How to Stand Out in the Ocean of AI Slop | Mick Mahler | TED

00:04I’ve always been drawn to the uncanny -- the slightly creepy. I make movies about spiders playing jazz on their webs, or cockroaches building a rocket to fly to the moon and explore the universe. I love finding the human in what most people find a bit creepy.

00:22So when the first AI images like this appeared, I was not creeped out. I was really curious. What new ways of filmmaking could this unlock? I started a YouTube channel to find out. Some of my early experiments were nature documentaries generated using one of the earliest AI-video models.

00:46It was so early that it couldn't even remember what happened half a second ago, which is why it looks like planet Earth on acid -- I imagine, I mean, I wouldn’t know. (Laughter) My favorite early project, though, was using, back at the time, cutting-edge AI tools to generate the story, the 3D models and even the animation to create a sequel to my favorite Pixar movie, "Ratatouille," of course.

01:12And it became whatever this is: (Video) Gusteau always said that anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great. (Dramatic music) Oh! Help! Help me, Remy! (Screaming) (Evil cackle) Mick Mahler: So, yeah. (Laughter) Not exactly Hollywood, I know, but I really loved pushing these tools to their limits to see where they'd break.

01:48And as you can see -- they broke pretty fast. But now AI can make almost anything I can imagine, and it’s getting better and easier to use every single day. That’s amazing, but also kind of terrifying, right? I mean, what happens when everything becomes possible?

02:06Will anyone be able to just prompt a Hollywood blockbuster now? Or will we drown in an ocean of meaningless AI-generated content -- what we now call “AI slop.” I'm actually more optimistic. And to show you why, I brought three projects that really inspired me.

02:23When a new AI model was released that could transform audio clips into animation, filmmakers from Berlin went out into the streets and interviewed pedestrians about their meat consumption, and then they used this AI model to transform their voices into this: (Video) I’d like to be a vegetarian.

02:42It affects my health. But yeah, I do feel better when I eat it. Alien 2: We need the meat because of our brains. Those things that are coming from the meat is helping the brains. (Laughter) Now, a lot of people are creating these over-the-top sci-fi movie trailers with explosions and stuff with AI.

03:04And I get that. That’s a lot of fun. But this stood out to me because it's not that. It's rooted in reality. It's a simple idea with a funny twist. And most importantly, it tells a story. That's how I like to approach my AI projects, too. Earlier this year, I felt really burnt out from sitting at my computer all day long, testing all these new AI models.

03:23I started to feel a bit like Gregor Samsa from Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." You know, the book about the guy who turns into this beetle creature. Well, inspired by that, I went outside and photographed real beetles, and then used these photos to train my own AI character model of this beetle.

03:41I then wrote an alternative ending for the story where Gregor, instead of dying alone miserably, reconnects with nature and learns that there's more to life than work. We then just went out into the woods and filmed this on an iPhone. (Laughter) And using this beetle model, I was able to transform myself into Gregor with just a few clicks.

04:04(Laughter) Meanwhile, people are now creating entire movies on their laptops. There's this growing community of filmmakers pushing the boundaries of AI, and to them, sharing how they made it matters as much as the final movie. And I think that openness is really cool.

04:23It really invites anyone to come in and join and start creating their own movies. So this is where we are right now. Soon anyone will be able to tell any story without technical limitations. So what happens when everything becomes possible?

04:40I think, yes, we're going to see amazing new aesthetics, new narrative forms we've never imagined and stories from people who couldn’t find their audience before. But we are also going to see -- and we are already seeing -- a lot more trash: low-effort AI content to cut costs, deepfakes, misinformation AI slop.

05:01But I think in that ocean of AI slop, authenticity stands out more than ever. Originality stands out. I think effort stands out. Remember the Studio Ghibli trend, when everyone turned themselves into these anime characters? It was everywhere online for a few weeks, then very quickly vanished because novelty creates hype, but gets boring fast.

05:23And I too was drawn to AI for the novelty, but the more perfect and easy to use these tools become, the more bored I am actually by the technology itself, and the more excited I become about the real question: What stories are we going to tell now?

05:39Because filmmakers were never remembered for their tools -- they were remembered for their stories, for their ability to move audiences, for their vision. But I think here’s also the challenge, because the tools always kind of shaped that vision, right?

05:57When we didn't have sound, title cards became a whole art form. CGI is too expensive? Maybe we need to actually build a part of that set? Early AI looks weird and creepy? Lean into that and make abstract nightmare fuel to make people laugh.

06:15Now those constraints are fading, and to avoid getting lost, you have to be more sure than ever about what it is you want to create. I think when everything becomes possible, nothing matters more than your vision. So here is how I work now for my newer projects.

06:30For my newest short film about a man who changes size with his confidence, we went story first, tool second. We knew that AI would make the visual effects possible, so we just wrote it, went out and shot it, and then later we figured out our own AI workflow.

06:46built an open-source model that you can run for free on your own computer -- it’s very, very nerdy. That allowed us to control every creative decision. And that’s super important with AI -- to keep that control -- because a lot of these AI tools will try to make creative decisions for you.

07:06Don't let them do that. Think about the story only you can tell. Make it weird, make it unique, so that no AI could generate it on its own. And if you want, use AI as a tool to reach that vision, but never to replace it. Animation voice: Thank you for your attention.

07:22Now go make something cool. MM: Sorry for that. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)