I’ve seen a bunch of short films from AIFF and even met a few filmmakers that submitted to the festival. The “type in text, get film out” critiques fundamentally misrepresent what the process of making films with AI looks like. At Runway, I’ve seen the creative team craft imagery with these tools that I would have never been able to come up with. It was so obvious that you need to spend a lot of time to understand the tool, lot of iterations to align with what’s in your head and yes, brainstorming with your fellow humans to make a film that represents your vision. Many films here would have otherwise been impossible to make by that set of filmmakers, if not for the tool. And for people that say “we actually need less content and fewer films” - no one is asking you to consume this. The purpose of a film is to realize a story you have in your head, the role of audience is secondary. You cannot gatekeep storytelling. I’m glad to see IMAX doing this and partnering with Runway on this. I don’t think any other AI video company is building with artists’ best intentions the way they are.