By Ilija Brunck

“Can a robot write a symphony?”

The question posed by Will Smith’s Detective Spooner in 2004’s I, Robot.

Now, over 20 years later, the question has skyrocketed in relevance because of the rise of AI and its presumed threat to creative industries.

That threat felt more tangible than ever when, in the past few weeks, Tilly Norwood, touted as the world’s first AI actress, was unveiled, sparking widespread debate.

But while I understand the fear, I think the conversation around the subject gets simplified into a battle between good artists and evil AI. In reality, the two are much more aligned than people think, and the chance of generative AI smothering human-led creativity is close to zero.

Let me explain. Most of what people fear when they say “AI” is a specific subset: What’s known as generative. A form of AI that’s trained on a massive amount of prior work and remixes it in response to prompts.

The industry I work in already uses advanced machine learning techniques for defined, technical problems like face and body tracking, segmentation, clean-ups, de-ageing, de-noising and restoration.

These are targeted techniques that reduce workload and cost, so artists can spend more time on the emotionality and character of a shot. Crucially, these tools are not substitutes for direction, performance, or authorship. When you look at a finished sequence, everything that makes it land still comes from people making choices, one frame at a........

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