Instant video could be the next big thing in Artificial Intelligence

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Ian Sansavera, a software architect at a New York startup called Runway AI, typed in a short description of what he wanted to see in a video. “A quiet river in the forest,” he wrote.

Less than two minutes later, an experimental Internet service generated a short video of a quiet river in a forest. The flowing river water shimmered in the sun as it cut through trees and ferns, rounded a corner, and splashed gently over the rocks.

Runway, which plans to open its service to a small group of testers this week, is one of several companies developing AI technology that will soon allow people to generate videos simply by typing different words into a box on a computer screen. computer.

They represent the next stage in an industry race — which includes giants like Microsoft and Google as well as much smaller startups — to create new kinds of AI systems that some say could be the next big thing in technology, as important as web browsers or the ‘iPhone.

The new video generation systems could speed up the work of filmmakers and other digital artists, becoming a new and rapid way to create online disinformation that is difficult to detect, making it even more difficult to tell what is real on the Internet.

The systems are examples of what is known as generative AI, which can instantly create text, images and sound. Another example is ChatGPT, the online chatbot built by San Francisco startup OpenAI, which stunned the tech industry with its capabilities late last year.

Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta unveiled the first video generation systems last year, but didn’t share them with the public because they were concerned the systems could be used to spread disinformation with newfound speed and efficiency.

But Runway CEO Cristobal Valenzuela said he believed the technology was too important to keep in a research lab, despite its risks. “This is one of the single most impressive technologies we’ve built in the last hundred years,” he said. “You have to have people actually using it.”

The ability to edit and manipulate film and video is nothing new, of course. Filmmakers have been doing this for more than a century. In recent years, researchers and digital artists have used various artificial intelligence technologies and software programs to create and edit videos often referred to as deepfake videos.

But systems like the one created by Runway could, in time, replace editing skills with the push of a button.

Runway’s technology generates videos from any short description. To get started, simply type a description just like you would type a short note.

It works best if the scene has some action, but not too much, something like “a rainy day in the big city” or “a dog with a cell phone in the park”. Hit enter and the system generates a video in a minute or two.

The technology can reproduce common images, such as a cat sleeping on a carpet. Or it can combine disparate concepts to generate weirdly funny videos, like a cow at a birthday party.

The videos are only four seconds long, and the video is choppy and blurry if you look closely. Sometimes the images are strange, distorted and disturbing. The system has a way to mix animals like cats and dogs with inanimate objects like balls and cellphones. But given the right hint, it produces videos that show where the technology is going.

“At this point, if I see high-resolution video, I’ll probably trust it,” said Phillip Isola, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in AI. “But that’s going to change pretty quickly.”

Like other generative AI technologies, Runway’s system learns by analyzing digital data, in this case photos, videos and captions that describe the content of those images. By training this type of technology on ever-increasing amounts of data, researchers are confident that they can rapidly improve and expand their skills. Soon, according to experts, they will be generating professional-looking mini-movies, complete with music and dialogue.

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