summaries, not a big deal. Copilot producing bad information for Windows users that could affect lives, that could affect people's finances, like, that's a much more horrible thing to deal with. I think so.
- [39:53]
Podcast Host
I think our regular listeners would know that I Pretty much agree with all of that. But when I thought about the Disney OpenAI deal and I always tried to examine my blind spots and think, okay, well, let's assume these people are not stupid and it's not just fomo. What is going on here? And I guess what really shook me is the idea that you and I look at this Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt scene and we kind of laugh and mock it and we consider ourselves movie buffs and we know movie history and like we, whatever, we appreciate the form and we're like, this is garbage. Obviously this is garbage. But then maybe Disney, which has its tendrils in all parts of the media industry, is looking at the data and they're like, look, man, we're investing all this energy and paying artists and taking bets. Not as much as they used to, obviously. It's like, you know, it's the, the industry is very homogenous and Marvel and Star wars and all that stuff. But it's like we're trying to make stuff. Right. Even if it's the Super Mario Galaxy, we're trying to make things and it's like we're looking at the data and it's actually people, the way they spend most of their time is they're scrolling TikTok and TikTok is full of this garbage. So it's like, what are we doing?
- [41:15]
Devendra Hardwar
Like, yeah, yeah.
- [41:16]
Podcast Host
So I mean, isn't that like a valid business decision? You know what I mean? It's the kids that are wrong kind of perspective on things.
- [41:26]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah. For us, like we think we should think that. I don't know, it's. I can see the business case. I can see why they did it. Like, listen, I talked to Frickin. Remember Quibi? Like I talked to Jeff Katzenberg, I sat down, I talked to Jeff Katzenberg around Quibi and I was grilling, I was like, this seems like a bad idea. I don't think people are actually going to sit down and watch long form content on their phones. I don't think they're going to be turning their phones. And by that point they had gotten $2 billion in funding. Jeff Katzenberg and was it Meg Whitman? And they could just be like, well, we are successful, right? We have made money before. I'm a Hollywood titan. I'm going to take this investment and just make this bet to make this thing. Because, yeah, kids are just watching stuff on their phones. Quibi barely lasted a month. You know, like there are these weird, wild bets out there. At least Quibi was like human created content. But if they had survived, I'm sure they would have, like tried to do the AI stuff. But it's like a lot of people are taking the wrong lessons out of things. And I think we see that happen time and time again. We see that in Hollywood, we see that in big business and in media and in everything. So I would not blame these companies for like dabbling a bit in the AI stuff and seeing what you can build around that. But I also think this is a time for a lot of companies to really look at their strengths and look at what they can do very well and kind of double down on that because we're seeing younger viewers, like Gen Z folks want to see movies in the theater. We're still seeing people show up for event films in the theater. I don't know how the hell Barbie and Oppenheimer, how Barbenheimer happened, but that was the thing. I didn't even like Oppenheimer that much. And yet somehow that became a hit. A talky movie about the birth of the atomic bomb. It's people in rooms talking. It made a shit ton of money. I don't know how that happened. There is hope out there for Hollywood, but they're going to bet, they're going to make these bets and it's going to look really stupid. The key is not to make too big of a bet. I think Disney got us scot free because I could have seen that AI deal going badly so many ways for them.
- [43:27]
Podcast Host
Let's talk about the other huge business story, which is the acquisition of Warner Brothers. Initially it seemed like Netflix was going to be the buyer. Yeah, politics, the machinations of the Ellisons and the White House and so on. That's not going to happen. Paramount. There was just a story today that the Warner Brothers investors or shareholders agreed to the acquisition. And yeah, Warner Brothers is going to. At least at the moment, it seems like Paramount is going to own it. I think you're a lot more plugged in. Like, I'm assuming that you notice, like what movies come out of what studios and which production companies and so on. There was a lot of panic about this even pulling. The politics of it aside, do you think, like the average person who, let's say streams a lot of stuff at home, but maybe goes to the movies like once or twice a year, are they going to notice the impact of this at all? And if so, how?
- [44:23]
Devendra Hardwar
I mean, they probably won't notice, like, Right. I don't think most people really follow directors or studios or things. They follow franchises. Right. They'll Follow actors, invisible names. I think people may eventually start to notice where less interesting things are making it to theaters. This is a really sad situation because when this whole thing was first announced where Netflix seemed like the big thing, I did a lot of research around there and I talked to people in Hollywood and I really came to the conclusion where, like, this is bad. Like, this is bad no matter where we go. The Netflix thing could have been interesting, at least for the landscape of Hollywood and kind of what they're doing right now. All the Ellisons want to do is build a media empire and essentially a right leaning, conservative media empire. And they don't care about much else. Right. They want to make money. I don't think they care about the art form. I don't think they care about movies. I don't think they care much about Hollywood. It's going to be a really sad state for these studios and I don't know what they're going to do. It's just tremendously sad. At least like if it was Netflix getting Warner Brothers Discovery, that's a newer sort of tech focused company that could be doing something interesting, I could have seen it. There's a potential where that led Netflix to taking theaters more seriously, which is a problem right now because some great releases are not making it to theaters. And that's a damn shame. The theatrical stuff around Paramount and Warner Brothers, actual movie releases, it's just going to lead to more right leaning garbage slope. Maybe people will notice that eventually. But I think this is one of those insidious things. These things happen at the top. These mergers happen, these deals happen. Most consumers don't understand how this affects their content. So it's up to the journalists and the media to shout it out. It's sad. All I can say is it's sad. And I'm worried about what this means for the future of Warner Brothers, which is such a storied studio and their whole back catalog and everything. It's not going to be in the best of hands.
- [46:15]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I was trying to look at what they've put out because I'm not the kind of person who could tell you off the top of my head, but didn't they put up a lot of the Nolan movies? Isn't that them?
- [46:26]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah.
- [46:26]
Podcast Host
So I'm just thinking it's just like if you like Christopher Nolan, you know what I mean? It's like if you like Inception or Oppenheimer or whatever, it's like that's where he lives. And I don't know, that seems. It's like doesn't bode well for that. I'm sure he can make movies. I'm just saying it's like the type of studio that funds that work that people think is like a pill of like modern cinema.
- [46:47]
Devendra Hardwar
He had a big falling out with them, I think because of the whole HBO same day stuff. So Oppenheimer was Universal, so he kind of went over there. Yeah, yeah. But again, like it's that sort of thing. Artists are tied to studios, they like to work with specific studios. I'm not sure how many people are gonna be excited to work for the Ellisons. And you know, the Ellison owned Warner Brothers and the Ellison owned Paramount. Yeah.
- [47:10]
Podcast Host
So last couple of things I wanted to talk to you about, and I'm just gonna indulge myself. Cause it's something that I often wonder when I listen to you guys. You guys watch a lot of stuff. You have a full time job, you have two kids. I often wonder how you make it happen.
- [47:24]
Devendra Hardwar
It's hard.
- [47:25]
Podcast Host
Let's talk about at home, right? It's like, what is the setup? Where are you watching movies and when?
- [47:34]
Devendra Hardwar
It's almost always after the kids are asleep or when I have pockets of time, maybe during the workday. But it's also sometimes I can watch a thing that is both applicable to my work. Hitting gadget. Cause it's a movie I'll be reviewing there and a movie we'll be reviewing on the film cast. And that's golden. That's like, oh man, I am producing so much content from this time. But yeah, we have a house outside of Atlanta. I'm lucky enough to have a projector and a big projector screen in my basement. And that is my little personal movie theater. It's nothing fancy, but it looks good. And I have my surround system there. But we also have a large TV in our family room. And that's where I watch stuff with my kids, I'm sad to say. Like, I do like to watch like little short form videos with my daughter because it's just like a thing we do sometimes to pass the time during bath time or whatever. You know, that's like the minor thing. But most of what I watch happens after the kids are asleep. And thank goodness they're getting better about sleeping. But I am somebody who can like drive to the movie theater after 10pm still make it through a movie and still make it back home. It was so much easier in New York where I didn't have to drive. But that's typically what I do right now. Or I'm watching a movie late at night at home. You know, I've talked about this. Like, sometimes you don't feel like moving if you're a parent. Like, bedtime is done, bath time is done. You just feel like collapsing in your bed or whatever. I will watch stuff on my phone. I don't typically watch movies on my phone, but I watch TV shows on my phone because it's like, I don't have to move, but I can veg here and I have a decently large OLED screen inches from my eyes and I can watch a TV show and still have like a full sense of like how it's made and how it looks. So I watched a lot of the Pit that way this year and, and it works for the visceral nature of the pit. It's not the best viewing experience, but it's one way to do it.
- [49:16]
Podcast Host
I'm surprised you said projector. I assumed an OLED guy, I would assume you would look down at projectors.
- [49:23]
Devendra Hardwar
I have OLED everywhere. Listen, I understand the differences. I report on TV stuff and projector stuff, but it's a laser ultra short throw projector. So it's one of those things that sits close to the wall and spits out a 120 inch image. And I'm sorry, but for OLED, if you want over 100 inches, you're spending tens of thousands of dollars right now. TVs are getting cheaper. I'm seeing some wild deals out there right now. So like, if you want like a mini LED, a not so great mini LED, but at 100 inches you can get that between like $1,000, $2,000. Right now. Older OLED sets are also coming down. So right now we have a 65 inch mini LED in our family room, which I think is perfectly fine. Large enough for the kids, maybe a bit too large, but I'm like, these 77 inch OLEDs are getting down to like $1,500, which is insane. And I just feel like at some point we're going to make that move when I feel comfortable like having a TV that large there with the kids. So that'll probably be something. Right now if anybody's in the market for TV, look@slickdeals.net right now because the deals are insane.
- [50:27]
Podcast Host
I would say go to Best Buy. I bought my first new TV in like 20 years. I had a Sony Bravia. I bought it in 2010 and I used it up until this year and it was totally fine, 1080p. And then I went to Best Buy because I very much was like, okay, if I'm going to get a good tv, I'm going to get like the best quality. That's what I care about. I want the best quality image I can get. I don't care about the size as much you will.
- [50:48]
Devendra Hardwar
The more you sit with that TV, you will be like, I could actually fit a 77 inch in this room. 77 inch TVs are actually not that large anymore. So you can make it work.
- [50:57]
Podcast Host
You can get one for like $500.
- [51:00]
Devendra Hardwar
Best Buy is good if you can fit into your car. But the really clutch things are like, there's so many of these deals where it's like you get free delivery and you get free setup. And that's like the best thing. Because what you don't want to do is be a novice handling these massive screens, which can crack really easily if you unbox them badly. When you get the install service, it's super nice. They can even wall mount it sometimes for free as part of these deals too. So I would say take advantage of those things because these things are very delicate. So the less you put your hands on it and set it up sometimes the better.
- [51:31]
Podcast Host
Yeah, the price of everything obviously is going up somehow. TV's cheaper than ever. I don't understand it.
- [51:37]
Devendra Hardwar
Well, they're getting a new stock. The new stock of units are coming in. So like, this may be the cheapest TVs are for a very long time. Who knows what's going to happen? But yeah, the old stock is being replaced right now. So I think LG and a lot of folks are trying to clear things out.
- [51:50]
Podcast Host
Okay, that makes sense. So I guess the other thing is speaking of kids and not having time, I have a two and a half year old and I came into parenting and screen time extremely blase.
- [52:05]
Devendra Hardwar
Yep, yep.
- [52:06]
Podcast Host
My opinion on that changed immediately. Like, I grew up and we were allowed to do anything with Sabines. I was like, whatever. He can do everything. And then I saw how he reacted to the phone. Yeah, I really didn't like that. We curbed that and now we are trying to like, build a healthier relationship. And I think it's working. But I'm wondering, like, how. How are you approaching it? Like, when did you introduce them to full movies? Or did.
- [52:31]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah.
- [52:32]
Podcast Host
Did you try. How are you picking stuff? Are you like consciously trying to like, raise film fans?
- [52:39]
Devendra Hardwar
Absolutely.
- [52:40]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So tell me, what are you doing?
- [52:42]
Devendra Hardwar
It's all, it's all a conscious effort. I will say for parents, like, there are enough studies out there that screen time before 18 months, like, definitively not a great thing. So if you can try to avoid that, that's a good thing. Once you get to 2 years old, then you could start to have a little fun. And around 2 to 3, I was like, okay, what am I gonna introduce to my daughter? Where are gonna be her first things when it comes to media? And a lot of that ended up being Miyazaki movies. And I'll say my neighbor. Totoro is a perfect film for children. Perhaps the ultimate, the best, best kids film ever made. And the dubs are great too. So the Totoro, Kiki's delivery service, really fun, really great, really sweet. Ponyo on the Cliff is like a little more grating. It's not as good as Otodoro, but it's still Mizaki. It's still fun. And then you can expand from there. And I try to avoid things that have too much violence and stuff. But my daughter has seen a bit of Nausicaa. She's seen Porco Rosso with me. I try to be really careful about how some of that stuff is cartoonish violence. I'm not too worried about realistic violence. I am more. But the Miyazaki stuff has been a good thing to lean on. And then from there, it's just like, great kids movies, great kids show that I really enjoyed. Bluey came out at the perfect time. Bluey is just like a perfect, perfect thing. Short episodes, really inventive, really creative show. I am very careful about the media. I introduce my kids to. My wife is less careful. So that's how I find, like, oh, mom, my son is watching Vlad. And somewhat like these Russian kids who live in Dubai or something. I'm like, how the hell did this happen? What are we doing here? I do try to avoid that some of that stuff is real bad. But you can be thoughtful, especially if you're a parent who likes to watch shows, likes to watch movies and stuff. You can't be thoughtful about it. You can bring your kids into it. My thing right now is I'm very purposeful about the other types of movies I'm showing my kids. So my kids really want to see some Marvel stuff. They want to see more superhero stuff. How do I get into the mcu? Iron man is not a great movie for kids. Maybe not the best. You probably shouldn't go in chronological order. And the best introduction ended up being Spider man. Ended up being the Tom Holland Spider Mans. So Homecoming was a good one. I fast forward scary bits. I fast forward bloody bits. But my Kids love Spider man, but I actually started even before that. I was like, like, we're going to get to Raimi. If we're going to start, if we're going to go down the superhero path, it's going to be Sam Raimi. You're going to know Sam Raimi's Spider man before anything else. We watched Spider Man 1 and they love that. And that introduced them to the idea of sitting down and watching live action stuff more. We've watched the Princess Bride. We've watched a lot of the classics too. I'm being very careful about it. Star wars is the one where I'm like, how do I introduce this? Because there's so many ways in. And I kind of just want to do A New Hope, but I go where the kids are interested. And right now it's been superhero stuff. It's been me as hockey and it's worked out pretty well.
- [55:42]
Podcast Host
My son was in an all encompassing Pixar's Cars phase.
- [55:49]
Devendra Hardwar
Oh man, that's rough.
- [55:50]
Podcast Host
I've seen the movie a million times and I could do a four hour podcast just about the logic of the Cars universe.
- [55:55]
Devendra Hardwar
Logic of Cars is insane.
- [55:56]
Podcast Host
Crazy. But it's funny. You said Totoro. That is the thing that broke the spell. I put that on.
- [56:03]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah.
- [56:04]
Podcast Host
And I'm not, I'm not. I've watched like the big canonical anime movies, but I'm definitely not that guy. And I did. I did not get Totoro.
- [56:15]
Devendra Hardwar
It's a movie made for kids. Like it's kid logic purely throughout.
- [56:19]
Podcast Host
It is. It really is. And when you. I really appreciate it. I could not appreciate it until I watched it with, with a. With a child next to me. It's nice for me because I'm rediscovering Miyazaki through this experience. If I may, how do you literally put something on for them? By which I mean what I found to be different from my experience of watching movies as a kid and my kids experience of watching movies is how malleable the content is. Because it's like I grew up with like a VHS and lots of movies and I can put on whatever I wanted and all that. So it's not like I didn't have access to stuff. I definitely did. But like when he was in the Cars phase, for example, he even at 2, realized that initially he watched the movies and he just watched them through and then he was like, you know what? I really, I like this part of this movie and I like that part of that movie. And I know that I can Pick and choose what I want, because it's all on the screen and it's all. You can scroll through the movies and you can pick whichever movie you want. And he doesn't have an understanding or access to TikTok. But it is kind of a TikTok logic of, like, I can immediate gratification to whatever I want immediately. And I'm wondering A, if you've noticed that, and B, it's like, have you found a way to bypass that? Like, I've seen some people and I find the idea a bit twee, but makes sense to me where people are like, I have a room set up with VHS tapes for my kids. It's like, I understand that now. I understand why you would want to do that.
- [58:01]
Devendra Hardwar
Yeah. Yeah. That's really. I mean, that's really cute. What I've noticed is that every kid is different. Like, every kid has different demands. My son has different demands, and my daughter. And my daughter's the one who's seven, watching stuff with them. A lot of it comes down to being like, hey, let's sit down, let's take a look at this. Or, for example, they're not listening to me. If they don't want to sit down, I just start watching something. I just start watching it while they're playing, and they'll start watching whatever you put on the tv. And I kind of get them in and get them distracted from whatever else they're doing. My daughter is an iPad kid, unfortunately, because she's by three to four. She just got really into Minecraft. I'm like, you know, of all the things to be into as a kid, Minecraft is kind of a really wonderful thing. I did Minecraft. I love Minecraft. I didn't play Minecraft at all when I was like. I was not that age for it. I was like an adult by that point. But I am discovering Minecraft through my daughter and learning about it. And we saw the Minecraft movie together, and kids are so spoiled, they can watch those clips however they want now. They have instant access to all this content. Minecraft is something that's peer creation. My kids don't ask for specific clips, but we certainly. They know we can always just rewatch a movie from the beginning. So I think they kind of treat it like vhs, right? Rather than ask for specific scenes, they're like, okay, we're halfway through the movie now, let's start back from the beginning. Let's just start again. So that's how I ended up watching the Incredibles and all these other things hundreds of times. My kids are big into the Pixar stuff too for sure.
- [59:36]
Podcast Host
Okay Devidra, I could keep talking to you about this for many hours, but we should wrap it up. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [59:43]
Devendra Hardwar
Thank you. This is great.
- [59:44]
Podcast Host
Please go listen to the film cast support their Patreon highly, highly recommend it.
- [59:49]
Devendra Hardwar
Thank you.
- [59:50]
Podcast Host
As a reminder, four four Media is a journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to four four Media and directly support our work, please go to four four media Co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and ad free versions of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribe to the section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope and Alyssa Metcalfe. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been 44 Media. I'll see you next time.