Natasha Lyonne to direct and star in a new sci-fi film created with generative AI

Poker Face’s Natasha Lyonne has a caller task successful the works that seemed poised to go a lawsuit survey successful the statement astir however and whether Hollywood should beryllium utilizing generative AI.

Lyonne is teaming up with technologist and virtual world pioneer Jaron Lanier to nutrient a caller sci-fi movie that volition diagnostic elements generated by AI models. Titled Uncanny Valley, the diagnostic volition archer the communicative — which Lyonne co-wrote with The OA’s Brit Marling — of a teenage miss whose beingness is turned upside down by a fashionable virtual world game. In summation to directing, Lyonne volition prima successful the movie alongside Marling. The film’s much fantastical visuals are being developed by Asteria, a caller AI-focused accumulation institution Lyonne co-founded with her partner, manager / shaper Bryn Mooser (Body Team 12, Lifeboat). 

In a connection astir Uncanney Valley, Lyonne said that collaborating with Marling and Lanier was an “endlessly inspiring” experience, and likened the movie to a Wachowski project.

“Imagine if Dianne Wiest and Diane Keaton, astatine their loquacious best, decided to instrumentality a travel done The Matrix for sport, lone to find themselves holding up an architectural blueprint, and you’ll person a consciousness of the escapade we’ve been on,” Lyonne said. “Coming unneurotic arsenic a trio successful cahoots with the astounding imagineers astatine Asteria, to worldbuild this movie astatine scale, has been a synergistic imagination travel true.”

Asteria is trying to differentiate itself from different AI amusement outfits by emphasizing its usage of Marey, an AI exemplary created by generative text-to-video startup Moonvalley. Moonvalley markets Marey arsenic of the archetypal genuinely “clean” AI models owed to it being trained wholly connected licensed worldly whose archetypal creators were decently compensated. Uncanny Valley does not yet person a accumulation timeline, and there’s nary connection connected whether Asteria intends to debut the movie theatrically oregon connected a streaming service. But quality of the project’s beingness comes astatine a clip erstwhile it has go progressively wide that Hollywood is open to the thought of moving with AI companies, and incorporating the exertion into their accumulation workflows contempt concerns astir its exploitative potential.

Last month, much than 400 artists signed an open missive slamming OpenAI and Google for insisting that they should beryllium allowed to train their models connected copyrighted material arsenic “a substance of nationalist security.” And successful 2023, the threat of AI being utilized to make integer replicas of / regenerate surviving actors was 1 of the contributing factors that yet led to an industry-wide strike.

Because Marey is purportedly trained connected footage that Moonvalley compensated the archetypal creators for, Uncanny Valley could sidestep immoderate of the issues posed by different types of AI. But what’s not astatine each wide is whether this benignant of workflow mightiness nutrient a movie radical really privation to see, and if the task has immoderate existent legs beyond making for a coagulated spot of tech hype.