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You might not recognize Lionsgate by name, but you’ve certainly seen some of its biggest hits, which include movies like the John Wick franchise, The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga and TV shows like Mad Men. All of these shows and movies are going to be made available to an AI start-up, according to a new deal announced this week.
Runway is an AI video start-up — if you’re a Canva user, you can test out its text-to-video capabilities — and this deal is the first of its kind for the AI company. Runway will build a custom AI model for the studio using Lionsgate’s content catalog. Lionsgate Studio’s vice chair Michael Burns told The WSJ, who first reported the deal, that the studio plans to use the AI tool in the editing and production processes — and save the company “millions and millions of dollars,” said Burns.
AI was one of the central concerns in summer 2023’s Hollywood trade union strikes, including The Writers Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Directors Guild of America. The new deals the unions eventually ratified set a foundation for protections surrounding AI. But AI continues to be a concern for Hollywood, as SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said in a speech at the guild’s 2024 award show, “AI will entrap us in a matrix where none of us know what’s real.”
Some of these artists’ concerns have led to legal action. Earlier this year, Runway AI and Stable Diffusion, which makes the models behind image generators like Midjourney, were sued by a group of visual artists alleging that their AI models infringe on their copyrights. The case is ongoing.
Runway’s tools aren’t ready yet to produce images and video for TV and movies, its CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said to The WSJ. The company hopes to have “refined” creator tools ready in the next 12 months.
