Cinema and artificial intelligence

The fast and relentless development of various types of Artificial Intelligence (AI), accompanied by heated debates about its benefits and potential dangers, might seem at first glance to be a natural enhancement of the computerization and digitalization processes that have characterized the last decades of technological advances. In reality, AI is a new step forward in these developments, such that it can be compared to the technological explosion caused by the advent of the Internet. This is due to a series of reasons, among which:

a. AI is able to collect and manage a huge amount of data (big data), which was unthinkable until a few years ago.

b. This data can be processed in a very short time through a series of algorithms that use it for an almost unlimited range of possible purposes, as we will see in the case of film industry.

c. The management of databases is completely different compared to the past: AI is actually able to process data according to different purposes, adding new data, and above all taking advantage of how these data are used. By using the feedback that has made the related processes capable of automatically updating themselves, AI is learning from its own behavior (machine learning), getting ever closer to the way the human mind works.

d. This ability to self-innovate allows AI to produce new combinations of data (texts, but also audiovisual materials), which can present themselves as original and creative, even if they still depend on the input provided from outside sources. However, it is surprising, even at a first approach to its uses, how AI is able to provide highly complex and structured results in just a few seconds, in enormously reduced times compared to the same operations carried out by a human being.