Link: Runway, Sora, and Hollywood: AI Films Actually Get Good

This week Runway AI Inc., which makes AI video generating and editing tools, held its second annual AI Film Festival in Los Angeles — its first stop before heading to New York next week. To give a sense for how much the event has grown since last year, Runway co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela said last year people submitted 300 videos for festival consideration. This year they sent in 3,000. A crowd of hundreds of filmmakers, techies, artists, venture capitalists and at least one well-known actor (Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne) gathered at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown LA Wednesday night to view the 10 finalists chosen by the festival’s judges. The films were made with a range of AI tools and were about as wacky as you might expect. In one, a cartoon kiwi bird went on an adventure across the ocean. In another, the modern struggle with anxiety was personified by a man trapped in a house fighting with a meat monster. The curious, excited vibe of the event was similar to last year, when I attended Runway’s first AI Film Festival last March. The videos, however, were markedly different this time around. They looked a lot less like experimental films and a lot more like, well, films. #

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